Oppression: A Saudi Princess Speaks Out

Al Beeb on its website carries excerpts from a radio interview on the BBC World Service with a genuine Saudi princess, resident in London.  These excerpts focus on the institutionalised oppression and infantilisation of women in the desert kingdom.  In the course of these remarks relating to women she also touches on other aspects of Saudi society  –  the fossilised educational curriculum and the endemic poverty encompassing much of society –  which she emphasises must also be changed.

For example:

'The content of the syllabus is extremely dangerous. For one, our young are taught that a woman's position in society is inferior. Her role is strictly limited to serving her family and raising children. They are actually taught that if a woman has to worship anyone other than God it should be her husband; "that the angels will curse her if she is not submissive to her husband's needs". Girls are also strictly forbidden from taking part in any physical education. This is a result of a complete misinterpretation of the Koran. I consider these ideologies to be inherently abusive.

 Aside from that, the focus in most of our educational system is on religious subjects such as hadith (sayings attributed to the prophet), Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), tafssir (interpretation of the Koran) and of course the Koran. The attitude is that "learning itself, anything other than religion won't get you into heaven so don't waste your time". I would like to see religious teaching limited to the Koran and the Sunna (the way the prophet lived), where the true ethics of Islam lie. The rest is blind rote learning of the most dangerous kind. It has left our youth vulnerable to fundamentalist ideologies that have led to terrorism and abuse of the true meaning of the Koran....

The ministry of social affairs is tolerating cruelty towards women rather than protecting them. The only refuge homes that abused women can turn to are state ones. In these, women are continuously told that by seeking refuge they have brought shame on their families. 

If they come from powerful families then they will be sent straight back to their homes in fear of the wrath of a powerful patriarch. As a result we have seen many cases of suicide by educated women, doctors and scientists who were sent back to their abusers.

 We need independent women's refuges where the rights of women are upheld and backed up by powerful laws that can override family traditions and protect women.

The ministry of social affairs not only abuses women's rights but is also one of the reasons poverty is rife in the kingdom. A corrupt system that lacks transparency has meant that more than 50% of our population is poor and needy even though we are one of the wealthiest countries on earth....'

It may be that Al Beeb is not squeamish about freely publicising these comments since they refer to a country that is a key ally of the West.

But the formalised oppression of women is prevalent in other parts of the Islamic world as well, and given the de facto existence of numerous sharia courts in Britain, which aren't renowned for being run by New Age guys, we don't have to travel to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan to find it.

Moreover, I suspect that so-called "Asian" gangs who in Britain and other parts of northern Europe groom vulnerable under-age white girls for sexual abuse are acting on an ingrained premise that females are inherently inferior (and in all likelihood on the further premise that by sexually possessing these girls they are getting revenge on their former colonial masters, symbolised by the white fathers who, being male, "own" the girls).

Yet with honourable exceptions (there must be some, surely?) the Israel-demonising lefties regardless of gender are wilfully blind to all this.

Or at least wilfully shtum about it.

They misdirect their spleen at Israel.

What a bunch of hypocrites (to put it no stronger) they are.