Decline in freedoms and targeting women

News Center - The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is affected by several internal and regional events that led to a decline in freedoms again, and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is activate and fatwas for women has emerged.

After the assassination of King Faisal in 1975, the establishment of the religious regained its influence and authority, especially with the increase in cases of harassment in the shops and streets and, the life of women was the most affected.

Decline in freedoms

The period of the sixties and early seventies of the twentieth century was more brilliant for women's right in Saudi Arabia, where female students and women appeared in the streets and the shops, but that led to the phenomenon of harassment, such as meeting young in front of schools at the time of female students' departure for lunch break, and shoppers were exposed for harassment, such as exploiting narrow places to touch them, chasing women with cars, and unfortunately, these practices emphasized the society's view of the obligation of women to keep their homes, and instead of ending the harassment, the state and men of families employed men who punished those who violated the law and invited them to comply with specific ways of dress and behavior, the men who exposed to women punished by beating and imprisonment as well as women who uncover their faces were punished even if they were foreigners.

Awakening stream, the beginning and the effect

The Awakening stream is known as a reformist intellectual stream, which appearance in 1979 and its roots go back to the Muslim Brotherhood who took refuge in Saudi Arabia after being pursued by the governments of Egypt and Syria, this movement focuses on spreading an Islamic culture that is against some of the standards of society, and carried various political and social ideas having ideas about  Saudi religion and traditions, and mixture ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood with the traditions formed by the Wahhabi movement that dominates the society of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Hassan al-Banna formed the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt in 1928, on the principle of the intersection between religion and politics, and the ideology of the group seeking power spread in several countries such as Syria, Turkey, Qatar, and Palestine and reached more than 72 countries in the world.

 Wahhabism contained the Muslim Brotherhood and its grooming, and the Saudi scholar Omar al-Bashir al-Turabi says in a study called "Political Islam in the Gulf States... The Speech of Crises and Revolutions "and, since the beginning of the establishment of the third Saudi state, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud supported the Islamic movement in Egypt represented by the Muslim Brotherhood organization.

 The establishment of the religious regained its authority over society and women after the incident of Al-Haram Al-Makki, represented real opposition to the state, questioned the extent of the credibility of the Al Saud and their right to rule.

The Haram al-Makki incident is known as an abbreviation of the operation led by a retired Saudi National Guard called Juhayman al-Otaibi, in 1979, and he broadcasted a sermon from the mosque denouncing the ruling family, public life and the spread of corruption and called himself the awaited Mahdi, before issuing a fatwa to intervene and remove him. His followers and the process leaders were executed.

People from all strata, especially illiterate women, considered the Haram al-Makki incident was a punishment from God for the "forbidden" openness, and the state returned to adhering to its identity of religious nationalism and focused on addressing "moral corruption", and reduced ethics to women's clothing and gender relations, that led the sheikhs and religious scholars focused on issuing fatwas targeting women, and strict gender roles.

Focus on women

The establishment of the religious represented by the clergy focused on women as the only guarantor of the survival and continuity of the pious society, and the scholars of Najd which was established in 1971 monopolized the fatwas and legislations of the Supreme Council of Scholars, by announced fatwas on matters of belief, worship and transactions. Najd was known by extricates in religion matter. Fatwas related to the movements and habits of women became a preoccupation and their male tendencies over many fatwas, until they reached their climax in the eighties, and the number of fatwas about the women’s body and their behaviors increased to more than 30 thousand, their body was considered a source of sedition, so they imposed women to wear black clothes without legitimating proof obligatory in Islam.

 All these ideas and fatwas were taught in schools and religious universities, the aim was to prepare children, youth, and even girls to accept these ideas and put them under their control. 

 All fatwas tried to exclude women from public or political life and deprived them of leadership positions. The clerics questioned their eligibility and forced on idea lacking mental, religion, weak and emotional issues, and women did not even have the right to control their bodies, and hair dye and wearing high heels were prohibited. Fatwas allowed polygamy and prevented female scholarships from studying outside the country, and traveling without a mahram.

 The fatwas confirmed the idea says that a woman cannot receive leadership positions because she cannot travel alone with strangers or without her guardian’s permission, and speak to men.

Adhering to the traditions of society

The King Faisal's wife and her three daughters who had education abroad, tried to provide education for  girls and change the structure and thoughts of society but, strict adherence and tribal traditions were a fundamental feature of Saudi society.

One of the disadvantages of education was that it was not compulsory and gave the family the right to dispose their daughters’  future by accepting or not accepting their daughters going to school, and that situation led to the education for a few girls, as well  educated women were leaving school. The oil sector remained the exclusive domain of men, but a small number of women were excluded and they were often relative to employees of Aramco, which was established since 1933, while educated women remained unemployed. They were not freed from the idea that education is luxury and their real place is home.

 The guardianship system stands on the way of women’s work life and, going out is impossible for women unless the visiting a friend must be approved by the parents. 

Feminist Ideas

 Saudi women’s rights workers are divided into two; Islamists who aspire to the state to grant them more rights and their commitment to Islamic traditions, and the liberals who call on the state to move quickly to end exclusionary religious opinions and implement international agreements related to women’s rights and gender equality, Saudi Arabia signed the CEDAW agreement in 2000, and it is a member of the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Equality and Empowerment of Women known as "UN WOMEN" and the Organization of Women Development in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

 The difference between liberal and Islamic women is the ideas about the roots of the problem and the proposed solutions. Liberals consider the Wahhabism is the reason for the low status of women, while Islamists blame the tribal strict that stands in the face of the emancipation.

Deprivation of rights in exchange for luxury

In the seventies, Saudi society lived in luxury after the benefits accrued from the oil wealth and that caused forgetting the rights issues, especially women's rights, and women were lured by the state as the benefits received by their families, and that led to intended and unintended negligence of society and the state from the decline of education and theft of simple rights.

Instead, women were given freedom from domestic services by recruiting foreign maids, and speeches about ideas that women had rights for jewels and private property protected from men and that they could not live without them were spread on social media. 

In terms of education, the oil wealth has provided sufficient money to implement projects that maintain severe separation between the sexes, so the money contributed to the education of girls who cannot travel outside, in 1980s the country could bring foreign professors with a PhD degree to supervise female students' education, while the government of richest countries prefer that universities and schools be mixed and are the least expensive

With the increase in foreign labor in Saudi Arabia, including the wives of expatriates and single women who became doctors, nurses and teachers, the number of fatwas was increased. In addition to many other fatwas banning hair dye, high heels, perfume, and tattoo, trying clothes in stores, the women had to  wear black cloak to distinguish Saudi women from migrants and they were banned from wearing  clothes that contain a cross-like drawing even if they were black or women wore them at home,