From CDHR
January 31, 2008
They Ran out of Ammunition - Women Do Exist and Can Rent Hotel Rooms
By Ali Alyami
Finally, the Saudi ruling religious, political and traditionalist elites, along with their religious devotees, realize that they are running out of the centuries-old fictitious excuses which they have used to deny women their basic human, divine and natural rights. They have decided now that women actually exist and are competent and able to rent a hotel room where they can sleep. This is instead of spending the night in a rented taxi in a dark and dangerous ally because they could not rent a hotel room without a male relative present. For centuries, the ruling Saudi-Wahhabi elites have insisted that women are incapable of doing anything for themselves, therefore must depend on men, from birth to death, for all of their needs. The ruling elites have been able to convince a vast majority of their disenfranchised people, as well as their allies in Western societies, that their desolate kingdom and its people are religious and traditional and that the marginalization of women is a natural outcome under these conditions.
It is not a secret that there are passages in the Quran that discriminate against women. One such example is the allocation of inheritance among males and females. Not only have the Saudi ruling elites used religion and tradition to discriminate against women, but to exonerate themselves from dealing with their home-grown problems and meeting the needs of all of their citizens, men and women. The rulers have used the same excuses to justify rejection of political participation and empowerment of the individual. Using religion and tradition to reject democracy is a feeble argument that has been proven wrong time and again. For example, India, with a population of one billion people, hundreds of different traditions, languages, ethnicities, regions and religions, including 150 million Muslims (6 times more than the native Saudi population) is a thriving democracy. Incidentally, India is the biggest exporter of doctors and nurses to heal the Saudis, as well as male drivers to drive Saudi women who are denied the right to drive their children to schools, emergency rooms, or to take rides to escape the suffocating living conditions imposed upon them by their male relatives and reinforced by the denigrating policies of self-appointed rulers and angry fanatics.
Allowing women to rent hotel rooms is a microscopic step on an immensely long road. Even this miniscule event is severely and insultingly conditioned. Once women check into a hotel, its employees are instructed to alert both the regular and religious police forces and give them the names along with all the information they have about these women. This, in itself, is contradictory to the common argument that women should not show their faces or be known to anyone other than their immediate family members. Now, their names, addresses and phone numbers can be made public and used by anyone in the agencies that receive them to blackmail these women for all kinds of reasons.
One may ask why reporting women to the police is necessary. Saudi Arabia is a religious and political police state. Its ruling elites are very insecure and fearful, for good reason, of retributions from their oppressed people. They fear that the mingling of genders and different ethnic and religious groups might lead to a united people against the ruling elites. This is the primary reason for severe gender segregation, regional and religious divisions, and prohibition of all forms of freedom of expression and assemblage, labor and other unions. The Saudis, for instance, are forced by the religious police to pray five times a day. Compulsory worship is against the principals of Islam, but the Saudis do it to ensure that the system knows where people are at all times, and to intercept any possible activities that could be considered threats to the royal family and its infrastructure. The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia welcomes any step that can lead to total freedom for and empowerment of Saudi women. Their empowerment is the only hope to move the country forward and eradicate religious extremism.