Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The repressive House of Saud strikes again: Saudi woman films surreal pursuit by religious police.
In this first video, a group of six agents head down an aisle towards the young woman. In the video’s description, she explains: "As you can see, they don't want to leave me and my husband alone.”
Saudi Arabia's notorious religious police are used to getting their way in shopping centres, never hesitating to sharply rebuke women who they believe aren't dressed "appropriately". But last Monday, agents found themselves face to face with a woman who made sure she had the last word.
The incident took place in Riyadh's Nakheel Mall shopping centre. A woman was shopping with her husband when she was stopped by "muttawa" agents – a term used to designate the religious police. The officers then asked her to leave because her outfit was too "provocative".
But instead of letting herself get pushed around, she pulled her mobile phone from her pocket and began filming the agents.
The young woman doesn't appear on any of the videos that she uploaded, but in Saudi Arabia, women don't have the right to leave their homes without wearing full-body niqabs that only leave slits for the eyes. They also have to wear gloves.
For the next few hours, the woman films her bizarre pursuit by agents through aisles in the shopping centre. She has given an account of her ordeal by posting a series of short video clips to Twitter.
The second clip is filmed in a jewellery store. An agent takes a vendor to one side and asks him not to serve the woman. Then another officer bursts into the shop and takes his turn at quizzing the vendor: "Why are you letting her film?" The young woman replies: "What does that have to do with you? He's just a vendor!" She explains in a tweet that a nearby police patrol refused to step in even after she had asked for their help.
Photo of the religious police agent wearing his badge backwards.
In this clip, she defies one of the agents one last time: "My name is Fatma Ibrahim Hussein. Tell me what your name is if you're a real man!" The officer, however, doesn't flinch.
This kind of overzealous enforcement of "religious" customs by religious police is nothing new in Saudi Arabia. Last May, a muttawa agent hounded a woman in a shopping centre in Haïl, on the grounds that she wasn't wearing gloves.
Despite the many inequalities that Saudi women face, they recently made a small step forward. The government has just announced that women will be able to vote and stand as candidates for the first time in the kingdom's history in the country’s next municipal elections, set for December 12, 2015.
http://observers.france24.com/content/20150715-saudi-woman-films-religious-police-muttawa
_____________________
Bless this lone woman's stand against the oppression, misogyny and hypocrisy on display here.
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
