July 29, 2008

Saudi Commission Argues for Letting Women Study Abroad Without a Guardian

As Saudi Arabia continues to send thousands of students abroad on government scholarships, some in the government are questioning the requirement that female students be accompanied by a male guardian. Arab News reports that the country’s Human Rights Commission has asked that the rule be waived if the student’s family permits it.

“This would help hundreds of women who don’t have male guardians available or ready to go with them to pursue higher education outside,” the commission’s spokesman, Zuhair Al-Harithy, told Arab News.

The commission has submitted its request to the Council of Ministers, which determines government policy.

So far, though, the Higher Education Ministry has refused. The government’s decision affects thousands of women. In 2006 King Abdullah established a scholarship program for 80,000 students to study abroad. More than 13,000 were in the United States in 2007, about 20 percent of them women, according to Saudi government figures.

The requirement to bring a guardian, or mahram, applies only to women who study on government scholarships. Women who study abroad at their own expense are allowed to travel alone as long as they have the permission of their guardians to do so. —Beth McMurtrie

Comments

1. Remind me again: why is the U.S. government allied with the Saudis? Honestly. It’s the 21st century, people!

   — history_grrrl    Jul 29, 12:20 PM    #

2. To the previous commenter, we are allied with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for several important reasons: (a) they hold 25 percent of the worlds oil reserves; (b) they are an influential and calming force in the Middle East; © we have a historical and good relationship with the KSA; and (d) we have the opportunity, through these scholarships, to help influence their continued political and religious evolution in a manner that is agreeable to both societies.

   They obviously live in a very different society based on a somewhat oppressive religious system. However, this is what it is, as is much of the Middle East, and it is a parameter for us to accept and work within. We have tried to “democratize” the world recently with little success. Perhaps the US needs to understand that other cultures do other things, and the best we can do is work along side in hopes of creating a more understanding and temperate world. That would be unique for us.

   — Watson Scott Swail    Jul 29, 03:40 PM    #

3. Just what I’ve been waiting for. Nubile Saudi women without guardians just waiting for me to teach them how to drive.

   — Casanova Weinstein    Jul 29, 04:52 PM    #

4. Watson Swail,

   The USA has anything but a good relationship with the Saudis, who are our enemies, nor are they a calming influence anywhere. The Saudis have put more than $80B into a covert foreign policy of bloody religious imperialism to spread their despicable Wahhabi death cult. Virtually every Muslim terror atrocity has a Saudi connection. That Saudi state-supported Wahhabism maintains that America is the Great Satan and endorses war against us. Saudi state-paid imams have made fatwas against the USA saying it is permissible to detonate a nuke in America. Saudi Arabia is a nation of savages who are waging an evil war of terror against the world, blowing people into bloody chunks from New York to Bali. We should destroy Saudi Arabia as we have destroyed Taliban Afghanistan and Saddam’s Iraq, annihilate the Wahhabi clergy, and drive the feral Saudis back into the desert where they can harm nobody but themselves.

   — Steve Gregg    Jul 29, 05:46 PM    #

5. Isn’t it pretty much a farce anyway for Saudi women to receive advanced education? They will never be allowed to reach their full potential upon returning home. Also, the watchful guardians will never allow them to “experience” the culture of a different land, one of the goals for studying abroad.

   — Zilla    Jul 29, 05:51 PM    #

6. “We have tried to “democratize” the world recently with little success.”

   Really? So Iraq isn’t a democracy? Don’t blame the doctor when they try to help the really sick.

   — Keith    Jul 29, 05:53 PM    #

7. Firstly, at the level of the individual student. Plenty of students study abroad in western countries like the USA, Canada and Australia and completely fail to absorb the culture, return to their home culture and make a career out of hating the west. Others go back with a life-transforming positive attitude to the west. Others find that they can no longer live in their home culture and stay in the west. Often they are treated with so much hostility and suspicion at home that they have no choice but return to the west, for others the west is a honeypot full of money and forbidden pleasures. Some assimilate and others make careers as “ethnic community leaders” making a profession out of hating western culture while being paid to do so on a western government payroll. The reaction to western culture is not predictable.

   Having said that, it is worthwhile to point out that Saudi students means Saudi money and influence peddling. Saudi money is bad news wherever it turns up. Universities are so PC that anyone who tries to say that Saudi money is tainted and best left alone gets nowhere. A donation from a Colombian drug lord is likely to have fewer strings attached than money from the Saudis. The Wahhabist agenda comes up immediately.

   — Raymond J. RITCHIE    Jul 29, 08:16 PM    #

8. To the reader who thinks that “educating Saudi women is a farce” I would say that when they return home, they “reach their full potential” by becoming physicians, attorneys, professors, etc., catering to the female Saudis who are permitted only to see female practitioners.

   — Barbara    Jul 30, 10:47 AM    #

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