In a letter responding to my recent article “Let US Congressmen look in their backyard” (June 28), a young Saudi woman with an American mother protested my condemnation of the US Congress for interfering in the women’s affairs in Saudi Arabia. Her mother, she said, was one among many unjustly treated in the Kingdom. The young woman complained that her Saudi father did not permit her to visit the United States to meet her maternal relatives.
“You quote profusely from the crime statistics against women in the US. How about the crimes committed against women here in the Kingdom? Do we maintain a register to record Saudi men’s crimes against women?” she asked.
Another young woman pointed out in a letter that a number of Saudi-American children have been taken from their American mothers and are not allowed to speak to or meet them. “After divorcing my American mother my father took me away from her to keep me under the control of his unkind second wife. She abused and ill-treated me. My brother ran away to Bahrain after suffering a nervous breakdown. My father thinks that the best way to keep me away from my mother is to have me marry a Saudi. He has been striving to find a husband for me since I was 12 and I agreed to whatever he said just to avoid torture. Nevertheless when I got an opportunity, I ran away from him to join my mother. Now we are hiding at a place where he cannot find us.”
This young woman also challenged my right to complain about the US Congress discussing the condition of women here: “I don’t think I could live with my father if anything happens to my mother. I can’t even imagine such an eventuality. I hope that you will have the courage to publish this letter.”
An American woman married to a Saudi for 18 years wanted me to advice her on how to get details about women’s rights from a religious perspective. She is a postgraduate and was working in the medical field. She worked hard and saved some money to buy a house and finally bought a villa in Jeddah jointly with her husband. Her contribution was SR500,000. After a while he started ill-treating her and a little later he married a non-Saudi Arab woman. He brought her to the same house. When the American woman objected to the second wife staying in the same house, he ordered the American woman to get out of the house — the house on which she had spent all her savings. He sent away her two children to the city where his parents were living. Later, he sent her to live with her two children in a small two-room apartment while he and his new wife lived in the large villa in Jeddah.
Though she was the joint owner of the villa, the American woman was forced to live in the small house like a prisoner. He threatened to divorce her and send her back to America without the children if she ever tried to get out of the house. He allowed her to stay with their children on the condition that she never left the apartment.
This woman, who has become a pious Muslim, asked me if Islam approved such unfair and cruel treatment of women and children. Did Islam give him the right to deny the money taken from her or to make her agree to the second wife’s living with her in the house which partly belonged to her? Or deny her the right of custody of the children if she demanded a divorce and went back to the US? Can he deny her the right to work or make her stay in a poor apartment in a city where her in-laws live while he stays with his second wife in her (the American wife’s) house? Since I knew her husband’s relatives, I could easily confirm the truth of what she said.
These are some of the unhappy experiences of three women who embraced Islam recently. There will, of course, be many others with similar tales. Their husbands have unfortunately presented a distorted picture of Islam, particularly where women’s rights are concerned.
The plight of the non-Saudi Arab wives or their daughters is also no better. A Saudi with a good family background married an Arab woman belonging to a well-known family. He is a high-ranking official with an excellent education and his wife is a university graduate. She agreed to the marriage because her sister knew some of his relatives. The wedding was celebrated in her country. When she arrived in the Kingdom she learned that the marriage was not officially approved though he assured her that all formalities would be completed in a matter of days. In the course of past five years she gave birth to three children, though the marriage is yet to be approved. The children are not entitled to get birth certificates because their parents did not fulfill the Kingdom’s conditions for marriage. Their names have not been entered in their father’s family register. Further, the wife has lived in the Kingdom illegally for four years until a kind Saudi woman took pity on her and brought her under her sponsorship. The husband has been ill-treating her. She was living in a flat with minimum comforts. She is only occasionally allowed out of the house. The miserly husband denies her and their children many of their basic requirements. Her mother and sisters bought most of the essential things she needed when they visited her. He did not even allow her to sleep in his bedroom. She was provided a mattress without a bed. He used to beat and abuse her for the flimsiest reasons. When she demanded a divorce he refused saying he did not marry her officially. He told her that she could return to her country leaving behind her children including a two-month-old baby. Once when he thrashed her violently she ran away to her sponsor’s house taking the children with her. The kind sponsor arranged for a female lawyer to talk with her husband. The lawyer pleaded with him either to give her a dignified life or divorce her in a fair manner. She also asked him to take urgent steps to confirm their marriage. I attended one of her meetings with the lawyer. It gave me an insight into how barbaric some of our men could be. They have scant regard for religious or human values.
In the case of this Arab woman, the Saudi sponsor was a great help. But who will help other ill-treated foreign wives married to Saudis? Most women do not know the procedures to seek legal help. Even if they knew the procedures, the difficult legal formalities discouraged them from going to a court.
I believe police can play a greater role in getting justice to women who are subjected to beating and other humiliation. Police should put men who do this behind bars.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs should have an exclusive section to protect vulnerable women. It should study the issues and acquire an undertaking from the husbands not to repeat unjust and harsh treatment.
I recently read about the ministry’s plan to protect children from corporal punishment and ill-treatment by relatives. It is essential that such departments are launched immediately. The ministry should also arrange for the treatment and protection of women who suffer from mental illness resulting from ill-treatment. The government should also permit women to enter legal profession to make the women’s quest for justice easier.