JEDDAH, 16 July 2003 — When Arab News columnist Hussein Shobokshi mused in the Arabic press about a future in which his daughter drives and works as a lawyer and he votes and attends human rights conferences, he touched on many contested questions.
The response included death threats as well as a call from Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. The crown prince “told me that he liked the article, but that I shouldn’t make so many people angry,” said Shobokshi.
His goal, Shobokshi told the Associated Press yesterday, was “to ignite a dialogue and open these issues up for discussion.”
He said the same article was rejected when he first submitted it to the editor of the Arabic-language Okaz newspaper two months ago. He tried again with a new editor in a new climate of soul-searching following a series of attacks in the Kingdom blamed on extremists, and the article appeared July 1.
Shobokshi wrote the column as a bedtime fable addressed to his seven-year-old daughter.
He described arriving on time on the country’s notoriously late national carrier and being picked up by his daughter. He chats with her about his meeting with the female social affairs minister and an encounter with a new Saudi citizen of Indian origin.
He talks about his plans for the following day: A stop at the ballot box and a religious lesson at the Grand Mosque in Makkah. At the end of the drive from the airport, he asks his daughter to speed up so they can catch the finance minister as he presents the national budget to the session of the elected parliament live on television.
The majority of the people who responded were delighted.
“They said that I wrote what they’ve always wanted to say. That I’ve expressed their dreams of what Saudi Arabia could be like. That they want this dream to be real,” said Shobokshi.
Shobokshi has written articles that have sparked criticism before, but he’s never before gotten this type of response. He’s planning to compile the article and all the e-mailed and faxed responses into a book.
“This is the most courageous article I have ever read,” said economist Bishr Bakheet. “In one article, he opened up for discussion so many sensitive issues, women’s rights, nationality laws, the press, the government budget. The things we’ve wanted to discuss all along but didn’t have the courage to. Finally somebody said it,” said Bakheet, who attended three gatherings in Riyadh where Shobokshi’s piece was distributed and discussed.
But the negative reaction has been scathing. Shobokshi received e-mails wishing him cancer and calling him a goat, a cow, and an infidel trying to steer the country away from Islam. Letters to the editor appeared in the local press complaining about the concept of women working as lawyers and mingling with men. “Know your limits or you will be punished by God and by his followers on earth,” said one e-mail.
“This reaction confirms the fact that our society does not have experience in dealing with different points of view,” said Suleiman Al-Hattlan, a research associate at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. “People in general resist change and feel nervous that the article will change the social structure overnight,” Al-Hattlan said.
“Saudi Arabia has been talking the talk, people are now anxious to walk the walk,” says Shobokshi. “Being able to talk about our problems makes us feel better, like spending 45 minutes on a psychiatrist’s couch. But now we need to see changes.”
