Are we contradicting ourselves or are we just trying to fool ourselves? In an article published in a local newspaper, I read something about women starting to work in the labor offices that were set up by the Ministry of Labor in order to help Saudi women find jobs.
The article said that women could work in any job so long as it was not counter to their nature. The ministry explained that women’s jobs have to be Shariah-compliant and must not be in an environment in which men and women mix. The law says that women can work in markets and commercial centers and that those places must be protected by tinted glass and strong doors in order to prevent men from going inside.
An optician’s shop in the Eastern Province hired a woman based on the new labor rules. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered her to leave her job. The Ministry of Labor said that the shop owner had violated the law because men and women mix in this type of work.
The question that then presents itself is: Aren’t women customers exposed to men who they go into such shops? How can we say that women working in these shops will cause men and women to mix? Women enter the shop and have their eyes examined by men who work there. What about women doctors in hospitals and clinics who examine men? How are they allowed to work? Aren’t they mixing with men? We need to clarify whether working in hospitals is legal or illegal.
As for religion, there is a difference between the relations of strange men and women and the normal mixing of the sexes in markets, hospitals and in the streets. Once again I return to what I asked earlier: Are we contradicting ourselves? If mixing of the sexes is forbidden in Islam, why are we opening medical schools and colleges for women?
