Many women have told me privately that they have serious problems with their husbands and that these problems put great pressure on them as wives and mothers. For example, Umm Abdullah told me that her husband traveled a lot and that was often away from home. She experienced abdominal pain and discomfort which eventually forced her to go to a doctor. The doctor — a woman — found that Umm Abdullah had a venereal disease which her husband had apparently contracted on one of his trips and then passed on to her.
Another woman told me that when her husband comes home, he curses her and his children. Yet another woman told me that her husband made her live in constant fear because every time he sees her, he threatens her with divorce. He accuses her of being a difficult wife and always tells her that she works against him. She said that he spends a lot of money on trips outside the Kingdom and that often she and his children lack enough money to live on.
Most of these wives try to solve their problems by writing in newspapers in a search for answers. They insist on analyzing the man and women in our society. One of the women was crying as she told how she preferred death to living with an abusive husband. She said that she had grown up with an abusive stepfather who beat her and now she is married to an abusive husband who beats her. She said she has lost her self-respect and now she even has children who sometimes beat her.
These women insist that they bear pain and injustice for the sake of their children. They want to live with hope for a better tomorrow. These women hope to get justice from newspapers and from religious scholars. They wish that imams would speak about these problems in their Friday sermons. These women accuse their husband of knowing every minute detail about their rights as husbands yet forgetting everything about their wives’ rights.
Personally I wish that our media and mosques would speak about family difficulties and discuss the problems they face. We need to highlight the rights of wives and children. I believe that many Saudi women have reached a point at which they will talk openly about their sufferings. They are in the advanced stages of disappointment and frustration. We must stand beside them, support them and increase their awareness of their rights. We need to establish places where they can go when they need help. We need to protect women.
