JEDDAH, 19 March 2006 — Saudis have long been accustomed to the fact that the Kingdom is not in sync with most of the world when it comes to weekends.
When Saudis take Thursdays and Fridays off, much of the world is working. When much of the world takes Saturday and Sunday off, Saudis are working. If you want to send a wire transfer back home, for four days of the week it is common for either the sending bank or the receiving bank to be closed. A conference call abroad is best done on the three days of the week where you (in Saudi Arabia) and your partner (in just about anywhere else) are both working.
This is not just an issue in the Kingdom, but in other Middle Eastern and Muslim countries. Some companies in the Arab and Muslim world, especially those in the financial sector, have long ago instituted a Friday-Saturday weekend in order to take advantage of Thursday as a working day that is in sync with companies abroad.
The debate over the asynchronous character of the Saudi weekend arises from time to time, most recently in the Arabic-language Al-Watan newspaper.
According to the report published yesterday, people in Saudi Arabia are not ready for the idea to change the weekend dates from Thursday and Friday to Friday and Saturday. Many of those interviewed said that there are social, religious barriers to switching days off from Thursday with Saturday.
Abu Ahmad, a Saudi citizen, said that considering Saudi Arabia’s ascension to the World Trade Organization (WTO) it is more important than ever before for the country to take productive advantage of Thursday as a working day, which is the case in most of the world.
“To many people now, Friday is a bad day because Saturday is the first day of work. We want to be able to pray the Friday prayer peacefully knowing that Saturday is a weekend too,” said Ahmad. “Currently we have four dead days in the week. The world does not work on Saturday and Sunday. We do not work on Thursday and Friday, which means that work with the outside world is limited to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We need to increase the working days to four days instead of three.”
Hala Al-Ghamdi points out that it would be very difficult for Saudi society to accept changing the weekend. “How could we make Friday, the day when we have the Friday prayer, to the day that weekend starts?”
She feels it is against the Arab and Islamic traditions to change the weekend. “How could you convince the average Saudi that Saturday is the last day of the week and Sunday is the first day to work? It is totally unacceptable,” said Hala Al-Ghamdi.
In fact, the two-day weekend is a relatively new convention in Saudi Arabia. Before the 1980s a six-day working week was the norm. The five-day working week, sometimes called “the English week,” emerged in Europe between the great wars and was adopted in the US around the same time. The concept of a two-day weekend has since spread, but it is not universal; many countries and businesses worldwide still accept a six-day working week, and the world’s poor and self-employed often work six or even seven days a week to make ends meet.
Naif Al-Mutairy, a Shoura Council member, said people would not understand the change of weekend for religious reasons. “People will misunderstand. Friday is the day of Muslims and Saturday is the day that Jewish people do not work,” said Al-Mutairy. “Taking a day off on Saturday will be interpreted wrongly because people would think that we are celebrating a Jewish day.”
On the economic level, Wasif Kabuli, a Saudi businessman, said: “With Thursday and Friday as weekends, we are losing four days of work. The West and maybe the whole world takes vacation on Saturday and Sunday. If we change the weekend to Friday and Saturday, we would gain one good working day which is very good for our economy.”
Samira Al-Bayytar, a Saudi businesswoman, supported the idea of changing the weekend. “We would gain a lot by shrinking the asynchronous days from four to three. It is bad enough that when I try to make a business call it is morning here and evening in the West and no one will answer. I wish the authorities considered the idea of changing the dates to Friday and Saturday because that would add a working day.”
