JEDDAH: While cases of women being blackmailed by men are still on the rise, opinions vary as to whether women should be punished for giving personal or explicit images of themselves to men.
The police and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice often arrest men who blackmail women into giving them money or sex by threatening to publish their images on the Internet. The occurrence of women blackmailing men is, however, very rare.
The organization that is oft contacted by blackmail victims is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Although Saudi culture forbids relationships between the sexes, men and women still secretly form relations. It is the clandestine nature of such relations that some men take advantage of. Fearing a scandal, women allow themselves to be manipulated and blackmailed.
In some cases, victims were in relationships with their blackmailers and willingly parted with images. In other cases, women were not in relationships and were targeted. The question arises whether women who willingly part with their pictures should also be punished. Some feel they should, others disagree.
“It depends on the case. But it all goes back to the man’s sleaziness. The man should be punished and the woman shouldn’t,” said Mohammed Essam, 27, who works for a private company in Jeddah.
Mohannad Ibrahim, however, said that women should be punished slightly, as they give men the opportunity to blackmail them. “Girls have to wake up. They should never give their photos or any material that would lead to them getting blackmailed,” Ibrahim said.
He also believes such relationships bring disgrace to women and their families. “If the girl did not give the photo in the first place, nothing would have happened,” he added. “She has to bear some of the responsibility because she is part of the mistake,” he said, adding that the punishment should not be harsh, perhaps memorizing parts of the Holy Qur’an or some type of community work.
Hadeel Al-Ahmed mentioned how Islam is lenient and how it protected the rights of men and women in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Al-Ahmed told the story of a young man who asked permission from the Prophet to commit adultery at which the Prophet responded: “Do you accept it for your mother or your sister?” The young man replied no and the Prophet responded saying that others also do not accept it for their mothers and sisters.
Bank worker Mai Al-Hilabi, 26, said a woman should not be punished, as the experience is a bad enough punishment. “The man is the villain here and even if she gave him her photos it was just because she trusted him and loved him,” she said.
Ibrahim Al-Zamzami, a Makkah-based lawyer, has handled several cases of women being blackmailed. “I had a case in which a man promised to marry a woman. He told her that he wanted her picture because he wanted to show it to his mother,” Al-Zamzami said.
He added that then the man began blackmailing the woman and demanded SR5,000. “The woman reported the man to the police and he is now in prison,” he said.
Al-Zamzami said that women are victims in 95 percent of cases and that they are rarely the blackmailers.
He also told a story of a driver who took a passenger’s pictures from a mobile camera while she went into a shop. “He then started blackmailing her. After a while she complained to the police. The man was arrested and is now in prison,” he added.
Al-Zamzami explained that women’s photos are private. “Women are emotional and men know that this is what they need to manipulate to get what they want,” he said, advising women to guard their photos.
“Women have to be aware. Parents also need to keep a watch on their daughters. There should be trust, but this should go hand in hand with some sort of monitoring,” he added.
Speaking about the punishment blackmailers receive, Al-Zamzami said, “In most cases, as a personal right, men are sentenced to pay back the money they took from their victims. As for the judicial right, the offender is usually sentenced to a couple of months or years in prison and lashes. It depends on the case,” he added.
“Women should not trust men,” said Hanaa Abdul Aziz, 30. “If he really wanted her, he would approach her parents and ask for her hand in marriage,” she said, adding that Saudi society is “a male dominated society.”
“A mother should always speak to her daughter and advise her on what’s appropriate and what’s not,” she said.
In a recent case, commission members in the Eastern Province arrested a 23-year-old man for trying to blackmail a 20-year-old woman by threatening to publish her pictures on the Net. The woman contacted the commission after the man demanded SR200,000 from her. She had already given him SR60,000.
In another case, commission members in Makkah came to the aid of a 40-year-old woman who was being blackmailed by a young man. The woman complained to the commission saying the man threatened to post her pictures on the Internet unless she paid him large sums of money.
The commission set up a sting operation whereby the woman agreed to pay whatever the youth demanded. When he showed up, commission members arrested him.
