The public outcry over the sexual harassment of the two young Saudi women on the Jeddah Corniche during Eid Al-Fitr, which we have seen now through the video posted online by someone who filmed it all on their cell phone, seems a little too late. After all this type of harassment of women has been taking place on our streets for very many years now, and we still do not have a specific law outlawing such behavior.
For sure we are the land of the Two Holy Mosques and we are a Muslim nation. All of our children are taught religious values at school, in mosques and at home. Unfortunately, that does not seem enough to stop some of them from acting like wild animals whenever they catch sight of an attractive member of the opposite sex.
Watching the video of the harassment of the two women in Jeddah I was horrified by the monkey sounds that many of the young men were making while crowding around the girls, everyone trying to take photos of them with their cell phones.
At one point, one person even yells: “Picture, picture, we want a picture!” The women were wearing their abayas and had their hair and faces covered. Obviously that was not enough to keep these young men off of them, who seemed more like a bunch of braying dogs than human beings.
A new video has allegedly surfaced showing the two women riding their quad bike on the beach while waving at the men and calling out to them before they were harassed.
This, in the opinion of many, was enough to blame them for their sad predicament of being treated like mere pieces of flesh by the over-excited young men. Thank God we still have some morals left in the Kingdom, or that scary scene could have ended up much worse than it did.
I don’t think it’s useful or fair to blame the victims, who in this case are the two women. Just because they waved at the men, does that mean that they deserved to be surrounded by the group of men and harangued in the fashion that they were?
What we should be asking is why is it taking the Shoura Council so long to discuss the proposed law that criminalizes sexual harassment? Who in their right mind could have any objection to it? If we as a nation want to really live up to our claim of protecting women from all forms of harassment, especially from the lustful advances of strange men, it seems clear that a specific law dealing with this issue should be of utmost urgency.
I have seen many scenes of Saudi women having their cars stopped in the middle of Tahlia Street in Jeddah by young Saudi men who were running after them. These young men looked rich and powerful, and indeed no one did anything to stop from what they were doing. It was shameful and shocking to witness such behavior in Saudi Arabia. After all, we do not live in the jungle where whoever is strongest gets whatever he wants.
We all have mothers, sisters and daughters, and none of us would want them to have to endure what those two women had to on the beach.
We must teach our young boys that girls are not sex objects to be lusted after, abused and then thrown out.
It is obvious that as a nation we have not been doing our job well. It is time for a national dialogue on gender relations and the respect that should be foremost in all of our relations, but which is sadly lacking, even though we like to claim that we are a righteous and honest nation.
Admitting our own shortcomings and mistakes would be the first step to our own redemption.
