Friday, April 8, 2011

'Islamic emancipation' of women from Saudi Arabia.


Make temporary announcements to escape immediate criticism and then try to deflect attention from relevant issues. Standard Islamic procedure. Right after 9/11, Saudi Arabia, under international pressure, mentioned that it will be conducting municipal elections and women also can vote. When elections were conducted in the year 2005, women were not allowed to vote and instead, were promised that they could do so in next elections. But it turns out that, women casting their votes has to wait for more time, if at all they ever do so in future (one can read on this from here).

What is so un-Islamic about women voting? Well if they do vote, when votes are counted, votes cast by women have to be counted as equal to votes cast by men; but Islam says value of a Muslim woman is only half the value of a Muslim man and Koran says men are above women. Islam even says women are deficient in intelligence and religion too. Saudi law literally discriminates women in all fields like compensation in qisas: if maximum limit a Muslim man can be compensated for some injury or death is 100,000 rials, that limit is only 50,000 rials for women (one can read from here).

Another relevant news item is: Women cashiers face uncertainty
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The few women in Jeddah working as cashiers are still doing so, but they fear that government ambivalence to the idea of women working in the service industry won’t protect them from being fired without notice due to their employers succumbing to social pressure, especially considering an official fatwa last year condemning any job where a woman might interact with a male customer, coworker or manager. .......
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