Y’know, I keep hearing these claims from Muslims who visit these boards that Islam isn’t sexist. But I just don’t frickin’ believe it. They personally may have escaped from sexism, and I’m SURE it’s less epidemic in the US than in Third World Muslim countries, but Third World countries are most of the countries where Islam is dominant (a coincidence, I’m sure :rolleyes: ).
Saudi Arabia is a country where they claim the women are very happy within their domestic enclaves. “Oh, it’s different from the West,” the apologists say, “but there’s nothing wrong with being different.” But with what I’ve read about honor killings and such, my bullshit detectors go off like air raid sirens whenever I hear this kind of stuff. Having your women hidden away like they do in Saudi Arabia allows for a great deal of evil conduct, and apparently in Saudi Arabia, the guys are taking full advantage of it.
The statement in the quoted passage is that ninety percent of abused women in Saudi Arabia claim to have seen their mothers abused. The title of your thread is that ninety percent of all Saudi women are abused. Not the same thing.
Precisely - which could really just boil down to saying that girls whose mothers were abused by their fathers grow up to marry abusers, and you could probably find other countries where that’s the case. Maybe even the US. I read through the linked article and it didn’t provide any comparative data on the rate of abuse there to anywhere else, but it’s a start.
Your’e right. The percentage of abused women in Saudi Arabia may be well lower than 90 percent. I’ll bet it’s more like … 50 percent. Yah, that’s all right, then.
I’m taking bets on how long it takes for Paul in Saudi to show up with a brilliant apology about how, you know, Saudi women are perfectly content to be beaten, so it doesn’t matter that it’s tolerated.
Look, I’m not about to defend Saudi culture or deny that there’s spousal abuse going on, but if you are going to post bogus claims people are going to call you on them.
We’re enlightened people here-- at least we’re supposed to be. I don’t think we should be indulging in generalizations, lumping all of the people in a religion, or all of the people in a geographica area into one category.
Honestly, does anyone here believe that there are no Saudi husbands who adore their wives and would never hit them? Does anyone here believe that there are no Muslim fathers who would refuse to marry their beloved daughter to a man they know to be violent?
Must they be unfeeling robots with no concept of love or kindness? Is it that much of a necessity to dehumanize the “enemy” that we cannot even grant that they may love, laugh and treat each other tenderly as we do?
It must take some chutzpah to post an OP based on article that you failed to understand due to basic reading comprehension problems and then fail to offer a correct cite. Even worse than that you pull a random number out of your ass and then proceed to rant against that.
I am appalled by the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, and I don’t buy the cultural difference excuse anymore than I bought apartheid. But that doesn’t excuse a lame ass OP followed by the ‘my post is my cite’ brand of argument. it makes you look like a moron with reading difficulties.
Actually, the article you cite gives us no reliable figures about the percentage of Saudi women who are abused. In fact, that article (and a bunch of others on the web) make very clear that determining the figures for abuse of women in that country is almost impossible, given the social, cultural and legal constraints under which potential complainants have to operate.
Look, i agree with your general point about the problems faced by women in Saudi Arabia. I think it’s pretty clear that there are high levels of abuse there. But you undermine your argument by:
a) misreading the one statistic you do have
and
b) making up another statistic just to cover your ass.
Also, of the people who called your statistics into question, not one suggested that it was alright for women to get abused. They were simply pointing out the flaw in your interpretation, and also suggesting that it might have as much to do with Saudi Arabia itself as with the religion of Islam.
Me, too. I don’t **Paul in Saudi **all that well, but I don’t picture him as a Saudi apologist.
As to the OP, it takes a man to admit his mistake. Not a hard thing to do, but you do have to man up and say “I fucked up” when you have fucked up. People will think more of you, not less.
Paul seems like a very nice, respectful person, so I don’t want to harsh on him too much. Also the poor guy’s the only one living there, which means he’s the only one who particularly wants to defend Saudi Arabian culture or is in a position to so. So it’s unfair to expect him to harsh on S.A. too much. But even so there’s no question he falls in the apologist category. His attitude is very much: *Oppression of women? Really? Are you sure? I suppose it’s possible, but Hmm…I’ve never seen it. Do you have a cite? And do we really want to impose our culture on others anyway? * I mean it feels a little bit like someone in South Africa during apartheid feigning surprise that blacks weren’t full and equal and (content!) citizens.
No actually I can make no excuse for hitting a woman. (I was about to add ‘child or an animal’ but that would have sounded real bad.) Further I am enough of a pessimist about human nature that I wonder what is going on behind those three-meter walls Saudis build around their homes.
The case in question is noteworthy as the Establishment has been unable to suppress the news of it. The woman in question was a well-known news-reader. As the article points out, her battered face was plastered on front pages across the Kingdom.
The police brought the case to court. Her husband refused to show up for trial repeatedly (a common dodge). Eventually they nailed the guy, but it points out how dysfunctional the system is. Would there have been any sort of justice for a lesser case?
On the other hand, I once had a lovely discussion with my endocrinologist (who also serves as my andologist) about Saudi sexual practices. He said that incest was a bigger problem than domestic violence.
I presume his opinion is influenced by the patients he sees. In any case, things are very, very different when sets foot outside the First World. This can be a creepy and scary place.
And yet Saudi women often are the first to defend the existing system of sexual role differentiation, and Saudi men are known for being very differential towards, and kowtowing to their mothers wishes regarding family decisions.
So which is it? It’s difficult to resolve the notion of Saudi men being loving, obedient and deferential sons, and then turning around and being battering husbands.
Not in the least. It seems that they grow up with a very rigid power structure at home and know their place in it. Unfortunately the man is the absolute authority and holder of power in a household. So, when boys grow up and take hold of this position in their own household they expect to have absolute power and we all know how power corrupts. Checks and balances in the household!