Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country. There, women do not have freedom of choice or action. Under a system called male guardianship, Saudi women are not allowed to make any decision on their own. They must obtain permission from a guardian (a father, husband, or even a son) to work, drive, travel, study, marry, or even access health care. And that’s all. Saudi women cannot make decisions for their children – e.g. open bank accounts for children, enroll them in school, obtain school files, or travel with their children without written permission from the child’s father.
Farida Deif from Human Rights Watch said: “The Saudi government sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women. Saudi women won’t make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies.”
What are these “misguided policies”? Accoring to Human Rights Watch, male guardianship is one, the other is sex segregation. The outcome of the latter policy is that female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities.
But all this is changing at a new US$7 billion post-graduate campus called King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST). This research university is the brainchild of His Majesty, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud as the way to diversify (and wean) the country from its dependence on oil wealth.
KAUST already has an enrolment of more than 800 students from 61 countries and a teaching staff of 71 professors, many of whom came from the United States. The university aims to expand to around 2,000 students within 10 years of which Saudi students will account for 15%.
KAUST is equipped with one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It also boasts of a 3-dimensional virtual reality room and ultra-high resolution photograpy facilities.
And what does KAUST hope to achieve? University officials said that the goal is to effectively collaborate with industry to create a new generation of researchers, inventors and entrepreneurs. It sees itself as a global scientific hub.
Such grand ambitions obviously mean that KAUST cannot practise the male guardianship and sex segregation policies on campus. And indeed it does not. In a speech last month His Majesty, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud said that ”faith and science cannot compete except in unhealthy souls.” He also said that “scientific centers that embrace all peoples are the first lines of defense against extremists.” He hoped that KAUST would become “a beacon of tolerance.”
And indeed faith and science do not compete at KAUST. Here men and women take classes together. Women are not required to wear traditional black head-to-toe dress or veil their faces — and they can get behind a steering wheel. Saudi women studying at KAUST are doing just that.
But there are those who think otherwise. The kingdom’s powerful religious establishment had other ideas. Last week, Sheik Said bin Nasser al-Shithri, a member of the influential Supreme Committee of Islamic Scholars, a government-sanctioned body, called for a probe into the curriculum of KAUST and its compatibility with sharia law. In particular, his attack was directed at KAUST for not implementing sex segregation laws. He said: “Mixing is a great sin and a great evil. When men mix with women, their hearts burn, and they will be diverted from their main goal [education].”
The Shiek’s comment sparked various outrages. In an editorial, the al-Iqtisadiya newspaper said: “It’s the sort of thinking that, if not for the King, would have kept this country wandering the desert on the backs of camels in search of water and pasture.” Al-Riyadh puts it this way: the Sheik’s comments amount to ”a creed which puts us behind the rest of the Muslim world.”
His Majesty, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud was not amused either. The reformist king promptly issued a royal decree removing the Sheik from the Supreme Committee of Islamic Scholars.
Think about it. Will the king succeed in reforming Saudi Arabia, thereby giving Saudi women their freedom? Or will the religious establishment succeed in enforcing the male guardianship and sex segregation policies in KAUST? But then again, the question is why discriminate against women in the first place?
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