An article in the Sydney Morning Herald caught my attention today. It tells the sad story of how an Australian lady who converted to Muslim and later moved to Saudi Arabia became a victim of the abuse of the Saudi Arabia system of male guardianship.
Jennifer Birrell was 19 years old when her husband died barely 7 months after her wedding from surgery relating to his cancer treatment. That was 14 years ago. By the time she was 21 years old, she had renounced her Christian faith and converted to Islam.
It seems that she married a second time, had a child, and somehow the marriage was short-lived. At the Adelaide Mosque, her Iman introduced her to a Yemeni man who carries a Saudi passport. So she got married a third time and gave birth to 3 children. Six years later, the family uprooted from Australia and moved to Saudi Arabia.
But things went horribly wrong for Jennifer Birrell in Saudi Arabia. Her husband refused to work, and so Jennifer Birrell became the sole breadwinner of the family, working as a senior manager for 3 Saudi universities. Worse, her husband became abusive and beat her.
Three years after her arrival in Saudi Arabia, Jennifer Birrell had enough. She separated from her husband. But her problem continued. In one incident, she was assaulted by her husband who threatened to kill her. The police were called, and at the police station, under a bargain deal, her husband divorced her. Jennifer Birrell said: ”He verbally divorced me in accordance with Islamic Sharia in the presence of two male witnesses.” Later, in a Saudi court, he divorced her a second time.
So now Jennifer Birrell is legally divorced. But since she is a Muslim, the Saudi system requires a male guardian for Jennifer Birrell. Colleague Mohammed Nagi offerred to be her guardian. Later this Egyptian man proposed marriage in accordance with Sharia law. The wedding was solemnized at the Egyptian embassy in Riyadh and legalized in Saudi Arabia by both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.
But then her ex-husband reappeared. He lodged a police report against Mohammed Nagi, accusing him of destruction of the family. It seems that during the period of separation, ex-husband had re-directed Jennifer Birrell’s phone bill to himself. The record shows that in a 2-month period during their separation, Jennifer Birrell had phoned Mohammed Nagi almost daily for 2 months. Each call lasted less than 2 minutes. On the basis of phone bill records, he accussed Mohammed Nagi of being a marriage wrecker. “With no proof – only my ex-husband’s malicious false claim” added Jennifer Birrell.
But what was behind those almost daily phone calls. Jennifer Birrell said that these were all work-related calls. Mohammed Nagi was the finance manager at Al-Yamamah University where Jennifer Birrell was the director of English with 50 international English teachers under her supervision.
Mohammed Nagi’s lawyer was not allowed to speak in his defense at the trial. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison and 300 lashes of the cane. He has already served 15 months in jail, and received 200 lashes already. Worse, Jennifer Birrell was not allowed to visit her husband in jail.
But ex-hubsand has not finished with Jennifer Birrell. It transpired that after their divorce, ex-husband falsely claimed to be still her husband (and therefore her guardian) when he illegally renewed her residency permit. He had with him the passports of Jennifer Birrell and her eldest daughter to back him up.
Now the Australian embassy has issued Jennifer Birrell a new passport. But she cannot leave Saudi Arabia without an exit visa. As a Muslim woman, she needs her guardian to approve her travel. And on paper, though fradulent, her ex-husband is her guardian.
So Jennifer Birrell now finds herself in a difficult situation. She said: ”It’s a weird prison. A big house with a pool and a nice new car, all behind massive concrete walls that no one can see inside of. That’s the prison. So I live here with my maid and my kids and my driver. I have a great job, but it’s still a daily struggle to survive under such oppression.”
Now she has appealed to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud to intervene to release her husband, Mohammed Nagi, whom she described as “the only man who was there to help me”. She is hopeful of a positive response.
Think about it. The system of male guardianship can be horribly abused, and when that happens, the women suffer. Referring to Jennifer Birrell’s case, the Sidney Morning Herald asks this question: “What nation has a right to treat a woman this way?” It went on to say: “In Saudi Arabia, that ‘right’ rests on an entrenched system of sexual apartheid. Despite Saudi claims of reform, women continue to be treated not even as second-class citizens but as a lower species”.
Earlier post:
How many stories like this are we going hear before women wake up. The cultures and religion do not mix. Arabic Muslim men will modify their behaviour in western societies, but as soon as they take their wives and families back to those countries it brings the primitive and barbaric behaviour back out in them.
It is a simple case of a a person going to a foreign land and expecting that because it says on the Tin Islamic country everything will work according to teh beautifull principles of Islam. Unfortunately it doesn’t just as in every country of the world there is the Law and then there are the Asses who mess about with it.
As sir muhamamd Iqbal said
If we are to say that Islam is the superior set of Morals and values we first have to conceed that we ( muslim community) are not its true representatives!
So please remember that including the woman in question, Judge Men by Islam not Islam by the actions of man.
I worked with this lady in Riyadh. She was a very pleasant and congenial individual although she took the religious stuff too far for my taste. One can’t help feeling though that had she not gotten into this whole conversion business (and to Islam and its Saudi version of all things!!), none of this would’ve happened. Heaven knows there have been dozens of high profile cases of Western women getting the short end of the stick after marrying Middle Eastern Muslims men, getting themselves and/or their kids kidnapped and worse.
No sorry for her. She got what she was looking for.
She said it herself, she made her bed and she is now lying in it. You don’t leave the religion that formed the bedrock of democracy and civilization and convert to the religion of the dark ages where brutality and oppression is common place and not expect consequences.