Pat Dollard

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The following are some translated excerpts of a recent interview of Saudi women’s rights activist Wajiha Al-Huweidar, which aired on Al-Hurra TV on January 13, 2008.

“We have raised a generation – I think it began with my own generation – on the belief that we are a special people, that we are the cradle of Islam, that the truth is ours and ours alone, that we are the Saved Sect of Islam. People have begun to believe all these lies, and they use them as pretexts. When we demanded that women be employed in public workplaces, they say: ‘No, we are a special people.’ When we demand that women be allowed to drive, they say: ‘No, we are a special people.’ No, we are not. In what way are we special? There is nothing special about us. True, we have the two holy cities – Mecca and Al-Madina – but this does not mean that we have a monopoly on religion, and that we are the only Muslims in the world.”

(…)

“This Saudi patriarchal culture has become prevalent under religious guise, but if you examine everything that goes on in this society, none of it has anything to do with religion. How can it be that people are stripped of their individual judgment, and the Commission [for the Prevention of Vice] is sent to spy on people in the streets, and to determine who errs and who acts properly? Who gave them the right to do this? People have the right to decide for themselves what they do and don’t want.”

(…)

“…the early signs that a wrong ideology is dying are fanaticism and extremism. This is obvious. Have you ever seen a dead body that is soft? When the person dies, the body becomes rigid. Similarly, this ideology will become increasingly rigid, and will reach the height of fanaticism, but it is constantly in the process of dying. Take a look at history. Let’s examine what happened to the Church in Europe. It becomes rigid and persecuted ideologies, killing and burning scientists, until people rebelled against it, and this led to its collapse. History tells us that this holds true for all ideologies. Communism…”

(…)

“I do not understand why there is no room for other religions in the vast land of Saudi Arabia. To this day, there is no church for the Christians, no synagogue for the Jews, and [no] temple for the Hindus, even though they constitute a large part of the foreign communities in Saudi Arabia. There are six to eight million of these people.”

(…)

“Saudi society is based on enslavement – the enslavement of women to men and of society to the state. People still do not make their own decisions, but it is the women of Saudi Arabia who have been denied everything. The Saudi woman still lives the life of a slave girl. So in what way are we different from Guantanamo? At least in the case of Guantanamo, many prisoners have been released, while we remain in this prison, and nobody ever hears of us. When will we be freed? I don’t know.”

I think we’ll hear about this woman’s demise soon, or her exile. One of the two.