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June 19, 2003 Women Who
Wed the Wrong Wahhabi by Ilana Mercer Pat Roush, a woman whose personal
errors have resulted in an international political incident, is asking
President Bush to intensify the pressure on Saudi Arabia to rectify the
marital mistakes of American women. Roush describes her constituents as women
who . . . have married Saudi nationals who were sent to the
United States to study in our colleges and universities. Once they
accompanied their Saudi husbands back to Saudi Arabia, they soon found out
that they lost all civil rights and became prisoners. Their children fall
into that same category of slavery and are denied even the basic human
rights. Despite Roush’s use of a highly
charged word like "slavery," the women she describes were not
coerced into wedlock. They were not gulled into romantic entanglements with
Saudi men; they entered into the relationships willingly. Saudi Arabians are adherents of
the strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism, which is as austere as the religion
the Taliban practiced. A woman who takes up with a man, especially a Wahhabi
Muslim, is ultimately responsible for investigating the type of belief system
he espouses. To feel sympathy for these women,
one would have to believe that not until they were 'lured' to Saudi Arabia
did their Saudi husbands reveal any of their founding beliefs. The
alternative and more likely explanation is that the women simply chose to
believe that they'd housetrain their Muslim extremist husbands into sensitive
Westerners, who would share the housework and carry the newborn in a papoose. Why didn't the women now entombed
in Saudi Arabia case the country before moving there? A trip to the library
is all it takes to find out about the dismal status of women in Saudi
society. I certainly think I would have noticed if the country I was headed
to enforced a state religion, and had in tow an energetic religious police,
or Mutawaa'in. In one incident, the Saudi Mutawaa'in caused the
death by fire of a number of schoolgirls. The devout cops refused to allow
the girls to escape because their heads were immodestly uncovered. A responsible woman doesn't tether
the future of her children to such a place. My now grown-up girl only just
survived the perils of the public school system in Canada. Energetic parental
vigilance and awareness were key. To detect the corrosive elements of the
public school curriculum in North America, a mother has to take pains to
educate herself. That's not necessary in Saudi Arabia. Plain for all to see
in a Saudi ninth-grader's readings is a tract entitled The Victory of
Muslims Over Jews. It's a hadif—a statement by the Prophet Mohammed—and
it reads as follows: The last hour won't come before the Muslims would fight
the Jews and the Muslims will kill them so Jews would hide behind rocks and
trees. Then the rocks and trees would call: oh Muslim, oh servant of God!
There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him . . . The very pabulum that nourished
bin Laden and other extremists before him is compulsory for all Saudi
students. At least 35 percent of school studies there are devoted to this
kind religious education. Some things are facts of life: (1)
Saudi Arabia is a ruthless, medieval theocracy. It has been for a very long
time. (2) The U.S. government will rarely protect its citizens in
international disputes. (3) There is no such thing as the Right Wahhabi Guy. As sad and as hard for a mother to
live with as it is, the truth is that wannabe Wahhabi Western women who bind
the future of their children to Wahhabi men are first and foremost
responsible for what becomes of their children. _______________________________________________________________ |