Latest fatwa news from Saudi Arabia:
Saudi women activists expressed outrage and confusion on Tuesday at a new fatwa challenging a government initiative to allow women to work as cashiers in supermarkets and department stores.
The fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, issued on Sunday by the kingdom's governing body of clerics, said the cashier jobs were not permissible because they resulted in the women mixing with unrelated men, which is prohibited under Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict form of Islam.
Signed by the country's grand mufti and six other top clerics, it contradicted a push by the government to create new jobs for women, who face high unemployment in the kingdom.
According to figures reported in April, unemployment among Saudi women was 28.4 per cent in 2009, up from 26.9 per cent in 2008.
"The progressive women are all outraged," said Fawzia al-Bakr, a professor at Riyadh's King Saud University.
"It is not just about a woman working as a cashier... There are more than 60,000 women university graduates looking for jobs, so this is a big thing."
Reem Asaad, a Jeddah economics professor, called the fatwa an attack on efforts like her campaign to create more jobs for women.
"It's an organised war to stop what we are trying to do," she said, adding that "we don't know what will happen now".
A Facebook campaign has been launched calling for saleswomen to be employed in the Kingdom’s lingerie shops. The organizer of the campaign, the second on the issue this year, wants to bring an end to men selling women’s undergarments.
The campaign, launched earlier this month, has been started by Fatima Qaroob and is titled “Enough Embarrassment.” Qaroob is calling on Saudi men and women to stand together and object to male staff at lingerie stores.
“I never had the opportunity to buy my own lingerie in the Kingdom until recently. And when I did, I was surprised to see a man helping customers. While I stood there wondering, the salesman asked me intimate questions about my size and preferred colors. I felt shy and embarrassed when I shouldn’t have been because it was a normal thing and the guy was only doing his job,” she said.
To prevent immoral mingling of the sexes, men are employed in lingerie shops? Well, to be fair, there probably weren't many lingerie shops around at the time of the Prophet, so he left no recorded instructions. They really have no way of knowing how to deal with this kind of situation.
What a stupid country.
Come to think of it, that would have been an appropriate comment on yesterday's post about Pakistan's blasphemy law. I wonder what the two countries have in common.
Posted by: Bob-B | November 10, 2010 at 11:53 AM
As the Fatwa is a religious ruling, and as such crosses boundaries, are not the Islamic women now working at supermarkets and other premises in the UK and elsewhere, where interaction with 'unrelated men' exists, now banned from such positions?
At what point does their acceptance/rejection of ruling practices lay? There has and is in the West, still a considerable dislike of the face veil worn in public and the various reasons given for it. Will those women with Islam as a faith now remove themselves from their alloted tasks, just as those who choose to, continue to wear a veil? Or are we about to see double standards. Perish the thought.
Posted by: Derek Reynolds | November 11, 2010 at 08:58 AM
United Nations Elects Executive Board of New Agency for Women’s Empowerment
Date: 10 November 2010
I won't keep you in suspense, of course the United Nuts included Saudi.
http://www.unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=1188
Posted by: Sadie | November 11, 2010 at 04:09 PM