Abdulaziz Al-Samary
Al-Jazirah
The handling by mass media of females involved in honor and chastity cases has been ridiculous. They often attach the name of the city to the girl whom they want to defame. The most known among them are Fatat Qatif (the Qatif girl), Fatat Hail, Fatat Al-Kharj, Fatat Al-Jouf and Fatat Jeddah.
We should realize that these girls are either victims of family violence, oppression, sexual abuse or torture and of course in some cases they are involved in murder. We don’t see the same media berating the mistakes of men and we don’t hear terms like Shab (the young man) of Riyadh, Jeddah or Dammam. Here the media adopts a completely different approach.
The latest honor case was related to Fatat Al-Nakheel, who was beaten in public by an official of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia), according to a video clip being circulated on social media. A passerby asked the Haia man to stop beating the girl, warning him that she might die at his hands.
The Haia official chastised those who dared to question his action, saying, “We are more concerned about women than you.”
The media dubbing her as the Nakheel Girl brings a qualitative change in reporting such incidents. It indicates that the media would use the names of markets, streets and districts to identify female victims in the future.
Cases of these girls differ from one place to another and the Haia is not involved in all of them. Some of the girls ran away from home, or others were victims of sexual harassment and kidnapping — including the kidnap of a girl by a “genie”, in addition to arrests and defamation by Haia officials. The worst among them was the murder case.
In some cases, the fear of putting the family into disrepute was the reason for girls being murdered by male relatives.
In all these cases, the sins or mistakes committed by girls were looked at from a male perspective, considering women solely responsible for such sins.
This is clearly evident in society’s handling of crimes committed by men, including murder. Although murder is one of the biggest crimes punishable in this world and the hereafter, society sympathizes with male murderers and collects money to save them from execution.
I have noticed people treating women with extreme harshness even for their smallest mistakes and I could not find a single community initiative to forgive a female killer. At the same time, we can see many examples of people joining hands to save men convicted of murder from execution. I think this attitude is part of our tribal tradition where we can see tribal elders intervening to win pardon for their male relatives as they need men for wars, which involve killing and looting.
I remember the story of a Saudi woman who was sentenced to beheading after being convicted of shooting her husband to death following a conflict. The man used to beat her and deal with her harshly and at one point she lost her cool and pulled the trigger. We did not see any tribal or social groups joining hands to save that woman from the sword of the executioner.
Behind this fierce attitude toward women’s mistakes is a strange male chauvinism. People have been very strict about women’s behavior in society. They do not allow them to go out and force them to wear the darkest of attire, which is frightening to say the least. Their savagery reached the peak by justifying the rape of young women by young men in total disregard for their human rights.
We need to get up against male chauvinism, which is one of the reasons for the growing intolerance and violence in society. We have to protect the rights of men as well as women. We need clear rules and regulations that ensure equal rights for both male and female members of society. We should agree that women’s sins and mistakes are not different from that of men and that God forgives the sins of both men and women.
It is high time we incriminate the action of officials who say that “we are more concerned about women than you” and then humiliate them. I could not find a legal basis for such intervention. We will be held responsible by God for this bad treatment of women.
As long as we accept public humiliation of women we may lose our self-esteem. Let us take effective measures to protect the honor of women and take penal action against individuals who abuse them.
