Saudi Women

The family portraits hang in two rows on the living room wall, just above the sofa. There is Wahid Ishgi's, looking stern and fatherly, and his wife's, with her dangling earrings and irrepressible smile. Below those are school photographs of the girls. Well, most of the girls. Sixteen-year-old Meme ordered hers removed last year, lest an uncle or a cousin enter the house and see her face unveiled.

When this country began issuing ID cards to women in November, the hard-liners were quick to object. Women with picture IDs showing their faces unveiled? And what if someone superimposed copies of the photos on nude bodies and circulated them as pornography? "Whoever gets a card for his women will be acting like a pimp," said a leaflet issued by the fundamentalists. Still, less than six months later thousands of Saudi women are carrying their own IDs, rather than be listed by name on a husband's or father's card.

There is no heavenly sentry outside the Ladies' Kingdom, only a listless pair of khaki-clad policemen ready to run off any errant men. The women make their way past the gatekeepers, disappear behind frosted glass and step into a shopping center all their own. The white floors glisten like pearl; the ceilings stretch high and airy. A hatcheck clerk collects abayas, the heavy black shrouds that women must wear in public.

In The Times' article "Women Drivers Banned by Saudis as 'Portent of Evil' " (Nov. 15), the Saudis showed their true feelings towards Americans, who have saved their country from being invaded and annexed by Iraq, when they condemned Saudi women drivers as either "American agents" "communists or secularists." If it weren't for the presence of American troops there, the Saudis would have Iraqi drivers in tanks in their streets instead of Saudi women to complain about. We must not get involved in a war in the Mideast protecting people of such a diverse culture who really resent us. As Sen. Bob Dole said, we are in the Mideast because of three letters: Oil. We are there because of the industrial complex to protect their supply of oil. We have ethanol and can convert our car engines to run on that fuel and thus help American corn farmers and not have to spend billions on Middle Eastern oil. That entire region (especially Iraq and Iran)

Clerics took a stand Tuesday against forcing women into marriage, saying that fathers who try to force their daughters to marry should be jailed until they change their minds. The kingdom's mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Sheik, who has a ministerial rank, issued a statement saying the board of top clerics had ruled that coercing women into marriage was "a major injustice" and "un-Islamic."

For the first time, a group of Saudi women have formed a committee to lobby for the right to drive, and they plan to petition King Abdullah. "We would like to remind officials that this is, as many have said, a social and not a religious or political issue," said Fowziyyah Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars. "And since it's a social issue, we have the right to lobby for it."

It's hardly "Sex and the City," but by Saudi standards "The Girls of Riyadh" is a bombshell. The fictional tale of the loves, dreams and disappointments of four young women in the capital has, not surprisingly, drawn criticism in a country where women are not supposed to date or have a love life until married. More striking, however, is the degree of support being voiced for the 24-year-old author, Rajaa al Sanie, and her first novel.

In her steamy native Georgia, this American woman's short-sleeved top would have been considered only sensible. On the streets of Dhahran, revealing her elbows was enough to provoke a scolding from one of the officially sanctioned religious policemen who watch for breaches of Saudi tradition. " 'You should cover your arms!' he told me. 'Does your husband know you are about like this?' " recalled the woman, the wife of an American businessman. "I thought: 'I'll never adjust to this place.'

A verbal row between reformers and hard-liners is raging in Saudi Arabia, as the monarchy's recent cautious steps toward modernizing the ultraconservative nation have ruffled the feathers of some uncompromising clerics. On Sunday, a group of hard-line clerics exhorted authorities to ban women from appearing on television or in newspapers or magazines. On the same day, in an unusually bold move, Saudi human rights groups criticized the country's religious police, who enjoy wide powers to enforce adherence to the strict mores of the Wahhabi sect of Islam.

It's always amusing when celebrities are outraged over the media scrutiny (either from snoopy tabloids or snoopy mainstream publications) of their looks.  And certainly women are judged more than men in this regard. Although that's changing.  Awhile back, tabloids went through a season of speculation over whether Michael Douglas had had a face lift.  And who can forget the great fun that every outlet had with Nick Nolte's wild-haired arrest mugshot?  Some pundit even took the hallowed George Clooney to task for looking like he had been squeezed into his Armani tux at the Oscars.