saudi-arabia

My biggest fear is that the enlightened Arab thinkers are gong to leave the Arab world in search of fresh air: somewhere far away from the sword of the religious authorities.

I got a text from my husband. __anal, you are divorced,_ it read. __our papers are in the court of Khobar._ I was divorced in my absence, just as I had been married.

In fighting its war, the Ministry of the Interior has resorted to a novel tactic__arriage. No Saudi official will admit on the record that the Kingdom__ terrorist problem might boil down to sexual frustration, but if a social system bans hot-blooded young men from contact with the opposite sex in their most hot-blooded years, perhaps it is hardly surprising that some of them channel this frustration into violence. One cornerstone of the extremist rehab program is to get the __eneficiaries,_ as they are called, settled down with a wife as soon as possible. The Ministry of the Interior pays each unmarried beneficiary 60,000 riyals (some $18,000), the going rate for a dowry, or bride price. The family arranges a marriage, and whenever he can, Prince Mohammed turns up for the wedding.When Khaled Al-Hubayshi was released from Al-Haier prison early in 2007, he wasted no time finding himself a bride at government expense.

States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.

Any religion-based state has a mission to limit the minds of its people, to fight the developments of history and logic, and to dumb down its citizens. It__ important to stand in the way of such a mentality, to deny it from continuing its mission to murder the souls of its people, killing them deep within while they are still alive and breathing.

I was lonely, desperate, and angry. At that moment, I truly understood what it meant to be a Saudi woman. It meant being confronted with every possible kind ofobstacle and discrimination. It meant being told that if you want to race with men, you__ have to do it with your hands and legs cut off. I started to wish I had been born somewhere__nywhere__lse.

So you__e the infamous Manal al-Sharif,_ he said, eyeing me from behind his desk. __ren__ you ashamed of what you did?___s driving a car something shameful?_ I answered back.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the United States was created by an enlightened band of Founding Fathers with a global vision for the new republic.

How long will we stand in silence while half of our nation is chained by ancient, outdated laws? How long will we close our eyes to a tribal mentality that subjugates women in the most base and dehumanizing ways? How long will we hide in the shadows while the ruling elites bask in the rays of wealth and privilege?

As he stretched out his legs, Siraj let out a deep sigh and smiled. I wonder what Prince Bahir__ blonde surprise will be wearing. I'm guessing it won't be a habiya.

The route to his hotel had been committed to memory a long time ago. From the overflowing trashcan on the corner to the feral cats that frequented the dumpsters behind the nearby shawarma shop, Jamison knew every detail.

The Al Saud believe they have an asset more powerful than the ballot box: they have Allah.

The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002).

It is an amazing contradiction: a society that frowns on a woman going out without a man; that forces you to use separate entrances for universities, banks, restaurants, and mosques; that divides restaurants with partitions so that unrelated males and females cannot sit together; that same society expects you to get into a car with a man who is not your relative, with a man who is a complete stranger, by yourself and have him take you somewhere inside a locked car, alone.

How beautiful it is to live in a world with no walls.

We were like captive animals that had lost the will to fight. We even went so far as to defend the very constraints that they hadimposed upon us.

She took my papers, the papers that had followed me from the Khobar police station to jail, and pointed at a place where I was supposed to sign. On the paper there was a line for charges. In the blank space, someone had written __riving while female.

Because my mother couldn't change my present, I decided to change my daughter's future