Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Saudi Arabia recently allowed women to drive but activists say more needs to be done
Operating out of a small room in an unknown country, a new internet radio station broadcasts a programme aimed at campaigning for greater women's rights in Saudi Arabia.
With melancholy music playing in the background, the presenter of Nsawya FM (Feminism FM) addresses the issue of domestic violence in the Gulf kingdom.
The presenter's voice shakes with emotion as she discusses the fate of Sara, a woman she says was killed by a male relative.
She was a 33-year-old university graduate with a job who lived with her parents - and who wanted to marry a man with a different nationality, that of Yemen.
"Sara's dream was ended with five bullets shot by her 22-year-old brother, even though she had been officially engaged with the consent of her parents," Ashtar, a 27 year old who uses a pseudonym inspired by the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, later told BBC Arabic by phone.
The case was reported by the media and discussed by people who knew her, Ashtar said.
The presenter also told the story of Hanan Shahri, who is reported to have killed herself in 2013 after her brother and uncle allegedly beat her and refused to allow her to marry her fiancé.
Such cases, Ashtar said, were "only the tip of the iceberg".
Three weeks ago, Nsawya FM set up a Twitter account and announced it would broadcast a weekly programme that would be the "voice of the silent majority".
It also called for volunteers who wanted to get involved in production or contribute material.
In the past two weeks, the station has broadcast two one-hour programmes using only a microphone, a laptop with editing software and the live audio streaming website Mixlr.
The poor quality of the sound and the whole production, in general, reflects the non-professional nature of this project.
Ashtar said they did not expect a massive audience initially, and were instead aiming for "gradual growth" as the programme spread awareness on women's rights.
Image copyright Twitter/nsawya Image caption A tweet from Nsawya FM saying: "Religion and feminism are intertwined. We are not a political party, or an opposition group and we do not seek confrontations. But this does not mean that we should not be critical or even avoid discussing politics."
"We started this project to archive this phase for history, so that people would know we were real, we did exist," explained Ashtar, who did not want so share any details about her own identity despite living outside the kingdom because she feared reprisals.
"The Saudi authorities could ban Twitter at any moment and we would lose the archive of our thoughts. Whereas the radio gives us the opportunity to record programmes and broadcast them on other platforms," she added.
At least 17 human rights defenders and women's rights activists critical of the Saudi government have been arrested or detained since mid-May, according to the UN. Several of them have been accused of serious crimes, including "suspicious contact with foreign parties", and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Nsawya FM has two presenters and nine women producing content. All but two of the women are Saudi nationals, and some of the women live in Saudi Arabia.
The women say communication between them is difficult because they live in different time zones and some have other demands on their time, including studies or work.
Ashtar described herself as "an activist who uses the media to express her ideas".
She said she had sent articles to a number of leading Lebanese publications in recent years but that none of them had ended up being used. She believed that the rejections were the result of her "confrontational" ideas about society, religion and politics.
Ashtar expressed admiration for the "the Matriarchal era" - an apparent reference to a period in pre-Islamic Arabia when women were the leaders of their tribes.
"I believe that women are better than men. If women were to hold power again, especially in certain sectors like the judiciary, this world would be a better place," she explained.
Ashtar said she did not hide her beliefs from her family and took the opportunity to debate them with relatives at gatherings for Eid al-Fitr and other festivals.
But her family rejected them. "The West has brainwashed you," they used to tell her.
Now that the ban on women driving has been lifted by King Salman, activists like Ashtar are campaigning to for an end to the male guardianship system, which they say is discriminatory.
Under the system, men are given the authority to make a range of critical decisions on behalf of their female relatives.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Thousands of Saudis have signed an online petition calling for the government to abolish the country's male guardianship system
The activists have taken their campaign to Twitter, the most popular social media platform in Saudi Arabia. Saudi women are very active there.
However, many people in the kingdom frown on women using the site to push for reforms.
Some have denounced the activists as "spies" and "not Saudis", or described them as "electronic flies" in an attempt to play down their significance.
Others have urged them to wait and give the king a chance to enact further reforms.
"This is a mere propaganda. We are Saudis and we know it," Ashtar said.
"Had he wanted to, the king could have abolished the guardianship system. This does not need decades of discussions and consultations. All it takes is one signature."
Jtaimelafolie on August 19th, 2018 at 12:30 UTC »
This is very cool and I have no desire to retract from its face value. However, a terrific article in the NYT recently explained why our greatest hopes for liberalization in SA are almost certain to be dashed.
Here is the entire text of the article:
The speed and magnitude of change in Saudi Arabia has accelerated considerably after the consecration of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. To legitimize his ascent, fulfill his absolutist ambitions and face various internal and external challenges, Prince Mohammed has presented and positioned himself as the champion of “modernization.”
Several of the crown prince’s statements and initiatives — calling for a moderate Islam, authorizing women to drive, reopening cinemas — have been interpreted as his desire to break the historic pact between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious establishment.
In the mid-18th century, the Saud embraced Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a revivalist preacher who advocated a narrow reading of the Quran and the Hadith and attacked any deviations from or accretions to the original practice. People who deviated from the Wahhabi doctrine were excluded from Islam, and jihad was considered the only way to bring them back to the right path.
The compact with Wahhab and his disciples helped the Saud to legitimize an expansionist policy and create a durable state in the early 20th century. The Saudi monarchy monopolized political and military action; the Wahhabi clerics took charge of the religious, legal and social spheres.
Prince Mohammed is unlikely to pull off a break with the Wahhabi religious establishment because the clerics have proved to be resilient and have displayed a great capacity to adapt to transitions and vagaries of power. Attempts to marginalize the clerics date back to the early 20th century.
When King Abd al-Aziz, the founder of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who ruled from 1902 to 1953, set out to monopolize power, work with Western partners and find acknowledgment from the broader Muslim world, he felt the need to use Islamic reformism to weaken and moderate Wahhabism.
Wahhabi clerics preserved their authority and even grew stronger by offering ideological concessions such as showing more tolerance toward non-Wahhabis, allowing the presence of non-Muslims in Saudi territory, and accepting modern education and administration.
In the post-oil period, between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, under the reign of Saud bin Abd al-Aziz and then King Faisal bin Abd al-Aziz, Saudi Arabia had to modernize very quickly. The old structures of the kingdom were too archaic and personal to effectively control territory, to satisfy the expectations of a growing and heterogeneous population, to create new sources of legitimacy and to contain the hegemonic claims of pan-Arabist regimes.
The religious establishment saw the state-building and the concurrent changes as a threat but did not object to the kingdom admitting girls to schools or introducing television and cinema. Instead, the clerics took advantage of the Saudi conflict with pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 1960s and the bounteous oil revenues to modernize the religious establishment by creating new institutions such as the office of Grand Mufti, a fatwa bureaucracy, and religious schools and universities like the Islamic University of Medina and Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh. The clerics also created Islamic courts, media organizations and pan-Islamic organizations such as the Muslim World League. Petro-modernity helped the religious establishment to maintain its influence in the kingdom and export its worldview.
The Islamic revolution in Iran, the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Army in 1979 tilted the scale in favor of the Wahhabi establishment.
To restore its credibility after the attack on Mecca, to contain the Shiite revolutionary challenge and to fight Communism, the Saudi monarchy proclaimed its attachment to Islam by applying sharia severely — inflicting corporal punishment, imposing gender segregation in public spaces, shutting down cinemas, increasing the power of the religious police, and providing financial and ideological support to jihadist groups in Afghanistan and Sunni Islamist movements around the world.
In return, the clerics supported the House of Saud against internal and external enemies such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood. Memorably, the clerics issued a very unpopular fatwa in 1990 legitimizing the presence of American troops in the kingdom.
The Sept. 11 attacks put Saudi Arabia in a difficult position because Osama bin Laden and a majority of the hijackers were Saudi nationals. The kingdom was forced to distinguish itself from jihadist movements, allow criticism of Wahhabism, start an intrareligious and interreligious dialogue and reduce the powers of the religious police, among other measures.
The clerics came to the monarchy’s aid — and preserved their own interests as well — by sternly condemning jihadism and the Muslim Brotherhood through fatwas, publishing articles to such effect in newspapers and speaking on television networks. Even then some observers spoke of a post-Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. As soon as the pressure eased, the clerical establishment and monarchy questioned the opening process.
After the Arab uprisings of 2011, King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz requested the religious establishment’s support to thwart the challenges that the uprisings posed to Saudi Arabia. The clerics helped him out but got him to increase the budgets of religious institutions, allowing greater repression of any breach of the sharia in public space, promoting anti-Shiite discourse and muzzling secularist ideas.
King Salman bin Abd al-Aziz’s accession to the throne in 2015 led to the rise of Prince Mohammed. The crown prince’s public denunciations of extremist ideas and promises to promote moderate Islam have been interpreted as a renewed desire to break with Wahhabism. A closer reading shows that Prince Mohammed primarily condemns the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadists and exonerates Wahhabism.
The religious establishment has lent unfailing support to Prince Mohammed and ratified his decisions by promulgating fatwas such as the one authorizing women to drive.
The clerics yielded on subjects they deemed secondary when the balance of power left them with little choice and managed to preserve their authority.
Wahhabism is likely to remain a pillar of the kingdom in the medium term. The religious establishment controls colossal material and symbolic means — schools, universities, mosques, ministries, international organizations and media groups — to defend its position. Any confrontation between the children of Saud and the heirs of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab will be destructive for both.
The historical pact between the monarchy and the religious establishment has never been seriously challenged. It has been reinterpreted and redesigned during times of transition or crisis to better reflect changing power relations and enable partners to deal with challenges efficiently.
To truly break the pact between the Saudi monarchy and the Wahhabi religious establishment, it is necessary to have an alternative social project, the unfailing support of the elites and the population, a sound economic base and a very favorable context. Right now, Prince Mohammed does not possess those assets despite his personal inclination.
TL;DR: The religious authorities in SA, known as clerics, are very powerful and have a long history of successfully resisting and adapting to attempts to modernize/liberalize the kingdom by some of its royal leaders. While the current Crown Prince seems committed to some reform, he is primarily an opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni group that the Crown Prince considers a threat and has labeled terrorists. The Wahabist element of Saudi leadership is not currently on the defensive; in fact, they quite seem to like Prince Mohammed. To the Wahabists, reforms like women driving are considered secondary in the grand scheme of things when the balance of power is at stake, and by now they are highly experienced at maintaining it. Therefore, most of the things they enjoy about SA are unlikely to change in the near future.
EDIT: With the exception of the first and last paragraphs this is a New York Times article written by Nabile Mouline.
CptRavenDirtyturd on August 19th, 2018 at 10:12 UTC »
Well this is going to be interesting can Saudi Arabia lock up a bunch of women for speaking and get away with it... most likely.
autotldr on August 19th, 2018 at 08:00 UTC »
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)
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