Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 25 — On a marshy peninsula 50 miles from this Red Sea port, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is staking $12.5 billion on a gargantuan bid to catch up with the West in science and technology.
Between an oil refinery and the sea, the monarch is building from scratch a graduate research institution that will have one of the 10 largest endowments in the world, worth more than $10 billion.
Its planners say men and women will study side by side in an enclave walled off from the rest of Saudi society, the country’s notorious religious police will be barred and all religious and ethnic groups will be welcome in a push for academic freedom and international collaboration sure to test the kingdom’s cultural and religious limits.
This undertaking is directly at odds with the kingdom’s religious establishment, which severely limits women’s rights and rejects coeducation and robust liberal inquiry as unthinkable.
For the new institution, the king has cut his own education ministry out the loop, hiring the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco to build the campus, create its curriculum and attract foreigners.
Supporters of what is to be called the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust, wonder whether the king is simply building another gated island to be dominated by foreigners, like the compounds for oil industry workers that have existed here for decades, or creating an institution that will have a real impact on Saudi society and the rest of the Arab world.
“There are two Saudi Arabias,” said Jamal Khashoggi, the editor of Al Watan, a newspaper. “The question is which Saudi Arabia will take over.”
The king has broken taboos, declaring that the Arabs have fallen critically behind much of the modern world in intellectual achievement and that his country depends too much on oil and not enough on creating wealth through innovation.
“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. “We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”
Traditional Saudi practice is on display at the biggest public universities, where the Islamic authorities vet the curriculum, medical researchers tread carefully around controversial subjects like evolution, and female and male students enter classrooms through separate doors and follow lectures while separated by partitions.
Old-fashioned values even seeped into the carefully staged groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday for King Abdullah’s new university, at which organizers distributed an issue of the magazine The Economist with a special advertisement for the university wrapped around the cover. State censors had physically torn from each copy an article about Saudi legal reform titled “Law of God Versus Law of Man,” leaving a jagged edge.
Despite the obstacles, the king intends to make the university a showcase for modernization. The festive groundbreaking and accompanying symposium about the future of the modern university were devised partly as a recruiting tool for international academics.
“Getting the faculty will be the biggest challenge,” said Ahmed F. Ghoniem, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulting for the new university. “That will make it or break it.” Professor Ghoniem has advised the new university to lure international academics with laboratory facilities and grants they cannot find at home, but he also believes that established professors will be reluctant to leave their universities for a small enclave in the desert.
“You have to create an environment where you can connect to the outside world,” said Professor Ghoniem, who is from Egypt. “You cannot work in isolation.”
He admitted that even though he admired the idea of the new university, he would be unlikely to abandon his post at M.I.T. to move to Saudi Arabia.
Festivities at the construction site on Sunday for 1,500 dignitaries included a laser light show and a mockup of the planned campus that filled an entire room. The king laid a crystal cornerstone into a stainless steel shaft on wheels.
Cranes tore out mangroves and pounded the swampland with 20-ton blocks into a surface firm enough to build the campus on. Inside a tent, the king, his honor guard wearing flowing robes and curved daggers, and an array of Aramco officials in suits took to a shiny stage lighted with green and blue neon tubing, like an MTV awards show. Mist from dry ice shrouded the stage, music blared in surround sound, and holographic projections served as a backdrop to some of the speeches.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/middleeast/26saudi.html?em&ex=1193544000&en=1a3b3c7393a9c040&ei=5087%0A

The Crime of Honor - Chapter 1

PART I – ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
1 – The Crime of Honor

AMMAN — The criminal prosecutor on Monday charged a 68-year-old father

with the premeditated murder of his daughter for reasons the suspect claimed were

related to family honour, official sources said. The 26-year-old victim was shot six

times in the head and neck, reportedly by her father, at their family’s home on Monday

morning, one official source said. “When the police and criminal prosecutor arrived at

the scene, the father fired several rounds in the air, saying he was celebrating the killing

of his daughter,” the official source told The Jordan Times. “I have cleared the family’s

name and cleansed my honour. Let everyone in my town know that I killed my daughter

for this reason,” the official source quoted the suspect as saying. The victim was allegedly

involved in an affair with a married man, who sought her hand in marriage six months prior

to the incident, according to the source. The victim’s family refused because the man was

married, the source said, adding that almost two weeks ago, they discovered she was pregnant.

“The family took their daughter to a different city and arranged for her to undergo an abortion

and an operation to restore her virginity,” the source said. For the past two weeks, the

victim’s family locked her up in the house and on Monday they decided to kill her, the

source added. Pathologist Awad Tarawneh, who performed an autopsy on the victim,

removed four bullets from her skull and indicated that two other bullets penetrated and

exited her lungs, the source said. “Tarawneh also established that the victim underwent an

abortion and hymen- restoration surgery recently,” the source said. Coroners extracted bullets

from the floor and walls of the victim’s room, where the reported murder occurred. “It seems

the victim was run from one place to the other in an attempt to avoid the bullets, because coroners

found several bullets on the floor and other locations in her room,” the source said. There

was evidence that some rounds were fired while she was lying injured on the floor, the source

added. The victim became the seventh person reportedly murdered in a so-called honour crime

in the country since the beginning of the year, according to judicial and medical sources (Jordan Times 04/10/2007).

More than once experts[1] stressed that it was impossible to make generalizations in relation to honor crimes, but I found there were statements that came up time and again throughout the interview process. "These things happen in certain areas, among certain people. Usually the poor overcrowded places where word of mouth travels quickly; usually its uneducated people, unemployed mostly." Nonetheless, there are those who commit honor crimes where people can't believe they would. In one case a woman had decided to divorce her husband, so she sought the advice of an NGO. The social worker told her to give her husband a deadline of June 21st and if he didn’t agree to her demands, then to divorce him. The woman went home and repeated what she had been told to her husband. On the night of the 20th he bludgeoned her to death with a hammer. "He's a nice man. No criminal records and never in a fight on the street, so dealing with domestic violence is difficult."[2]

Nadia Shamrukh, executive director of the Jordanian Women's Union, expressed the opinion that these girls came from a family where there was "usually a history of violence." Girls whose families murder them are also in her view girls with a "bad reputation," and it may be a family’s last resort after less severe disciplinary actions to cleanse the family honor.[3]While this may be true of some cases there are many others where the woman will be killed for unsubstantiated rumors. "If they want to kill her they won't wait for the forensics report, they will kill her regardless," says Dr. Jahshan of the National Center for Forensic Medicine. In one case a teenage girl was sitting too closely to a male relative visiting from the city when her father came into the room. Seeing the situation he flew into a rage and beat her with a stick. When her suicide was later investigated and in addition to the bullet wound in her right fontal lobe they found bruising on her buttocks and legs her father confessed to beating her, but claimed he had not killed her. It was only after the forensic pathologist told the father that it was next to impossible for a teenage girl to shoot herself on the right side of the head with her left hand that the father confessed. He had been a police officer for a number of years, so he knew she needed residue from the gun on her hand to make it look like a suicide.[4]

There are a growing number of researchers who have begun to question the legitimacy of so-called female suicides. In response Dr. Jahshan stated emphatically "some researchers think we classify honor crimes as suicides, because we don't find it, but I take it as a personal offense to me, because it is my job as forensic pathologist to discover if it is suicide. I can't guarantee that occasional cases don't happen, but I can record them very easily. It's not a significant number." There was a case where the family claimed their daughter was having heart trouble and they could not get her to the hospital before she died. Their neighbor noticed a huge refrigerator truck running all night – They had put her in the truck, and then buried her the next morning. It was not until after the burial that the information got to the authorities, so they exhumed her body and discovered that she had been poisoned.

An estimated 95% of honor crime perpetrators receive the lowest sentencing available, which is between 6 months and 3 years. In the case that the judge is seeking to press for a harder sentence, 15 years to life imprisonment, 99% of the families will drop charges, so that the sentence will be reduced and they can have their sons, fathers, and husbands return home[5]. There has only been one recent case where the defendant received a harsher penalty; a man saw his sister who had run away from home 25 years previously. He went home and told his 20 year old son what she had done to the family and that he should go kill her for the family's honor. The young man got 10 years imprisonment for committing manslaughter[6].
Jweideh Women's Prison holds 30 to 40 women in protective custody who are seen to be at possible risk of an honor crime, in addition to convicted criminals. It is currently the only service in Jordan available to protect victims, but most advocates do not believe there is any legal ground for these forced detainments and a coalition has been formed to find a solution. Eva Abu Halaweh sees it as just being "easier to put victims in prison [when they should] try to put the father or brother in [prison]."[7] Others see this as impossible since they are threatened by the entire family so the 1953 Preventative Law, which is only used through an administrative decision, is the best protection available[8].

"This is a terrible issue. You know I'm a practitioner, so I examined a case

at 1am and a very nice woman police officer was talking with me. I ask after

my examination where are you taking her – she started crying- Not the woman,

the police officer! 'I don't know.' So if you don't have a choice, I'm not giving it

a reason, but at the same time we need to be realistic. I know if she stays with

her father and family she is at risk of being killed. So this is the only choice they

have, so they use it […] It is completely wrong to detain them, but if you don't

have a choice and you are in the middle of a problem a decision need to be taken."[9]

In another case a young girl had been raped when she was 14 by three men. A case was filed against them and they were sentenced to life imprisonment. When she was 17 she fell in love with her neighbor who was in his early twenties and he asked to marry her in the traditional way. His family visited her family and got the marriage contract signed and the wedding ceremony would be a few weeks later. Her new husband knew she was not a virgin, but after his family found out they wanted him to divorce her. He decided he would not and they ran away together. Legally they were married, but culturally they were not. After 3 weeks the police found her and she was examined for having sex with her husband. The governor decided to place her in Jweideh for her protection and for three weeks her family tried to get her out. Finally two uncles convinced the governor's office, they signed the papers and she was released. When she got out her father was waiting for her in the car and they all went to the family home for a celebration lunch. Afterwards he took her to the park and shot her.[10]

It is because of cases like these that the state continues to hold victims in detention. 90% of parents who bail their daughters out of Jewaideh do so with the intention of killing them.[11] Advocates are desperately pressing for the completion of a shelter to house these women, so that they do not have to suffer the indignity of being in prison and they also have the right to stay for as long as they feel they need the protection, regardless of their family's wishes. In the Sharia, if a woman needs to stay in a shelter (traditionally the tribal chief's house) her husband has no law over her and she is free to come and go at her will. In much more conservative countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq there are numerous shelters for women who are in need[12].

[1] During my ethnographic period fourteen individuals were interviewed in addition to attending the kick-off for the 16 Day Campaign against Gender Based Violence, a short play performed by the Noor Al-Hussein Foundation, Performing Arts Center on domestic violence, and a tour of Dar Al-Wefaq Al-Usaree, the state’s pending women’s shelter.
[2] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview, 12/03
[3] Nadia Shamrukh Interview, 11/29
[4] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview, 12/03
[5] Rana Husseini Interview, 12/01
[6] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview, 12/03
[7] Eva Abu Halaweh Interview, 11/29
[8] Enaam Asha Interview, 12/01
[9] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview, 12/03
[10] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview, 12/03
[11] Rana Husseini Interview, 12/01
[12] Dr. Hani Jahshan Interview

My Thesis - The Crime of Honor

I am going to post my undergrad thesis that I finished this past May. I have some ideas for adding onto it, changing it, extending it, etc. But as of now this is where it stands. If there are any questions just send out an email and I'll reply asap.

INTRODUCTION

Dawn will come and the girls will ask about her
Where is she? And the monster will answer,
We killed her.
A mark of shame was on our forehead
And we washed it off.
Her black tale will be told by neighbors,
And will be told in the quarter even by the palm trees,
Even the wooden doors will not forget her,
It will be whispered even by the stones.
Washing off the shame… Washing off the shame.
O neighbors, O village girls,
Bread we shall knead with our tears
We’ll shear our plaits and skin our hands,
To keep their clothes white and pure,
No smile, no joy, no turn as the knife so waiting for us
In the hand of father or brother.
And tomorrow, who knows which desert
Swallows us, to wash off shame?
- al-Malaika (Lang 43)

My interest in this work initially began when I chose to study abroad throughout the fall of my junior year at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. After pursuing various opportunities I finally settled on a program through Student International Training (SIT) that was centered in Amman, Jordan and fanned out to cover the entirety of the country, as well as Syria. I chose this program, because it was one of only two offered in the region, and it was the only one that focused primarily on the social and economic aspects of the area. The work contained a variety of subjects that ranged from language (Modern Standard Arabic and dialect), to Islamic banking, to Royal NGOs, to minorities within the community, to Islamist social groups (such as the Muslim Brotherhood), to student organizations and religious movements/belief groups.

On top of this programming a cumulative independent study finished off the semester. A combination of what was learned through course work and field excursions, as well as three weeks of independent interviews and research with an advisor who was a specialist in our chosen field of research came together to form a 30-50 page ethnographic paper.

I chose to research the social phenomenon known as honor crimes or honor killing. Previously I had been involved with a domestic violence shelter as a volunteer Rape Victim Advocate, in addition to a number of other projects on campus and throughout the local community in Missouri that dealt with women’s issues, so this struck me as a natural fit.

The summer leading up to my study abroad experience I began to research honor crimes. I didn’t know the availability of internet in Jordan, and I wanted to get a large amount of preliminary information before I began my journey. I became disappointed as hours of work discovered only dismal amounts of usable information that was not steeped in shock value story lines. Very quickly it became evident that honor crimes were something that only a handful of people in academia had dedicated time to researching. The majority of information available came from stories in teen and women’s magazines looking only for a sensational story. There was extremely little available that relayed accurate information about the simple facts of women’s lives or what factors played into honor crimes without a thick layering of cultural bias.

At the time what I didn’t know was actually my largest stumbling block; without a general knowledge of the social workings of the Middle East it was next to impossible to find viable works on the subjects that I needed. I lacked the words to place in the search engines, and the experience to spot things that could have bearing on the subject from an indirect angle. There is little in Middle Eastern culture that is simply explained by its surface appearance. It holds varied cultures with numerous layers and connections that are dictated by countless rules and regulations that help keep the society functioning within its predefined boundaries and markers.

Without a doubt being female in the Middle East gave me the greatest advantage in learning about the lives of women. In a culture that is strictly gender segregated it would have been nearly impossible to have gained as much first hand knowledge had I been a man. Surprisingly, my second biggest asset was my nationality. When I first arrived and mentioned my intentions to my director and others that were interested I was immediately told that doors would be slammed in my face – This was not a subject to be discussed. Yet, the fact that I was young and foreign gave me an advantage over someone who may have investigated within their own community and gained the censure of everyone around them. I was not seen so much as meddling into other’s personal affairs, as a curious innocent who was merely trying to finish her required assignment.

Since my return to the United States I’ve discovered that despite all of the media exposure available there is still little knowledge as to what constitutes an honor crime or how widespread the phenomenon actually is throughout the world. While the media expressly focuses on the Middle East and Islamic traditions there have been cases of honor crimes covering the globe for as long as there have been structured culture and society. For example, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice that has ancient roots, falls into the category of honor crimes committed against women throughout Africa and the Middle East and is more widely recognized in the West, as such there have been great strides taken at education of villages and tribes to bring eradication of this practice.