Saudi Thought Police Bust Mom in Starbucks
The 7th century geniuses who brought us jihad are still hard at work, this time making the world safe for male Muslim coffee drinkers:
A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.
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She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café’s “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.
For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.
“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?’. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.
The men were from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.
Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.
“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.
“He said ‘You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell’. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.
I imagine the Promoters of Virtue got a naughty little thrill out of abusing the woman that’s not atypical for their kind.
It’s the Sharia law that these fine fellows are so diligent about enforcing that is, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury (“Culture Buried”, per Gaius) says is inevitable in Britain.
I refuse to believe that. Stupidity of this kind should be opposed everywhere, at all times. Hopefully Yara will fight the good fight in Saudi, though one could hardly blame her for abandoning it. We’ve seen what they do to victims there.
and she was patronizing an american business establishment
I remember years ago there was an issue about an American woman who got trouble in Saudi Arabia because she didn’t want to wear the veil, and also wanted to be able to drive for herself without a male accompaniment.
Oh, and she was an General in the army.
I don’t remember her name, but I remember she had an amazing record, and was tough as nails. She was still forced to "submit" as a lesser female to men she could probably kill with her bare hands without breaking a sweat, because she happened to be stationed in Saudi Arabia.
It has been my observation (in 2004, just for reference) that women’s attire in Saudi Arabia falls into 3 categories:
- Saudi women — totally covered, except for an eye-slit.
- non-Saudi Muslim women — head scarf, but face bare
- non-Muslim women — bare headed (although still in floor-length, long-sleeved dresses)
And I have seen non-Muslim women, travelling about Riyadh on their own. Even going into government ministries alone. In one particular case, the Ministry of the Interior Data Center. (I believe she was consulting on some technical issues.) And the Ministry of the Interior not being one of the (relative) bastions of liberalism in the country.
So perhaps Ms. Yara made a tactical error in wearing a head-scarf.
Yeah, she engaged in immoral behavior while looking like a ‘non-Saudi Muslim woman’. She should have known better.
Nihat, I’m certainly not defending the behavior of the religious police! On the other hand, if you are somewhere that is known to have such things, it seems prudent to take any measures you can which might help keep them at bay. Not because there is any justification for their behavior, but because you are going to have to live with the consequences of their nonsense.
wj, I didn’t mean to disparage you (I’d seen your point, which is not invalid). But I’m fed up with this face of Islam, and refusing to lend any legitimacy to it in any realm.
Probably she is a "non-Saudi Muslim woman", since she is of Jordanian origin… Anyway, Saudi Arabia is on of the main problems of contemporary Islam. They have primitive crap in their heads, mistreat people on their territory and worse, they have lots of oil money and use it to brainwash people around the globe into their ideology.