Sandefur links to this post about the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and many other countries that wonders why the West has not been as adamant in opposing this as they were in opposing apartheid in South Africa (aside from the obvious practical argument based on oil and necessity, of course). After listing some of the barbaric laws in that nation, the author writes:
And this is just a bare outline of the laws. Imagine the day-in and day-out degradation of having to live under these rules every day. Imagine being subject to total control by one's own family members and not being able to do anything about it. The Makkah school fire of 2002 is one particularly atrocious example of how women's second class citizenship actually plays out: the religious police essentially killed 15 young girls by preventing them from fleeing the grounds of a burning school because they were not clad in proper Islamic dress.
So here's my question. I grew up in the '80s and early '90s when race apartheid in South Africa was a constant concern here in the U.S. and Europe. Throughout my high school and college years, South Africa was constantly in the news. There were plays and books everywhere devoted to exposing the injustices in South Africa. There were rock concerts held to draw attention to the plight of black men and women under apartheid. Students at my high school and college were always demonstrating to protest my schools' investment in companies that did business with South Africa. South Africa was considered a rogue nation and its athletes were not permitted to compete in the Olympics.
So why is it that since the '70s I have only heard bits and pieces in our media about the mistreatment of women in Saudi Arabia? Why is there not more of an international outcry over this? (I know, I know, oil and the U.S. need for a military ally in the region may have a little something to do with it.) But where are the idealistic college kids? Where are the protests over investment in Saudi? Where is the outrage over the systematic degradation of half of the human race that is occurring in a modern, industrialized ally of the United States?
I think this is an excellent question and I can imagine a couple possible answers, none of them acceptable to me. The first one is obviously the oil issue. As a practical matter, no one in the world is going to alienate Saudi Arabia because we are too dependent on the oil they produce. But as the author above notes, that doesn't excuse the lack of concern on the part of groups who would traditionally be up in arms over this and demanding divestiture.
The second one is that those groups - and we're talking primarily about the liberal intelligentsia, or at least what passes for it in America - interpreted South Africa differently because of a couple of deeply flawed but common misconceptions, the first of which is cultural relativism. The ruling class in South Africa was rooted in Western European culture, i.e. they were white males and their victims were blacks. I think some people see that as far more heinous than the oppression that takes place within a culture or within an ethnic group.
If we begin from the assumption that white males are always the bad guy and dark skinned people are always the victims, we will tend to view such situations as uniquely evil and we will tend to downplay the oppression that takes place when our presumed bad guys are out of the picture. The oppression in Saudi Arabia is objectively the same, but perhaps we minimize it because we view it as "arab on arab crime", so to speak.
The other explanation, I think, lies in cultural and moral relativism. Again, because we viewed the South African oppressors and their victims as being from different cultures (and they were), it seemed uniquely bad to us. But the oppression in Saudi Arabia happens within a single and virtually monolithic culture and ethnic group and we have a kneejerk tendency to fall into the sort of cultural relativism that says, "Who are we to judge other cultures when we are so bad ourselves? Their culture has been this way for centuries and it works for them, so who are we to impose our supposedly enlightened Western values on them?"
Count me as one who thinks this sort of relativism is utter nonsense. If it is wrong to oppress another person and take away their dignity and their self-determination - and I firmly believe that it is, and you will never convince me otherwise - then it is always wrong, regardless of where it takes place, how long it has been taking place, or the ethnic or religious identity of either the tyrant or the victim. If such tyranny is wrong, then it is wrong regardless of whether one believes that it is God's will and it doesn't suddenly become acceptable because it takes place on the other side of a line on a map.
It is oppression in all its forms that we should fight against, without giving any consideration at all to the identities of those involved. And this includes standing up to our own government when it violates those principles and not making excuses like, "Well at least we're not as bad as (fill in the blank)." There are certainly different levels of tyranny, some far worse than others, but the criteria for determining that should be based on the actions, not the identity of the person taking them.
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Even among those professing liberal sentiments, I often see that discrimination based on gender is taken much less seriously than that based on race or ethnicity.
Did anyone follow the IKEA controversy in Sweden last year? It touched on some of these issues.
This is because in reality almost no individuals are relativist. A real relativist would have to be an apologist for oppression of women in Saudi Arabia; I don't know of too many people who would do that.
If you're willing to go beyond the case Ed is making here and consider similar situations, then I'd say that Unni Wikan, a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo is pretty clearly a "real relativist" and an "apologist for oppression of women" when she wrote:
Now I grant you that she's not referring to the situation in Saudi Arabia and that asking Norwegian women to forego some of their freedom in order to accommodate the customs of recent immigrants is not exactly in the same league as defending a complete denial of women's right in a foreign country. I would actually argue that her type of relativism is worse for it involves making a calculated sacrifice of hard won rights in order to pay respect to religious and cultural sensitivies and these sacrifices have immediate impact on the host society, whereas agitating for reform in Saudi Arabia is simply a fight of principle with little consequence to the lives of Westerners.
Even among those professing liberal sentiments, I often see that discrimination based on gender is taken much less seriously than that based on race or ethnicity.
Did anyone follow the IKEA controversy in Sweden last year? It touched on some of these issues.
This is because in reality almost no individuals are relativist. A real relativist would have to be an apologist for oppression of women in Saudi Arabia; I don't know of too many people who would do that.
If you're willing to go beyond the case Ed is making here and consider similar situations, then I'd say that Unni Wikan, a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo is pretty clearly a "real relativist" and an "apologist for oppression of women" when she wrote:
Now I grant you that she's not referring to the situation in Saudi Arabia and that asking Norwegian women to forego some of their freedom in order to accommodate the customs of recent immigrants is not exactly in the same league as defending a complete denial of women's right in a foreign country. I would actually argue that her type of relativism is worse for it involves making a calculated sacrifice of hard won rights in order to pay respect to religious and cultural sensitivies and these sacrifices have immediate impact on the host society, whereas agitating for reform in Saudi Arabia is simply a fight of principle with little consequence to the lives of Westerners.
Right on. I would also venture that there is a perceived qualitative difference between the two situations. Even among those professing liberal sentiments, I often see that discrimination based on gender is taken much less seriously than that based on race or ethnicity.
There are certain people in the world who don't want very much freedom. They like to keep their bodies covered and live by strict rules. That's fine. It's even fine for these people to get together and form communities of strictly ruled living. What is not fine is if this community passes laws and there is even a single person living there who doesn't want their freedom limited. Their freedom is being restricted unjustly, even if 99/100 other people there are okay with it.
That is why cultural relativism doesn't work for me. If people live in a free society and they don't want to take full advantage of their freedom to dress and live as they will, that is entirely their option...and it doesn't force other people to live the same way if they don't want to. It's why freedom is not an imposition-- people can always choose to be less free if they so desire.
I would suspect that the major reason apartheid got so much attention in the American consciousness (not that it always did, it took a long time and a lot of work to make the world sit up and take notice) is that it directly reflected our own struggles in the Civil War over slavery. Outwardly you had a group of white people pretty much owning a group of black people. It spoke directly to the guilt we feel over how America handled its own black-white slavery issues.
The same is not true for our treatment of women. The level of degradation and de facto slavery that exists in fundamentalist Arab cultures was never seen here in America. We don't have the same gut-level national reflexive guilt over feminism that we had towards black-white slavery because we didn't live it.
People have to feel a personal sense of responsibility, or shame, to get worked up over an issue. The Apartheid protestors had a national guilt they could tap into. And just as importantly, they had someone like Nelson Mandela to serve as a symbol for the oppressed. He was a figure of hope, of courage, of articulate dignity that people could hang on to. There is no equivalent spokesperson/symbol for Islamic women.
There are a lot of things to be outraged about in the world, and the way fundamentalist Islamic nations treat their women is definitly one of them. It is worthy of our time, our passion, and our efforts to overturn it. But I am not that sure pointing a finger at "the liberal intelligentsia" and claiming that their lack of outrage over it is proof of anything in particular.
Accusations of any type of relativism are alway weak, as it can never be pinpointed on individuals, just some unspecified "group" that is somehow supposed to know about and have an equal interest in, two morally bad things. This is because in reality almost no individuals are relativist. A real relativist would have to be an apologist for oppression of women in Saudi Arabia; I don't know of too many people who would do that. Simply ignoring the subject doesn't make one a relativist. So the only recourse is to blame a group for no having a collective interest in a subject.
There are all sorts of "liberal," progressive, radical college and university groups who are indeed protesting against the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations. To suggest otherwise seems to ignore the fact that the major MSM and other media are ignoring these protests for the reasons Ed cited regarding the US need for Saudi oil and money. Are we to assume that only "liberal intelligensia" are the sole purveyors of moral outrage in this country, and that when they are unable or incapable of being heard in the din of MSM noise, it is their failure to act?? Part of the success of the resistance to apartheid was due to the support that middle class, and the few upper class, african americans provided, many of whom were conservatively oriented. I would challenge Karen Hughes to stand up for the rights of women in Saudi Arabia, and lead the conservative intelligensia to support a protest. What? She won't do that? Why?? Oh, her boss said No!
I think you're overthinking this. Surely one reason is that discrimination against women is still common and accepted in America and elsewhere in the West. Obviously not to the degree that you see in Saudi Arabia, but certainly overt discrimination or prejudice against women is far more accepted than against ethnic minorities.
spyder wrote:
There might be some truth to this. I'm not really in a position to judge it. I'd be curious to hear about such protests though and where they are taking place. But I doubt this can all be blamed on lack of media attention. I've seen lots of university protests asking for divestiture from Israel because of the treatment of the Palestinians, for example, but virtually none for Saudi Arabia.
Culture has a lot to do with it. Non-muslims protesting the treatment of women in muslim countries will probably be preceived as not a human rights protest but an anti-muslim ralley.
No if a bunch of American muslims organized a protest, perceptions will change.
I'm curious if the high Muslim population in Detroit ever does anything about treatment of woment.
Oh yeah,
I'd say that this country has protested the treatment of women in recent years, specifically cases dealing with honor killings.
Reed Cartwright wrote:
I think this has a lot to do with it, but I think it ties in with the cultural relativism explanation. We sort of instinctively think "well that's their culture, it's not our place to criticize it". It also ties in with a theme on another thread, where some people really do think that if an idea is "religious", it is automatically insulated from criticism. But I think these tendencies both undermine our ability to argue for an objective truth in such situations. If oppressing women is wrong (and I think it is), then it's wrong regardless of the identity of the person doing it, the identity of his victim, or whether the justification for it is religious.
Interesting Saudi tidbit from Jeremy Scahill on Common Dreams today:
While Cindy Sheehan was being dragged from the House gallery moments before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt honoring her son and the other 2,244 US soldiers killed in Iraq, Turki al-Faisal was settling into his seat inside the gallery. Faisal, a Saudi, is a man who has met Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants on at least five occasions, describing the al Qaeda leader as "quite a pleasant man." He met multiple times with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Yet, unlike Sheehan, al-Faisal was a welcomed guest of President Bush on Tuesday night. He is also a man that the families of more than 600 victims of the 9/11 attacks believe was connected to their loved ones' deaths.
Al-Faisal is actually Prince Turki al-Faisal, a leading member of the Saudi royal family and the kingdom's current ambassador to the US. But the bulk of his career was spent at the helm of the feared Saudi intelligence services from 1977 to 2001. Last year, The New York Times pointed out that "he personally managed Riyadh's relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban. Anyone else who had dealings with even a fraction of the notorious characters the prince has worked with over the years would never make it past a U.S. immigration counter, let alone to the most exclusive offices in Washington." Al-Faisal was also named in the $1 trillion lawsuit filed by hundreds of 9/11 victims' families, who accused him of funding bin Laden's network. Curiously, his tenure as head of Saudi intelligence came to an abrupt and unexpected end 10 days before the 9/11 attacks.
I came up with a similar, but crucially distinct hypothesis. I think that since SA was viewed as a "Western" nation (or at least its ruling white minority were Westerners), then we found it easier to pass judgement on them. It's a bit different with a certuries-old culture that is very foreign to us. People are understandably hesitant to interfere with other cultures and to introduce mores that are highly alien to the indigenous way of life. With South African apartheid, this wasn't an issue. To have a white South African say, "you wouldn't understand, this is a part of our history, our culture, and the way we've always done things" would have been absurd. It was a recent situation born straight out of imperialism.
That doesn't excuse the lack of attention paid to Saudi Arabian gender inequality of course. But I think it's understandable that the issues were and still are treated differently. Institutionalized racial discrimination is still very common in many parts of the world, and it usually gets scant attention. When it happens in a "Western" nation, however, Westerners take notice.
The reason it is not analogous to S. Africa is that there is no real local movement for change that can harness international opinion on its side. The reason S. Africa worked was largely because of local activists fighting apartheid. T he internatinoal community showed them support. Where is the local women's movement in S. Arabia to show support to? Without a local grassroots reality on the ground, it will just look like a paternalistic West saying that it knows how to take care of women better than an Eastern country, and the women themselves are not being heard.
This kind of thing only works when from inside. You cannot impose values on someone else in a quasi-colonial way even if your values are really intrinsically superior. There has to be a broad-based liberal Muslim movement in the region and then international non-Muslim sympathizers can give it support. Until this movement is in being there is nothing you can do that will not do more harm than good.