Hi, I'm writing a paper on the culture of Saudi Arabia with a focus on the woman rights there.

Gender, Monarchy, and National Identity in Saudi Arabia Author(s): Eleanor A. Doumato Source: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1992), pp. 31-47 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/195431 Accessed: 10-10-2019 05:03 UTC

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GENDER, MONARCHY, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN SAUDI ARABIA

Eleanor A. Doumato

The heading on a broadside posted in public places in Riyadh read, 'here are the names of the sluts who advocate vice and corruption on the earth'. The broadside had been circulated by the mutawwi'in, the morals policemen of Saudi Arabia, in the wake of the women's driving demonstration of 6 November 1990. Listed under the heading were the names and ages of 49 women from well-known families, and prominently displayed at the top were the names of five women with the title 'doctor'.1

It was an inauspicious end to a demonstration which had begun at a time of optimism among westward-looking circles in Saudi Arabia. In August, King Fahd had invited American forces to defend the Kingdom after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and American women military personnel were becoming a highly visible-though controversial-presence in the Kingdom. In September, the King had issued an edict calling for government agencies to train women volunteers to work in civil defence and medical services. The

response was one of elation by women who hoped it would be the beginning of a much larger role for women in the work force. Those who participated included not only the western-educated, but also women of the royal family, who organized and attended training sessions at Riyadh hospitals. By early October, hundreds of women in every section of the country were volunteering for these sessions, even in the arch-conservative town of Buraidah, the site of rioting 30 years ago when the first elementary school for girls opened.

The King's alignment with the United States and his bold initiative for women's civil defence work appeared to hold out the possibility of a decline in religious-conservative influence and the further opening of Saudi society to the West. Nowhere was this optimism more acutely felt than among the Kingdom's western-educated women. The driving demonstration's organizers were in fact encouraged by the King's apparent commitment to increasing women's participation in public life. A letter requesting permission for women to drive, reportedly sent to the Mayor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, on the day the driving demonstration took place, began by praising the King's edict: 'Opening the door to the Saudi woman to volunteer to serve her country was an act of great generosity by the Servant of the Two Holy Shrines, and demonstrates his deep belief that women are an important asset to this country.' The letter appealed to the Prince 'in the name of every ambitious Saudi woman eager to serve her country under the leadership of the Servant of the Two Holy Shrines and his wise government to open your paternal heart to us and to look sympathetically on our humane demand, to drive in Riyadh.'2

1. Broadside headed 'The Names of the sluts who advocate vice and corruption on the earth', translated from Arabic to English, in possession of author, unpublished, undated. 2. 'Letter addressed to Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Prince of Riyadh,' translated from Arabic to English, in possession of author, unpublished, undated.

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A sympathetic hearing is not what the women received. The demonstration was stopped by mutawwi'Tn, who were angered that the women refused to acknowledge their jurisdiction and insisted on being taken to police headquarters instead.3 The Interior Ministry, headed by Prince Naif, came down firmly on the side of the religious police, and made the previously unofficial ban on women's driving official. The Ministry also issued a ban on all political activity by women in the future. The state-funded Directorate of Islamic Research, Ruling, Propaganda and Guidance, headed by Shaykh 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Baz, sanctioned the ministry's ruling by issuing a fatwa which stated that 'women should not be allowed to drive motor vehicles, as the SharV'a instructs that the things that degrade or harm the dignity of women must be prevented.'4

Those who participated in the demonstration, and the husbands of those who participated, were punished by having their passports confiscated and those employed as teachers were suspended from their jobs. Some were subsequently harassed by phone callers accusing the women of sexual immorality and of being agents for Western vices. Moreover, the demonstration became an occasion to inject fresh vigour into the image projected in the public media of ideal Islamic womanhood as secluded wife and mother: in December, while the American military build-up was at its height, the state-funded media turned the demonstration into a moral object lesson for children, when a television programme featured a group of little girls singing a song with the words, 'I am a Saudi woman and I do not drive a car.'

The question of women's right to drive was not a new issue, but one which had been publicly addressed many times in the past, through newspaper articles, meetings at women's clubs, and private overtures to government officials. With the preparations for war consuming public attention, the King committed to women's participation in the war effort, and sympathetic listeners within the royal family, the participants had reason to feel that the time was at hand to press for the right to drive.

Why then was the government's response so focused on reaffirming traditional attitudes about women's roles? Why did the government respond to a convoy of women drivers as if the act were revolutionary? The reason is that the demonstration brought to the surface the underlying tension in Saudi Arabia between those who want a more liberal, evolutionary Islam and those who want to retain the literal Islam of the country's WahhabT heritage. Traditional roles for women have become a symbol of that heritage, and have been co-opted by the monarchy as an emblem of its own Islamic character. The demonstration, in making a public appeal to alter Saudi Arabia's unique Islamic character, in effect represented a challenge to the stability of the monarchy.

This paper discusses the construction of gender ideology in the political culture of Saudi Arabia. It looks at the way gender constructions play into

3. 'From a report by a Mutawwi',' translated from Arabic to English, in possession of author, unpublished, undated. 4. Arab News, 14 November 1990.

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myths of national identity which underpin the monarchy, and at the way these constructions become a useful instrument of state policy and of state security.

Gender Ideology: the Ideal Islamic Woman

Gender ideology promoted within the political culture of Saudi Arabia constructs an ideal type, one which may be called the 'ideal Islamic woman'. It is an ideology that has been expressed in official government statements, state policy decisions, and religious opinions issued by the state-supported 'ulama' since the late 1950s, when women's roles first became a focus of contention over the question of public education for girls. The idealized woman is a wife and mother. Her place is within the family, 'the basic unit of society', and men are her protectors. Women who remain at home are the educators of children and the reproducers of traditional values. As the mother of future generations, the idealized woman is in effect the partner of the Saudi state, which is dedicated to protecting the family and guarding 'traditional values' and 'Islamic morality'.

The official version of the ideal woman tends to elevate the public separation of women from men as the hallmark of Islamic society. It defines the particular Muslim society of Saudi Arabia as something distinct from and morally superior to the West, as well as being superior to other Muslim countries where women are less rigidly separated. The ideal woman, therefore, stands among other symbols which define a national identity that is uniquely Saudi Arabian.

Within the Kingdom, this ideology emanates not only from religious scholars and conservative writers, but is nurtured within state agencies and incorporated into public policy, sometimes with the explicit objective of correlating Saudi rule with the preservation of Islamic morality. For example, when a newspaper article published in 'Ukaz criticized men in general for considering themselves the guardians of women, the state-funded Department of Religious Guidance responded by issuing a fatwa citing the Quranic verse, 'Men are guardians of women by what God has favoured some over the other and by what they spend of their money', and stated that the author of the letter and the publisher of the newspaper should be punished for suggesting otherwise. The fatwd also explicitly credited the Saudi rulers for upholding what it viewed as the Islamic moral value of protecting women within the family under the guardianship of men:

'Our government, thank God, is known for its deference to the Shariah law and its enforcement of it on its subjects and this is part of God's favor on it and the reason for its survival, glory, and God's siding with it. May God stay it on the right path, reform its men, and help it to protect His religion, His Book, and the Sunnah of His Prophet from the mockery of the mockers, the atheism of the atheists and the scorning of criminals.'5

5. Al-Da'wa, 603 (19/6/1397 A.H. (1977)), quoted from Hamad Muhammad al-Baadi, 'Social change, Education and the Roles of Women in Arabia', unpublished PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1982, pp. 133-134.

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The language used to construct the 'ideal Islamic woman' is very similar to 'fundamentalist' or 'Islamist' language employed by the Muslim Brotherhood6 and others in Egypt,7 Hamas in Gaza,8 the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria,9 and by the ideologues of the Islamic revolution in Iran.10 In Saudi Arabia, however, the relationship between the ideology of the ideal woman and the reality of women's lives is closer than in most other places where Islamist opinion attracts a following. In fact, in Saudi Arabia, values of sex- segregation outside the private home remain practised to a degree that is unknown in most of the Muslim world.

The reason is two-fold. First, Saudi Arabia's social fabric was not disturbed by a colonial experience: western influence is of a very recent date and has arrived, to some degree selectively, by the Saudis' own choosing. Second, social conventions and religiously based attitudes supporting sex-segregation, female domesticity and dependence on men have been incorporated into public policy.

These policies are well known, and thus only a few examples are cited here. Shar'a laws of personal status remain unmodified and are enforced through the courts: men retain prerogatives in marriage, divorce, and child custody, and also in the practice of polygyny, which has been modified in some Muslim countries and outlawed in at least one. Women are not allowed to travel

without the permission of a mahram, a male guardian, a policy which is enforced by the state at airline check-in counters, railway stations, and hotels, where women travelling alone may not register for a room. Further, women may not receive a commercial license unless a male manager has been hired, and certain courses, such as engineering, are not open to female university students because employment in engineering is viewed as incompatible with sex-segregation practices.

The ideology of the ideal Islamic woman is reiterated in royal edicts, policy statements and official regulations. In the Saudi labour law, for example, the state recognizes its responsibility to protect the family according to Islamic values, and women and children are cited together as individuals in special need of government protection. Sex-segregation ('in no case may men and women co-mingle in the place of work') is stated as the fundamental requirement of women's being allowed to work in order to assure this

6. Valerie Hoffman-Ladd, 'An Islamic Activist: Zaynab al-Ghazali', in Elizabeth Fernea, ed., Women and the Family in the Middle East. New Voices of Change (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1985), pp.231-254. 7. A discussion of this literature may be seen in Yvonne Haddad, 'Traditional Affirmations Concerning the Role of Women as Found in Contemporary Arab Islamic Literature', in Women in Contemporary Muslim Societies, Jane Smith ed. (Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1980), pp.61-86; see also Valerie Hoffman-Ladd, 'Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt' International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19/1 (February, 1987), pp.23- 50.

8. Rema Hammami, 'Women, Hijab, and the Intifada', Middle East Report 164/165 (May-August 1990), pp.24-28; 'Gaza Journal: The Veiled Look, It's Enforced with a Vengeance', New York Times, 22 August 1991. 9. 'Divided House: Algeria Conflict Pits Father Against Son', Wall Street Journal, 23 January 1992.

10. William Darrow, 'Women's Place and the Place of Women in the Iranian Revolution', in Yvonne Haddad and Ellison Banks Findly, eds., Women, Religion and Social Change (State University of New York Press, 1985), pp.307-319.

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protection. 1 Consequently, women are excluded from working in shops or in offices where men are present, including most of the Ministries, the very place where women in neighbouring countries, such as Kuwait, have most readily found employment. The ideology of the ideal women is also inscribed on the cornerstone of the official girls' education policy of the Kingdom: 'The purpose of educating a girl is to bring her up in a proper Islamic way so as to perform her duty in life, be an ideal and successful housewife and a good mother, prepared to do things which suit her nature, like teaching, nursing and giving medical treatment.'12 The same policy, which prescribes sex-segregation at all levels of education, also justifies the closing of certain university courses to women, such as engineering, geology and meteorology, which might lead to employment in male-dominated fields.

However pervasive this ideology, it does not define policy. It is rather the idiom through which policies regarding women's issues are articulated. Sometimes the idiom is used to initiate what are for Saudi Arabia quite liberal policies. For example, the leaders of the women's driving demonstration employed the Islamist idiom in their petition for the right to drive: 'Since we have noted your highness' spirit of understanding of the demands of this age and of the working women's creative efforts which are undertaken in the light of the teachings of our Islamic religion, we appeal to you ...'13

King Fahd's September 1990 edict on women's volunteer work is another case in point. The language of the edict promised that the volunteer programme would be carried out 'within the context of fully preserving Islamic and social values',14 even though the rigid sex-segregation practised in Saudi Arabia is incompatible with women's work for civil defence. Incorporating Islamist language into the edict, however, cushioned its impact sufficiently to preempt criticism of the sort that would have nullified the edict's intent. Had the edict been implemented at a less politically stressful time, it might have become the cornerstone of a new area of employment for women.

In effect, the volunteer work edict might have brought about radical change for women in the same way that instituting women's education did thirty years ago. The official girls' education policy cited above clearly limits education to what is compatible with marriage and motherhood, but even so, this policy, regularly reiterated, has been the means by which secular education for girls has been able to grow into a nation-wide system of secondary schools, eleven women's colleges, and five universities which accept female students. When it was written in 1968, secular education for girls was still a revolutionary idea, one which had been met in the early 1960s with considerable hostility from those who saw secular education as incompatible with traditional Islamic morality. It was the Islamist idiom, the assurance that education for girls would be carried out in a sex-separated environment and only for the purpose

11. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Labor Regulations, 'Employment of Juveniles and Women', Chapter X, section I, Article 160. 12. 'The Philosophy of Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia', in Dr. Abdulla Mohamed Al Zaid, Education in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah, Tihama Publications, 1981), p.56. 13. 'Letter addressed to Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Prince of Riyadh', translated from Arabic to English, in possession of author, unpublished, undated. 14. Arab News, 5 September 1990.

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of making girls into better wives and mothers, which opened the door for education to go forward.

By the same token, the Saudi labour law limits the kinds of places where women may work by mandating sex-segregation, but at the same time these labour restrictions open up a legitimate space for women in the workplace. For example, women were not supposed to work in banks, and out of propriety, could not comfortably patronize one, but the rubric of Islamic morality justified the opening of banks operated by and for women, which have come into being under government auspices without significant opposition. Similarly, the separation and 'protection' of women clauses in the labour law have provided the rationale for securing very progressive policies for the benefit of women who do work. Women employees, for example, are entitled to a ten-week maternity leave, in some cases with full pay, and daily time off for nursing an infant when they return to work. Women employees are also entitled to employer-paid medical coverage and cannot be fired during illness or pregnancy leave. Official assurances of sex-segregation in the workplace, furthermore, make it possible for many women professionals to work unfettered by morals police in journalism, computers, utility companies, some ministries and especially in health care where contact with men is unavoidable.

The idiom of the ideal woman is deployed not only for issues relating to women. In order to defuse concerns about the harm imported western culture may bring to Saudi society, nearly all development projects which require the importation of foreign labour have been prefaced by the Saudis' promise that such projects will be carried out within margins of Islamic values, values which are symbolized most commonly by the separation of women.

The ideology of the ideal Islamic woman has thus been a useful instrument in securing both progressive and restrictive policies. The idealization of women's domesticity and the elevation of female separation to an Islamic imperative has remained consistent on the level of official policy in Saudi Arabia because idealized definitions of gender are intimately connected to the ideologies which legitimate the monarchy.

The Legitimation of the Monarchy: Religion and Tribal Authority

As a political entity, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a collection of families and diverse ethnic and religious groups which were united through conquest by 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud during the first quarter of the century. In order to establish the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy among its newly incorporated constituencies, the ruling family did not attempt to undo these identities, but tried to create overarching loyalties based on a common social and religious community in which membership has its privileges, placing themselves as the locus of these loyalties.

These loyalties are grounded in myths of identity which translate, with varying degrees of success, into perceptions of Al Sa'iud leadership as legitimate leadership to the present day. The first myth is that the Kingdom is a cohesive national entity fused by a common loyalty to Islam as shaped by the WahhabT tradition, and that the Al Sa'ud family are qualified-and uniquely

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so-to defend Islam and to ensure the moral well-being of the Muslim community. The second is that the Saudi Arabian state is an extension of the tribal family.

Islam and Al Sa 'ud leadership

The father of King Fahd, 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud, inherited from his eighteenth-century forebears a political and religious ideology which he used to legitimate his own rule and the expansion of his rule across the peninsula. This ideology grew out of the teachings of the eighteenth-century scholar Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, whose philosophy effectually converted political loyalty into a religious obligation. According to Ibn 'Abd al- Wahhab's teachings, a Muslim must have presented a bay'a, or oath of allegiance, to a Muslim ruler during his lifetime in order to be redeemed after his death,15 while the ruler is owed unquestioned allegiance so long as he leads the community according to the laws of God. 6 According to his teachings, the whole purpose of the Muslim community is to become the living embodiment of God's laws: the responsibility of the legitimate ruler is to ensure that the people know what are God's laws, and live in conformity with them.

In theory, to the WahhabTs of Najd, living according to God's laws means following the Qur'an and Sunna of the Prophet in all one's daily affairs, adhering only to the interpretations of the early jurists of the first three centuries of Islam and avoiding later interpretative readings. This has shaped the WahhabT attitude about women's roles in two ways: first, the WahhabT 'ulamd' reject the kind of reformist interpretations of the Qur'an and Hadith which have been essential to bringing about changes in dress, education, sex- segregation practices and Islamic personal status laws in other places; second, sex-segregation, face-covering, and patriarchal control, which are substantiated not so much in the literal word of the Qur'an and Hadith as in local interpretations of religious doctrine and local established practices, are continuously being re-inscribed back into society through religious decree and state-supported policies as an essential component of leadership in the community living in conformity with God's laws.

WahhabT doctrines have been promoted by 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud and his descendants in the process of promoting religion as the glue which would hold the Saudi kingdom together. 'Abd al-'Aziz, for example, subsidized Qur'an memorization classes and sent missionaries to all the villages and towns. The Qur'an was to be the constitution of the Kingdom. Universal male participation in public prayer five times a day in the mosque was enforced, with women encouraged to participate on holidays, and in some areas, on Fridays. When public education for boys was instituted in 1953 and for girls in

15. Al-Baadi, p.30. 16. Obedience to the Muslim ruler is emphasized in literature produced by the Department of Religious Guidance. 'Muslims should acknowledge to their ruler the rights of authority. They are not allowed to disobey their rulers or leaders except in one case, when the ruler orders them to commit a sin or an action contrary to the commandments of Allah'. Abdul Rahman bin Hammad Al Omar, Islam, the Religion of Truth (Riyadh, 1401), p.45.

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1960, religious education became mandatory, constituting to this day the largest block of school hours in the elementary curriculum.

Ibn Sa'ud's campaign to evangelize Bedouin as a means of encouraging them to settle on the land also became a medium for re-inscribing WahhabT attitudes about women's roles. Beginning in 1912, Ibn Sa'ud subsidized agricultural communities known as hijra, meaning 'the move from the land of polytheism to the land of Islam',17 where newly settled Bedouin would apply Islamic law and Sunna to daily life. In these settlements some of the most rigid sex-separation practices were instituted in the name of religion, practices which have been observed among descendants of hijra settlers in the present day, such as forbidding women to enter the public market place, or to speak when attempting to get a merchant's attention. 8

During his lifetime, Ibn Sa'ud also revived religious institutions which would symbolize the continuing partnership of his regime with the scholars of religion: these were a body of state-funded 'ulama', and the Society for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, whose task is to enforce compliance with Islamic law and practice as interpreted by the 'ulamd'. These institutions have an interest in maintaining WahhabT interpretations of Islamic rulings about women, and they have been in fact on the front-line of shaping the ideology for the ideal Islamic woman.

The Directorate of Islamic Research, Ruling, Propaganda and Guidance is the definitive guide in religious matters, and issues fatwds (religious opinions) about social and political issues, including correct public behaviour such as personal dress and deportment. The Directorate also offers opinions on issues submitted for religious approval by the King,19 and at times, in effect, the 'ulama' provide Islamic sanction for policy decisions already taken by the government. Another body of state-funded 'ulamd', the General Presidency for Girls' Education, is the designated overseer for the programmes and policies of girls' public education.

The function of the mutawwi'Tn, the patrolmen of the morality society, is to demonstrate the government's readiness to enforce standards of behaviour approved by the 'ulamd'. In the past, the mutawwi'n have been responsible for supervising the closing of shops at prayer time and the attendance of men in the mosque for prayers, and for preventing infractions of public morality such as playing music, smoking, drinking alcohol, men and women mingling in public places, and immodest dress for both men and women. In the 1920s, these mutawwi'Tn obtained extraordinary powers of enforcement ranging from personal embarrassment to trial, imprisonment and corporal punishment. Since then, however, the power of the mutawwi'Tn has declined. In 1976 the Director of the Society was assigned ministerial status, and the Society now exists as one of a number of independent departments in the state administration which report directly to the King.20

The jurisdiction of the mutawwi'Tn is usually limited to overseeing the

17. John Habib, Ibn Sa'ud's Warriors of 'slam (Leiden, Brill, 1978), p. 17. 18. Ibid., pp.54-55. 19. al-Yassini, p.71. 20. Ibid., p.67.

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closing of shops at prayer time, public decorum, and proper dress, especially for women. The mutawwi'n have often worked alone on their patrols, and have been drawn from among the least educated. Without the capacity to enforce punishment of infractions, they sometimes have tended to be ignored and ignorable. At other times, especially during times of political instability, the mutawivi'n's jurisdiction has been broadened to include an arbitrary range of moral infractions, including the presence of women in hotel swimming pools, women employed in shops serving customers, or women in cars with an unrelated man. At such times, morals policemen have been accompanied in their duties by police and charged with the capacity to make arrests.

In the wake of heightened sensitivity to Western influences during the Gulf War and excessive vigilance on the part of the mutawwi'mn, the Society received increased government funding to upgrade the educational level of its patrolmen.21 The 1992 revision of the Saudi governing system places some limits on the mutawwi'n's activities by stipulating that private homes are inviolable and cannot be entered or searched. Whatever their effective capacity for coercion, however, the mutawwi'n remain a powerful instrument of social control through intimidation.

All of the civil-service religious scholars, including the Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the scholars of the Department of Religious Guidance, serve to some extent at the pleasure of the monarchy. These institutions may at times be relegated to a symbolic position when religious attitudes are incompatible with government policy.22 Whenever deference to religious opinion can confer political benefit, however, these religious institutions can become useful instruments for promoting popular support for the monarchy.23

The Tribal Family

The second myth of identity underpinning the monarchy is that the Saudi Arabian state is an extension of the tribal family, with the monarchy fulfilling the patriarchal obligations of the tribal shaykh: mediating disputes, defending his people, conducting warfare, dispensing largesse, guarding the gates of admission to the tribal family and securing the honour of all its members. When Ibn Sa'ud rose to power, he broke up tribal alliances by undercutting the obligations of weak tribal groups toward stronger ones,24 and assumed for himself, both symbolically and concretely, the functions of tribal leadership over a multitude of tribal affiliations.

The most important function was economic: the tribal shaykh is expected to assure the welfare of his group by such means as receiving tribute and dispensing largesse, and his position of respect is secured by his willingness and his capacity to do favours for those who come and ask. While consolidating his conquests, Ibn Sa'ud subsidized the settlements of the Ikhwan Bedouin. When

21. Wall Street Journal, May 1991. 22. al-Yassini, p.67. 23. Ibid., p.73. 24. See Christine Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

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the camel economy went into decline at the end of World War I, he became the source for the most basic necessities of life, dispensing food, clothing and cash to any male who came to ask.25

The sons of 'Abd al-'Aziz carry on the same tradition, except that the source of largesse is the mineral wealth of the country which is operated as a family-owned business, and the recipients are those who are privileged to be citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Whereas Ibn Sa'ud actually handed out rations through his personal staff, the sons offer free medical care, welfare payments for women who have no male to support them, subsidies for agriculture and industry, grants for housing and land, jobs in ministries, forgiveness of personal debt, contracts for government projects, and rules requiring majority ownership for Saudi citizens in joint-venture companies operating in the Kingdom. Nomads receive livestock subsidies, veterinary services and mechanized water supplies, as well as land, equipment and training for those who wish to settle.26 Financial incentives for marriage through a fund to provide the mahr (bride price) are offered to men who are citizens and can demonstrate that they are practising Muslims.

The economic benefits from the monarch's largesse do not flow to women in the same way that they flow to men: for the most part, women are entitled to receive benefits, but indirectly, through their male relatives. Women, for example, are not entitled to separate citizenship cards, but are included as dependents on their father's or husband's card.27 For women in rural areas particularly, this means that they are unable to obtain certain forms of government assistance, such as livestock subsidies, or to apply for loans to purchase land or housing.28 Whatever the intended purpose of eliminating identity cards for women, the effect was to bolster women's economic dependence on men, and to re-inscribe in society the values of patriarchal privilege within the family.

On a symbolic level, the functions of the tribal shaykh as one who determines marriage alliances and keeps the blood-lines pure have also been assumed by the monarchy. Citizens who wish to marry foreigners are supposed to obtain special permission to do so: for male citizens wishing to marry a foreign woman, permission is possible but not easily forthcoming; a Saudi woman wishing to marry a non-Saudi man does not ask. In this way, the ruling family symbolically acts as if it were sustaining the integrity of the tribal family, which favours marriage back into the paternal line and rejects marriages outside the extended tribal network. Guarding the gates of admission to the patriarchal tribal family-if only on a symbolic level- contributes toward shaping of the myth of the whole country under Saudi dominion as one vast exclusive tribal family patronized by the Al Sa'ud. Since admission to the tribal family-Saudi citizenship--confers entitlement to the

25. See, for example, Amin Rihani, Maker of Modern Arabia (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1928). 26. Third Development Plan, p.378. 27. Aisha Almana, 'Economic Development and its Impact on the Status of Women in Saudi Arabia', unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Colorado, 1981), p.204. 'This is a recent ruling', Almana says. 'Previously women were entitled to separate identity or citizenship cards.' 28. Ibid., p.204.

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largesse of the shaykh, the Saudis have created powerful incentives for their citizens to buy into the myth of Saudi national identity, an identity fused by religion, in which membership is in fact a coveted privilege bestowed by birthright.

The 'Ideal Islamic Woman' in Action. how Ideology Promotes Stability

Over the past thirty years, the ideology of the 'ideal Islamic woman' has proven to be a dependable vehicle for the Saudi monarchy to play out the myths of national identity which underpin its legitimacy. By promoting the imagery of the ideal Islamic woman, by controlling women's mobility and independent access to the resources of the state, and by enforcing women's public separation from men, the heterogeneous people of Arabia become a homogeneous Islamic community, the patriarchal family is sustained, and the Al Sa'ud gain the appearance of the nation's guardian. The political utility of the ideal Islamic woman is most vividly highlighted during times of political instability: the state's responses to the mosque seizure of 1979 and to the women's driving demonstration of 1990 are two cases in point.

In November 1979, Juhayman ibn Muhammad ibn Sayf al-'Utayba, a former seminary student and prot6eg of Saudi Arabia's most influential religious scholar, ibn Baz, drove a Toyota pick-up truck laden with food, water, guns and ammunition into the Grand Mosque at Mecca. Convinced that the advent of Islam's fifteenth century signalled the arrival of a Messiah (Juhayman's brother-in-law) who would bring about the Kingdom of God in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he and his followers began shooting at worshippers and custodians in the mosque precincts.

During the previous year, Juhayman had distributed a series of pamphlets critical of the extravagant life-style of the Saudi family, western influences, gambling, television, secular universities and the liberalism of the state-funded 'ulama'. He and his followers called themselves Ikhwan, considering themselves the spiritual heirs of the WahhabT movement's most militant proponents under Ibn Sa'ud. Juhayman's movement was effectively ended when he and sixty-two of his followers were beheaded, but the yearning to set boundaries around western influence, as the movement advocated, had struck a deep cord of sympathy across society.

The Saudis' immediate response was to mollify those sympathies by putting renewed energy into controls on western influences, and these controls related primarily to women. The Society for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued circulars in all the major cities such as 'Guidelines to our Brothers in Humanity about Proper Dress and Behaviour in Saudi Arabia', which asked foreign women to wear clothing that covered their hair, legs and arms.29 The mutawwi'7n rigorously sought to discipline female secretaries working in offices, unmarried couples eating in restaurants or riding in cars, and improperly dressed women. The French Cultural Institute was compelled

29. Circular issued by Sa'd ibn Mutrafi, Director, Hay'at al-Amr bi-l-Ma'ruf, Jeddah. No.1039, 9 January 9 1979; circular issued by 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-DubaykhT, General Supervisor, Hay'at al-Amr bi-l-Ma'rif, Eastern Province Branch, No. 178/6/T/129/1, 13 September 1982.

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to exclude all women from language classes, the British School was given the ultimatum of separating men and women in its evening classes or close down, and church services held in foreign housing compounds came under scrutiny. The Interior Ministry issued new rules instituting sex-segregation in recreation areas of foreign housing compounds and set penalties for foreigners who obtain work permits illegally.30 Scholarships for Saudi women to study abroad were curtailed, along with commercial licenses for women who failed to prove they had hired a male manager to run their business, and a fatwd was issued saying that a woman must be physically accompanied by a male guardian in order to travel.31 The mutawwi'mn removed mannequins, stuffed animals and dolls from shops, ordered changing rooms in clothing stores closed, and arrested unmarried couples discovered eating in restaurants. The Ministry of Education took steps to remove Muslim school children from foreign schools.

In the same year, other 'Ikhwan' established their own vigilante police in the Eastern Province, and their activities were backed up by government police. Their aim, like that of Juhayman, was to remove what they perceived as corrupt Western influences, and these influences centred on things that women do: these Ikhwan, for example, closed down an ARAMCO clerical training programme for young women because, in their view, the women were being trained to work as secretaries where they could be exploited by male employers.32 Also closed were beauty salons in the Dhahran area on the grounds that such places offer no legitimate service that women cannot do for themselves and, like any place that offers body services, act as a cover for prostitution. In addition, a Dhahran hotel was compelled to apologize in the press for having offered musical entertainment before a mixed audience of men and women, and for having advertized Christmas festivities.

During this year of political turmoil in 1979-80, whether the decrees, fatwds, and police actions were addressed to foreigners or to Saudi citizens, the main thrust of them all was toward women's behaviour and the public separation of women from men. The purpose behind the articulation and zealous enforcement of these rules was to undermine and appease the broad coalition of sentiment which resented Western influence, of which Juhayman and his group represented only the most extreme fringe. The strategy was to do so in ways which were politically safe and which would not alienate other significant constituencies: the Saudis were not prepared to step down from power, nor to halt economic development programmes or curb the country's nascent industrial sector in order to stem the flow of Western influences, nor were they prepared to close the universities or lower their personal standard of living. However, by focusing on women's roles and defining these as Islamic, the monarchy could demonstrate its readiness to act with vigour to uphold Islamic morality against the West, without actually having to make any personal sacrifices or alienate other significant constituencies.

When the Saudi monarchy responded to the women's driving

30. al-Jazirah, No.2738, 28 January 1980. 31. al-Da'wa, No.767, 20/11/1400 (1980). 32. Interview with Ms el-Idris, ARAMCO employee and director of the clerical training programme (February 1981, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia).

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demonstration, their responses, and the reasons for them, were very similar to those that pertained in the period of the Mosque siege. In November 1990, the monarchy was facing serious challenges. The Iraqis had invaded Kuwait, and King Fahd's request for protection from Saddam Hussein raised questions about the wisdom of aligning with the United States. People were questioning American motives, expressing concern that going to war could benefit no country in the region except Israel, and wondering aloud why a negotiated settlement was not being pursued. Questions were also raised about the competence of the Saudi military. Why should it be necessary to invite the Americans, people were asking, when vast sums had been spent on arms from the West, even as the price of oil had declined and spending programmes for social services were being curtailed? Some also felt that Saddam Hussein was an Arab problem that should be solved within the Arab region, without outside interference. A major, emotionally-laden, issue also raised concerned whether or not it was legitimate in terms of religion to invite unbelievers to defend the birthplace of Islam.

In addition to these challenges, both conservative and less conservative groups were asking for some recognized form of participation in government decision-making. When the Muslim World League was convened in Mecca at the behest of King Fahd to lend Islamic legitimacy to his invitation to American forces to defend the Kingdom, the League sanctioned the call for help as expected, but also called on Muslims to return to the Islamic system of Shiur (consultation). Criticism of the Saudi monarchy's failure to institute a consultative assembly, which has been perpetually 'under consideration' for decades, was implicit, and three weeks later the King offered a fresh pledge to review plans for a consultative assembly.

As the build-up for war progressed and American troops poured into the country, the king's edict authorizing women to train for civil defence and medical service was receiving a positive response in many quarters, but still fed the concerns expressed about the moral implications of American dominance-to such an extent that Iraqi propagandists identified the edict as a potential spur to opponents of the monarchy. In one of a series of clandestine broadcasts, 'Holy Mecca Radio' equated the edict with a violation of Islamic decency, and claimed that the Americans were importing 'immorality and evil into Dhahran, in a way that threatens all values and norms with which the Muslim Arab woman has been raised ... it is amazing that someone should accept that the honourable and pure Arab woman in the Arabian peninsula has become a target for the evils of the infidel American and Zionist, his arrogance, his drunkenness, and profanity of all values and norms ...'33

The driving demonstration occurred at an opportune time for the monarchy. It provided a ready-made platform to diffuse whatever resentment the volunteer work edict may have provoked, and to deflect attention away from its inability to defend the holy places of Islam, not to mention the Saudi oil fields. As with the response to the mosque siege, raising the flag of Islamic womanhood was an opportunity to garner support without alienating any

33. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 26 September 1990, p.17.

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powerful constituencies. Punishing the demonstrators was a chance to deflect attention away from the war and to tap the widespread emotional undercurrent which resents Western influences, which wants to feel that God's laws are being fulfilled in daily living, and which views traditional roles of women as emblematic of those moral values.

Why Women, and not Men, Symbolize Islamic Tradition

All across the Arab Muslim world, modest clothing and the public separation of women has become the predominant political symbol of Islamic tradition. Historically, however, the piety of the Muslim community has been publicly measured by things that men do. This was especially so in Saudi Arabia. During the era of 'Abd al-'Aziz, indeed throughout the entire history of the WahhabT movement in Najd, the actions of men represented the community living according to God's laws: it was men who went to the mosque, and it was men, not women, whose attendance was enforced. Boys' successful completion of Qur'an-memorization classes received a public celebration, and men assumed the highest positions of authority in religion. Conformity in the length of a man's 'abd'a, the presence or absence of an 'iqdl, the trimming of the hair and beard in a certain way, not smoking, and not wearing gold or silk, were outward symbols of communal piety.

Theoretically, therefore, the Saudi rulers of the post-development twentieth century could demonstrate their willingness to uphold Islamic tradition by focusing on things that affect men's actions, such as enforcing male attendance at the mosque, the wearing of a beard, insuring that brothers pay to sisters their Qur'anic share of inheritance (as Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab himself attempted to do), and closing interest-bearing accounts in banks. Such regulations are in fact not without supporters: for example, a petition addressed to King Fahd and signed by scores of Islamic scholars, judges and university professors asked that banks be cleansed of interest payments, and among other things, that piety and observance of prayer be a consideration in making appointments to government posts.34

The reason why the monarchy, when pressured politically to reaffirm its commitment to Islam, does not press for conformity in the religious behaviour of men is that it can not do so without courting resistance. Saudi Arabia is different from the place it was even thirty years ago, and attempts to regulate male behaviour to a uniform standard would invite opposition of a sort from all quarters, including WahhabT fundamentalists, as well as those who are Western-educated, have travelled abroad, are secularists, or Shi'ites, or those who desire greater participation in decision-making, more independence for women, or greater allowance for the individual in determining what constitutes Islamic behaviour. Attempts to control the behaviour of men, in effect, would shatter the illusion of nationhood fused by a common vision of Islamic community.

34. 'The Most Important Political Document in the History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia', al- Sha'b (Egypt), 21 May 1991; 'Clarification Document to King Fahd from Clergy' by Shaykh 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Baz, no date, no place, in possession of author.

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Today the Saudi rulers enforce Islamic tradition selectively, in ways which demonstrate their commitment to public piety without burdening their male constituents with having to demonstrate their own: shops are closed at prayer time, for example, and mosques are built in every neighbourhood and shopping mall, but men are not forced to enter. Zakdt is deducted from the wages of salaried employees, but only in place of income taxes.

Women's separation, by contrast, is enforced because it can be. The veiled separation and dependency of women emerges from a long historical trajectory and represents values which are continuously reproduced at home and in the political culture of the Kingdom. In spite of the aspirations of many Westernized, liberal Saudis, women's modesty and separation continue to appeal to much of the population, cutting across the interests of diverse ethnic, religious and economic groups in the Kingdom. Over the past ten years that appeal has been growing,35 as the symbols of the Islamic community living according to God's laws have been gradually evolving from being represented mainly by things that men do to things that women do not do.

Elevating the separation of women to an essential Islamic imperative fills a symbolic void: like praying in the mosque or fasting during Ramadan, the separation and non-public presence of women are a way of making Islam visible. The public invisibility of women has become a way to display one's faith, to make of religion something tangible that can be measured by others. When adopted as a moral cause by the monarchy, as shown in this paper, the public invisibility of women becomes a visible sign of the monarch's piety.

The Continuing Political Utility of the 'Ideal Woman'

Gender ideology works as an instrument of legitimation because it appeals directly to the myths of nationhood which underpin the monarchy: the nation as Islamic community, the nation as patriarchal tribal family, and the Al Sa'ud as guardian of both. Women, veiled and separated, provide a unifying symbol of Islamic piety. When co-opted by the monarchy, ideal Islamic women become a symbol of national identity.

Ideal Islamic womanhood works as an instrument of legitimation because it has intrinsic appeal. Women's modesty, family values, and women's dependency on men represent support for the integrity of the patriarchal family. In a time of rapid change, the monarchy must provide stability, and support for the patriarchal family and 'traditional values' is support for stability. When the monarchy, either directly or by non-interference with the religious organizations, promotes the values of family and Islam, it is offering people a refuge. Measures such as limiting the sale of contraceptive devices, sustaining the SharT'aas the only basis for marriage, divorce and child custody, requiring official permission for a Saudi man to marry a foreign woman, issuing identity cards to males only, and limiting the types of employment to which women are entitled are ways of ensuring continuity in religious values

35. See Mai Yamani, 'Women in Saudi Arabia: Traditional Roles and Modern Aspirations', unpublished paper presented at the Council on Foreign Relations, 23 January 1992.

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and family traditions, even as the physical and social environment is being unrecognizably transformed.

The promotion of ideal Islamic womanhood has an unquestioned appeal to the mass of people of Saudi Arabia. Such government policies speak to the empowerment of men: they work to shore up the patriarchal family at a time in which male authority is being challenged by the centralizing state. The combination of women's education, population mobility, young families moving away from home-towns, and an affluence which allows Saudi couples to establish nuclear households, presents painful challenges to patriarchal control over the extended family. However, it is not only men who respond positively, for women too are uncertain about the effects social change may bring. If they stay in school too long, will they be considered undesirable for marriage? If they work, can they really take care of their children at the same time? Do they want to work at all, and if they did, would they choose to work in a mixed-sex environment which could perceived by others as compromising?

Controlling things that women do appeals to a range of fears and concerns over the effects of westernization. These effects include not only the demise of the extended patriarchal family, but secularization and the growing insistence on the right of the individual to make personal decisions about matters once held sacrosanct in custom and vital to communal well-being, such as the choice of a marriage partner, where one will live, or to whom one defers. These effects also include the destruction of familiar space, such as the demise of the old suq and with it, the means for the small trader to do business, the traditional ways of conducting business, and the circle of life between suq, home and mosque. In its place are vast shopping malls and arcades, with foreign names, selling foreign goods, and staffed by Europeans or Asians who often do not speak Arabic. These are foreign spaces, inviting foreign behaviour, making people, especially those who cannot adapt easily, feel themselves foreigners in their own land.

The ideology of ideal Islamic womanhood has up to now allowed the monarchy to diffuse opposition emanating from these disparate voices and at the same time negotiate between concerns about cultural erosion and the desire for change. Offering assurance that women will not be seen working in shops, or that the establishment of educational institutions for girls will not lead to their employment alongside men, curtailing scholarships to study abroad or denying women a right to travel without a male guardian's permission has mollified conservative feelings while the state has built its westernized economic, educational and physical infrastructure and opened by-ways for women's access to it.

Because the ideology of ideal Islamic womanhood is so closely tied to monarchical power, women's issues have been subject to manipulation at particularly vulnerable points in time. Such was the case of the driving demonstration. From the point of view of the demonstrators, defying the ban on driving was about freedom from dependency: it was about being able to take a sick child for medical treatment, getting oneself to work, attending a social event, buying one's own groceries. The government's response, however, was about internal security. Had the incident occurred at another time, it is

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likely that, at worst, the women would have been stopped and taken home, at best they would have been ignored, and their determination rewarded with tacit approval of women's driving in the future. Instead, the demonstration became a way to appease the many voices rising in opposition to the monarchy over issues that had nothing to do with women's driving but with the conduct of the monarchy during the Gulf crisis.

The political connection between gender, monarchy and national identity was expressed in a poem addressed to the King and circulated anonymously in Riyadh just after the demonstration ... a time, the poem began, when 'the banners of secularism were raised in Najd.'

I never thought I'd live to see The daughter of the peninsula making light of principles Attempting to remove the hijab as though She were a nation losing its might ...

I challenge the men of my tribe ... Where is decency, was it lost in a culture Which is Western, which buries decency as it enters? I wonder how the front can hold out

While behind it the sword of conspiracies is raised ...

I wonder how our soldiers can remain steadfast

While with the fires of apprehension their hearts burn Afraid that the call of the uncovered women will destroy And break what noble traits have been built into the home ...

Oh Servant of the Two Holy Shrines I fear that I shall see The chain of cohesion in the peninsula shattered ...

Strike with the sword of righteousness the head of a vice ... Strike, for God's sake, leave not in our land A voice that calls openly for vice and blasphemy A small mouse could destroy a mighty dam And one who is careless might destroy a nation.36

The voice in the poem evokes the unease of a people confronted by shifting boundaries of personal and national identity, an unease which gives rise to strident reaffirmations of religious conviction. If the rise in Islamic reaffirmation spurred by the Gulf War should threaten to unravel the cohesion of Saudi Arabia, the construction of women in the nation's political culture may again prove palliative. Further flirtations with the West will likely be countered with strong expressions of Islamic leadership on the home front: the instrument of proven success is the role of women.

36. 'An Appeal from a Girl to the Servant of the Two Shrines', unpublished, no date, in author's possession.

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