Saudi Islamists Discuss The Status Of Women In Islam And In The West

'Abdallah Bin Hadhban Al-Harathi interviewed Dr. Said bin Nasser Al-Ghamedi about women in the West and in Isalm during his weekly religious program on the Saudi- based channel, Iqra TV, . Following are excerpts from the discussion:

'Abdallah Bin Hadhban Al-Harathi: Why did (the West) make the woman issue into a problem and a complex? Muslim society has never suffered from the woman complex, as Western society does.

In Western society the woman is a real complex. This complex existed in ancient Europe and later Christianity carried this complex with it when the barbaric European peoples became Christian.

It was these people's custom that a man weds one wife whom he owns forever but he cheats on her whenever he wishes and fornicates as much as he likes. This has been the situation from the days of barbarism to the days of the playboy, Clinton.

This culture passes form generation to generation, from father to son. Everybody acts according to it, in the offices, theaters, stadiums, beaches, brothels, and over the pages of Playboy. Their woman complex is deeply rooted in their past and in their present. But in the name of justice, freedom, and equality, they insisted on exporting this culture to us, while we, due to our weakness, wretchedness, and subjugation to them, are forced to import it. We have imported a complicated problem along with the films, and theater, McDonald's restaurants and Coca-Cola.

Doctor, I have news for you. It is peculiar and surprising that the US is demanding of the Islamic world, which it calls the Greater Middle East, that women should hold positions in areas that even in America they are not allowed to hold. For example, as you and all the viewers know, a woman in America is not allowed to become president of the US. Is it not so? And not vice president ? is it not so? While in our Muslim countries, in Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and in Bangladesh, women have held the highest positions.

There are also statistics about female MPs. For example, in America, the House of Representatives has 435 members, of them, 51 are women, while in the Muslim world, in the Pakistani parliament, there are more than 22% women. Furthermore, here, in Saudi Arabia, the salary a woman receives is identical to a man's salary. Meaning, professional rank five ? rank five. The woman receives the same salary, while in America she receives a lower salary only because she is a woman.

I will add a simple comment to this. The Nobel Prize has existed for 100 years. This is in the West. The number of women who got it is only 10, meaning one tenth.

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamedi: Western thought, which has been exporting these problems to us, and has invaded the minds of some Muslim men and women, is based on the idea of conflict. In the West, conflict is a fundamental and central element in life and even in their approach to nature. For example, we use the term "space exploration" while they call it "space invasion." For them, it is a conflict with nature, a conflict with man, and even an internal conflict.

This belligerent life has turned the nature of the relationship between man and woman in the West into struggle and conflict. While in Islam, the relationship between man and woman is integrated and balanced. The woman is one of the two halves of the human species!

A certain measure of oppression and ignorance exist in the Muslim nation, which has caused some mistaken behavior. But, Sheikh 'Abdallah, despite these phenomena, even in its sick and deteriorating state, the condition of the woman in the Muslim world is better than that of the woman living in the West.

Western women themselves have admitted this, as the wise Western men have admitted, and those who have researched the situation of the West and the woman's problem have admitted. They have all admitted that the women in the West suffer a life of human inferiority and degradation, which humiliates her humanity and inflicts upon her right. Despite the Muslim world's weakness, and despite the problems and injustice caused to women in the Muslim nation, we see that generally speaking, the Muslim woman's situation is better than that of the Western woman living in the West.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Is this wishful thinking or facts?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: These are facts?

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Give me something tangible?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: I have a large group of cases proving that women in the West live in a very depressing and painful situation. In America, for example, one of five women is raped, and according to more cautious estimates, one out of every seven?

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: This is the situation in the US?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: Yes. One of five was raped.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: And in the Muslim world?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: There isn't such rate?there are no statistics.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: If there are no statistics, perhaps the rate is higher?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: No, it is not higher, because in Muslim societies there are religious, moral, ethical, tribal, and familial deterrents. All these deterrents exist in Muslim societies. Despite the ignorance, we do not have this kind of rate of rape cases, as in the West.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Pardon me, Doctor, I cannot accept statistics about the other while we do not have statistics about ourselves, because we have a problem?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: People whose source (of values) is in a Holy Book and a Sunna and have ways of true, clear and clean understanding, are nothing like others whose source (of values) is urges, philosophies, Freud or Darwin, who takes Man back to the ape and animals.

They are not like those whose sources are philosophies that view human existence as a bestial existence, only in a different form. The other source makes different?

The other issue is the avoidance of implementing the qualitative difference between male and female. There's a qualitative difference acknowledged by the wise of all nations. There is a qualitative difference that dictates differences in the type of work and a difference in the position a woman can hold.

The male is not like the female. The man has his own entity, strength, physique, mental structure, a way of looking at things and events. While a woman has a different entity, mental structure, and way of life. Even her physique is different than the man's.

There are those who call for the woman to go out and work, as you have mentioned regarding the issue of rights and such. They say rights. What do they want for the woman? They want to get the woman out of home as a hired employee who integrates into the labor market while what the woman needs is to work freely. She needs to work freely in her kingdom, her home. There is a difference between her working freely in her home and fulfilling her role in raising future generations, nations, and men upon which the future is built, and between her going out to work as an employee, under the rule of a man who will treat her as though she were hired.