Earlier in the week, we discussed a Saudi cleric who believes that women should not turn on their air conditioners at home because it might bring about a woman’s immorality.
But wait, that’s not the only absurd piece of oppressive news we’ve heard. Just recently, Saudi writer Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood urged his Twitter followers to sexually molest women hired to work as cashiers in big grocery stores.
Abdullah Mohamad Al Dawood writes self-help books, one of them include The Joy of Talking. He’s recently stirred a fierce debate on Twitter with the use of the hashtag “#harass_female_cashiers” in order to protect Saudi women to be forced to stay at home to protect their chastity.
He justifies his claims through an obscure story from the early day of Islam about a warrior named Al Zubair, who did not want his wife to leave home to pray in the mosque. One night, he hid in the dark and molested his wife in the street. She rushed home and then said she was never going out again because there is no safer place than home.
His campaign against official moves to encourage women to work in mixed gender environments has led some Twitter users to denounce him, while others applaud him as a fighter against government efforts to westernize and corrupt the country.
Khalid Ebrahim Al Saqabi, a conservative cleric, endorsed Al Dawood’s question: “Why is the labour minister concerned with finding jobs for women instead of men?”
Saudi Arabia still has poor women’s rights records. They are not allowed to drive unless they wear a full-length veil and are accompanied by a male relative. In 2011, women were given the right to vote and run for office in the municipal elections in 2015.
What Twitter users are saying:
(Source)
