This has been talked about to death in some circles, I know - fortunately this isn't one of them. As the Beijing Olympics roll on and the Michael Phelpses and Nastia Liukins (or the Cheng Feis and Yang Weis, if you prefer) win medal after medal, it's almost too easy to forget those left out of the Olympics. No, I'm not talking about the North Korean women's artistic gymnastics team; although MENA countries on the whole are underrepresented at the Olympics (and, for that matter, aren't bringing home the proverbial bacon - save for Algeria and Tunisia, oddly enough), we shouldn't fault them for their performances rather, we should fault only a handful, but for the performances that never happened...those of their female athletes.
A few good women are missing from this year's competition. Though it's fewer than ever before, it's still too many. In 2008, 3 countries lack a single woman competing for their team: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Of those three, only one has ever sent a woman to the Olympics (that would be Kuwait, represented in '04 by 16-year-old runner Danah Al-Nasrallah). Afghanistan also sent its first female competitor to Athens, while female Omani, Bahraini, and Emirati Olympians are appearing for the first time in Beijing.
While it's unfortunate for any team to lack female representation, however, Saudi Arabia is the only country which outright bans women from competing. That's their prerogative, perhaps, but shocking that the IOC, the Olympic governing body which prohibits "any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise" would allow them to compete; that's the same IOC that barred South Africa from the Olympics in the 1960s during the apartheid era. And South Africa actually offered to send black athletes. It was for their refusal to allow interracial sporting at home that they were barred; Saudi Arabia's situation is actually much worse, as women aren't allowed to compete at home or abroad.
What's worse is the apologists for Saudi Arabia; among them Ray Hanania, who argues:Newscasters make a point of always saying its team is “all male.” Women are prohibited by Saudi Arabia’s government from participating, but many other nation’s [sic] also have teams that are also only all male.
Many other nations, no. It's now down to two, in fact - so when will Qatar and Saudi Arabia step up to the plate and join their neighbors? Hijab is clearly not the problem - Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, and Afghanistan all sent hijab-clad athletes this year, and development in athletic clothing for Muslim women is improving all the time.
Little girls in Saudi Arabia (which I will use as an example from now on, given that Qatar's population equals that of Boston) deserve to have strong heroes too. Girls in Morocco idolize Nawal El Moutawakel the same way young Romanian girls have idolized Nadia Comaneci and Americans Mary Lou Retton. The next generation of young Muslim women might grow up to idolize Bahrain's Ruqaya al Ghasra (pictured) or Lebanon's Nibal Yamout.
So until Saudi women are allowed to play sports, and compete in the Olympics, the IOC should hold to its standards and simply ban the country from competition. Full stop.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Saudi Girls Deserve Sports Heroes, Too
Friday, May 30, 2008
Nonoo? or Yes Yessss?
Houda Nonoo, who has been appointed as the new Bahraini ambassador to the US. Nonoo is remarkable not only for being the first woman ambassador from the kingdom to the US, but because she hails from the country's small Jewish community. Most of the Jewish Bahrainis trace their ancestry to either Iraq or India, but have been in Bahrain for generations. Once again, with all the problems with the Gulf region, this is yet another sign of movement in a positive direction.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
A Qatar Above
While the longevity/viability of the Lebanese peace deal has yet to be determined the emergence of Qatar as an emerging global player seems to be more certain. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on what the tiny country is doing. When you add it up, the list of their activities is quite impressive considering they were not start to develop their hydrocarbon resources (most of which are natural Gas) until the late 80's early 90's:
-Mediation in Lebanon
-BBC Co-sponsored Doha Debates
-Education City (has campuses of Cornell, Georgetown, etc.)
-Headquarters of US Military's Central Command CENTCOM
-Close ties with Iran and Syria
-Al Jazeera(s)
-Has held controversial high level talks with Israel
-Initiated the building of a causeway to Bahrain and are exploring a similar project with UAE
-Slow but steady improvements in the treatment of foreign workers and representative democracy
-One completed and one planned church
Not a bad job for 20 years. Oh well, they still ain't getting the iphone anytime soon. Why Egypt?
As an aside, is it just me or is The Christian Science Monitor starting to regain some of its previous luster?
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Get Your Vote On...
Kuwait held elections on May 17th and the results are in. In Saturday's vote, tribal MPs took 23 seats in the assembly, hard-line Islamists won 11 seats, liberals took 11 seats, and Shiite candidates won five seats. The elections were held to help resolve a deadlock in the parliament that has held up proposed economic reforms. At this point it seems the parliament has enough power to get in the way of the ruling families, but not enough to actually rule.
This election was the second that involved women, but just as importantly it was the first time that the number of voting districts were reduced from 25 to 5 in an order to prevent vote buying (with 10 candidates coming from each district).
An estimated 214,886 voters cast their ballots, out of 361,684 eligible voters in the five constituencies; of them 161,185 are men and 200,499 were women [55% of eligible voters in Kuwait are Women], the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reports. Dr. Rola Dashti came in 11th in her district just missing the mark and other female candidates had a strong showing. (coverage from The Economist, here). Just remember, the Emir can dissolve parliament at any time, so if the gridlock does not get any better we could be at this again shortly.
In similar news Qatar is set to change the ratio of elected to appointed members of the consultative council from 1/3 to 2/3. Interestingly Qatar, much more conservative that Bahrain or Kuwait, has seen a woman win a contested election, whereas this has not happened so far in the other countries, where women ministers have all been appointed or ran unopposed.
Over in Bahrain, the parliament is starting to get a little more confident in its power allowing some of the Shia majority to question the policies of the Emir. Of course they have wasted their time and legitimacy in much the same manner of parliaments all over the world.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Rock the Cliche
I do enjoy the occasional puff piece human interest story about the Middle East, but it is all the more aggravating when they a done so terribly. In an incredibly cliche article the Times Online profiles the rock obsessed son of the King of Bahrain, Abdullah bin Hamad al Khalifa. He seems like an interesting enough guy who is really trying to do something he cares about in his country. I have my problems with the government there (see: treatment of the shia, migrant workers, lack of democracy), but compared to the rest of the region they are making strides. Back to Abdullah... I think it is commendable that he is trying to add some culture to the country and diversity to the economy, but despite his protests, this seems like just another royal pet project. I could only imagine if the rich traditional arts in Bahrain (including a few amazing radio stations) received a 1/10th of the funding it took to house MJ for a year or start 2 Seas Records. Plus, how sustainable is it to pay a bunch of brits to run everything? I seriously doubt there is a training component to help some youth from the shia villages learn new tech skills.
Lastly, this reporter is an idiot. He raises the possibility that he felt he was being lured to Bahrain so he could be killed. I exaggerate, but only slightly. I guess it would have been silly to do a bare modicum of research on the country before going, huh? The article has more cliches than you can shake a stick at. The broader story about cultural-economic projects in the Gulf is an interesting and important one, but this article adds little to several others that have been written over the past year. Plus the story quickly degenerates to a "dish on MJ in Bahrain" piece. Better luck next time!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Spitfire-side Chats: The Low Down on the High Value of "Low" and "Good" Numbers in the UAE and other Persian Gulf States
"Yo son, what you sporting these days?"
"Well, you know how I do; I got me some gators, 22s, and a single-digit license plate number-ya herrrrd!"
That's right, big pimpin' in the Arab world has taken a life of it's own. Because of the general level of wealth enjoyed by Khaleeji national community (and corrupt monarchy-sustained elites in other Arab countries), a couple of imagined commodities have taken the respective countries by storm as a means to distinguish individuals from the pack; many centered around "Low" and "Good" numbers.
Low and nice numbers go beyond being a representation of material wealth, they represent that of symbolic wealth, of the kind of power one can wield for accessing and possessing exclusive imaginary commodities. And what are these imaginary commodities specifically?
License plates: The lower the number the more well-connected you are to government-unless of course you bought one off of some enterprising sheikh for beaucoup bucks.
Cellphone and home numbers. The "good" numbers are basically the "nicer sounding" ones. From what my informants have told me, the "nicer" sounding connotes easy memoryability (remember I'm a budding anthropologists, I'm allowed to make up words), which usually means there are repeating or symmetric numbers in the sequence.
Here are some ads on an UAE-based ebay-like classified site called Bazaar.ae that sell "good", "nice sounding" cellphone and home numbers-some at undisclosed prices and others that will cost you a pretty dirham: Here, here, here, and oh yes, HERE.
The following are KABOBer reactions, highly-opinionated comments, sensationalist stories and titillating hearsay about the low and nice numbers phenomenon in the Arab, but mostly Khaleeji, world:
Maytha: I have been informed by my cousins who live in Abu Dhabi that low numbers on license plates are considered the 'it' thing in UAE. So, Sheikh Maktoum having a "1" as his license plate number basically means that homeboy is the biggest balla in Dubai.
Assouli: License plate numbers are also big in Jordan. the king has number 1. i remember Abdulmajid Shoman had a 5. people are very proud of their license plate numbers. poor poor people have nothing else to be proud of in Jordan. generally, it's gotta be 5 digits to be cool, unless it's 5 digits on a shitty car, which just means the person got it a long time ago. 4 digits is unheard of for anyone other than the closely connected Jordanian or the very wealthy. people pay a premium for the numbers and any repetition in numbers is hip such as 11145. then apparently there are numbers that show some connection to the mukhabarat (intelligence services) and that supposedly grants you immunity from traffic tickets without having the moustache and the Bedouin accent...
By the way, same thing for cellphone numbers... you're cool as hell if your number is 677-7776 or something... buying a SIM card you can expect to pay a healthy premium above the price of an ugly number like 648-5210, although that 210 at the end is bordering on hot!
That's pretty much what's going on in Jordan in a nutshell...
Nimr: To add my 5 cents, it is not just Jordan. In Qatar and Bahrain I heard of guys buying these "good" numbers for thousands of dollars for their cars or phones. there were even speculators and re-sellers. talk about an imagined commodity.
Omar: It's not just hearsay about people willing to pay thousands for "cool" phone numbers and license plates. When I was in Saudi my brother had a really easy number to remember and constantly kept getting calls from people who wanted to buy it. I think the highest offer he got was around ~$3500. Come to think of it, I don't know why he didn't just sell it.
I also heard of people willing to pay millions for license plates.
Diana: In Palestine, numbers are also hot too but we don't have to pay big money for them: you just have to pay an additional $5 when getting the number. Sometimes you luck out - like me - with a cool number. But I get a weirdo from Gaza always calling me thinking that I am his wife. Cars are different, of course, due to apartheid-incentiving Oslo: only PA officials get red coloured licence plates with four digits. Arafat was the only person with a 0001. The licence plate has been retired. Abu Mazen's car is now: 2000. Here the cool thing is with PASSPORT NUMBERS: PA guys get super cool numbers: A011111 (used to be the Passport Number of Abu Mazen).
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Two steps forward, three steps back
As I wrote about recently, there have been some positive, albeit tentative, movement in regards to the rights of migrant workers in Gulf State. I was even more encouraged when i found an article about a public awareness campaign in Saudi asking them to "be nice to your maid". However, as I read further in the article I found this little gem: Riyadh police teamed up with the Sri Lankan embassy in September to rescue a Sri Lankan maid who had telephoned the Arab News newspaper to say she had been imprisoned, abused and unpaid by her woman employer for at least seven years. Charge d'affaires at the Sri Lankan embassy W.S.M.S. Wijesundera told AFP the housemaid had reached a settlement with her employers under which they will pay more than 5,000 dollars and buy her a ticket home. Now, the story does not go into the details about the veracity of the Sri Lankan national's claims, but if they were even in the ballpark, a mere $5k for seven years of abuse and forced labor! Zero jail time! I don't care if that is a lot of money in her country, that is just wrong. I want to see the upside that the Arab News and the Riyadh police took action (they often don't), but really? $5k and a ticket? Wort of all the Saudi government has the temerity to downplay the situation and accuse Human Rights Watch of "exaggerating". With "penalties" like that, no wonder those Saudis with no morals are not exactly worried about the repercussions of their inhumane actions. In self defense, some domestic workers have resorted to witchcraft to make their employers like them (Translation: The husband got caught sleeping with the maid and this is the best explanation he could come up with).
