Empowering Women - Where Exactly - To What End?
I guess I have become a little cynical - suspicious even - to look a gift horse in the mouth and question the motivations behind the recent stories of Saudi Prince Alaweed's plans to donate tens of billions of dollars to charitable causes.
Every article I see mentions "empowering women."
If he aims to empower women in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Islamic world, then he believes empowering women is a good thing for society, enriching and enabling the populations in which this would occur.
If he is not empowering women in Saudi Arabia (and I hear no alarm bells or dissent or protests about it from the Imams and Mullahs - so I have to wonder) but is only aiming to empower women in the West - perhaps his motives are not so friendly? What if he wants to do this to weaken enemies of Islam and hasten the collapse of the West, while nothing is done to empower women in Saudi Arabia?
A typical article says things like:
Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has promised his entire $US32 billion fortune to charitable projects in coming years in one of the biggest ever such pledges. The pledge is "maybe ... the first such big announcement" of its kind in the region, and is modeled on a charity established by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the United States, the prince told reporters. Prince Alwaleed said his charity "will help build bridges to foster cultural understanding, [this sounds like an effort to be made in the West, not at home] develop communities, empower women, enable youth, provide vital disaster relief and create a more tolerant and accepting world." [Again, I assume this is to create tolerance of ISLAM out in the rest of the WORLD.] The 60-year-old magnate belongs to the Saudi royal family and is a nephew of the former King Abdullah. Is it plausible that the lack of details means the Prince will "empower women" in his own country? Not likely. It would be considered a crime under Sharia Law, and also considered a crime against the royal family, of which he is a member. Not that the gradual empowerment of women is impossible under Saudi kings who might someday actively pursue such reforms... but as Human Rights Watch says in their 2015 report on Saudi Arabia: http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/saudi-arabia "Ministerial policies and practices forbid women from obtaining a passport, marrying, traveling, or accessing higher education without the approval of a male guardian, usually a husband, father, brother, or son. Authorities also fail to prevent some employers from requiring male guardians to approve the hiring of adult female relatives or some hospitals from requiring male guardian approval for certain medical procedures for women. In February, a member of the Senior Council of Scholars, the highest state body for the interpretation of Islamic law, issued a fatwa stating that women are not allowed to visit a male doctor without their male guardians. They are not allowed to expose parts of the body with the exception of a medical emergency. All women remain banned from driving in Saudi Arabia. Likewise, under un-codified rules on personal status, women are not allowed to marry without the permission of their guardian; unlike men, they do not have a unilateral right to divorce and often face discrimination in relation to child custody." * So I have serious doubts that Prince Alaweed intends to practice what he preaches and work towards ending these traditions in Saudi Arabia. I suspect that he views "empowered women" as a tool which weakens and takes away power from western men, which will weaken America and Europe. How could we possibly expect him to go against the nation's Sharia Law, and not be punished - or even criticized? Part of my cynicism comes from knowledge of Saudi influence in America's classrooms. Do you know how many millions of dollars Saudi Arabia has spent to provide "free" textbooks to American schools, or that what those (mostly social studies) textbooks are "free of" is praise of Christianity and Judaism, while also free of negative references to Islam, terrorism, 9/11, etc.? In the article: SAUDI & ARAB INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN EDUCATION We can read: "In recent years, religious extremists based in Saudi Arabia have exerted immense influence on what America’s K-12 schoolchildren learn about Islam and the Middle East. Specifically, these extremists have poured large sums of money into the coffers of organizations that produce K-12 curricula whose ideological leanings are sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism and, conversely, critical of the United states and Israel." As journalist Stanley Kurtz explains, “without ever realizing it, America’s taxpayers end up subsidizing — and providing official federal approval for — K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under Saudi auspices.” With Saudi money and the federal government's sanction under "Title VI NRC – to create a teacher-training seminar on Islam and the Middle East, the Harvard Center was unwilling to include any kind of instruction that reflected negatively on Islam; e.g., such topics as the nature of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the lack of democracy in the Middle East, and the plight of women in much of the Muslim world were ignored. Instead, the Harvard Center delivered seminars and lessons that virtually promoted Islam as a religion, whitewashed the life and teachings of the Prophet Mohammad, ignored the violent tradition of Islamic jihad, and sharply criticized America's alleged prejudices against the Muslim world." One investigator "Stotsky was unsettled by what she termed the Harvard Center's “distorted” political agenda that was “manipulating” apolitical teachers with a “barely disguised” attempt to “shape…attitudes on specific political issues.” If Harvard’s outreach personnel would have designed similar classroom exercises to teach students about Christianity or Judaism, said Stotsky, “People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the ACLU would descend upon them like furies.” In her 2004 book The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America’s History Teachers, Stotsky detailed her observations about the Saudi infiltration of America's schools. She wrote: “Most of these materials have been prepared and/or funded by Islamic sources here and abroad, and are distributed or sold directly to schools or individual teachers, thereby bypassing public scrutiny.” Stotsky went on to note that after 9/11, the Saudi government had sent U.S. schools thousands of packages of educational materials that traced most problems in the Middle East to the doorstep of Western colonialism." As another article put it: "
“Saudi Arabia is paying to influence the teaching of American public schoolchildren. And the U.S. taxpayer is an unwitting accomplice….Often bypassing school boards and nudging aside approved curricula….These materials praise and sometimes promote Islam, but criticize Judaism and Christianity….Ironically, what gives credibility to…these distorted materials is Title VI of the Higher Education Act….Believing they’re importing the wisdom of places like Harvard or Georgetown, they are actually inviting into their schools whole curricula and syllabuses developed with the support of Riyadh.” So with this in mind, I feel the need to ask - just where do Saudi Royals plan to empower women - and if not in Arabia, but in America - then what is the motivation?