Politics is always a mix of uncomfortable choices.
The recent case of tectonic political movements in Saudi Arabia, which has seen scores of royal family members imprisoned, including the noted billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal, is no different.
Not from a feminist perspective at least.
Just last month, a “female” robot was granted citizenship in the kingdom.
A move that actually gives a robot more rights than female citizens, because unlike actual women, the robot will not require a male guardian (
wali), nor have to live by the stringent dress code (
abaya and head scarf).
Irony aside, it isn’t just robot-rights that are making strides in the culturally and socially insulated kingdom.
The favourite sonIn June 2017, the young prince Mohammad bin Salman, the current king’s favourite son, was appointed crown prince. The move was as sudden as it was perilous, but was fuelled by a serious need for economic reform.
For decades, the kingdom rode on petrodollars, as it still does, but the deflated price of oil means that without urgent and massive economic reforms, the kingdom will perish.
But economic reforms cannot be accomplished without concomitant social reforms.
In a kingdom where they are barely considered citizens, uncomfortable compromises are the best we can hope for
Mohammad has quickly become the most powerful figure in Saudi politics. Apart from being the crown prince, he is also the first deputy prime minister, the minister of defense, and president of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs.
In short, he wields control over almost everything, and he is using that control to usher in an age of unprecedented changes within the kingdom.
Policy of reformHis proposed reforms, which include privatisation of state assets and the reduction of subsidies, and a possible end to the sinecures of many citizens, have largely been welcomed by Saudi youth, who constitute a majority of the kingdom’s population, but the older traditionalists are less impressed.
His actions are also anathema to the Wahhabism brand of religion that has governed life in the kingdom since its inception.
Mohammad seems resolved to curb the influence of the ulama in public life and rein in corruption within the royal family, the latter being the touted explanation for the spate of arrests.
King Faisal, the man who abolished slavery in the kingdom in 1962, had also tried to reduce the role of the ulama and check royal family corruption, which led rather directly to his violent assassination.
As good as some of the young prince’s rhetoric sounds, there is also another side to the story.
Unlike the hapless King Faisal, Mohammad isn’t actually the king, and in the current atmosphere, his reforms might be more of an attempt to cultivate support to ensure his succession.
Regarding his promises of economic privatisation, the IPO process of Saudi Aramco keeps stalling, as do plans of creating the next international tourist hubs along the Red Sea coastline.
His naïveté in foreign policy is, by most accounts, to blame for the current war and resulting infernal state of Yemen, and has led to the rift with Qatar and the despoiling of any semblance of past Arab unity.
The feminist perspectiveNotwithstanding Mohammad’s intentions or blunders, his influence has been far less dour for women in the kingdom.
In 2015, women finally got the vote and were also given the right to stand as candidates in municipal elections. Earlier this year, they got the right to legally drive motor vehicles; all this in a country where it’s still illegal for women to try on clothes when shopping. In grand political schemes, the plight of women has never found easy sympathy.
Few names are more prominent today as purveyors of political ideas for modern Western Muslims than Tariq Ramadan. He has also often claimed to have coined the term “Islamic feminism,” by which he refers to: (1) The consciousness of Muslim women as women, instead of mother, sister, wife, etc, and (2) the “near-ubiquitous” presence of women in the Western public sphere; an interpretation of feminism that is, at best, condescending.
In the post-#metoo world, the same man has been accused of perpetrating violent rapes by multiple women. One of the accusers attested that Tariq Ramadan believes that “either you wear a veil or you get raped.”
In a world where women are still fighting for their rights, and in a kingdom where they are barely considered citizens, uncomfortable compromises are the best we can hope for.
Mohammad bin Salman is neither a liberal nor a democrat, nor has he shown any signs of allowing freedom of speech or other political freedoms to flourish. He has detained scores of his critics and worse.
Nonetheless, from the feminist perspective he still is the most palatable choice.
Fardina Habib is an expert in branding and was trained in Baruch College, New York.