Saudi Arabia's morality queen

This year's Miss Beautiful Morals, the Saudi 'inner beauty' contest, is nothing but a veiled celebration of female submission

Nesrine Malik
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 October 2010

"Meet Zainab al-Khatam, the winner of Saudi Arabia's second annual pageant celebrating "spiritual and filial beauty". Each contestant reportedly underwent training in "psychology, culture and law in Islam; family relations, public rights, social skills, health knowledge, volunteering ... as well as cosmetics".

Established last year by a Saudi women's organisation, and implying criticism of western beauty contests, the Miss Beautiful Morals competition focuses not outward appearances but on inner beauty, and the values that are often given less significance.....

But what, exactly, are these values? This year's winner is a blind 24-year-old woman who had managed to exhibit superlative "respect for her family, parents and society" – by staying at home after she had finished her studies, in order to take care of her family. She suffered in dignity and accepted her lot, her martyrdom becoming all the more poignant because of her disability. She is a stark contrast to another Saudi woman, Samar Badawi, who was sent to jail for disobeying her father.

The practice of celebrating self-immolation as the highest form of morality is endemic in some Arab societies and it has always struck me as a con – one that dupes women into compliance by elevating their submission into some form of virtue......

But how about celebrating some volition? Some empowerment? It is not necessarily a binary situation. Zainab's disability did not necessarily oblige her to give up on having a role outside the home and living as independent a life as possible, as if that were somehow an immoral objection to God's will and a disrespect of Saudi values.

Zainab's morals may be beautiful, but society's reasons for celebrating them are very ugly indeed."

COMMENT

People keep asking why is the whole world changing with the exception of the Arab world.

In my opinion this article touches upon a critical factor: obedience to the existing power structure; the father, the chief of the tribe,....,the head of the state. Children are brought up, by an obedient mother who stays home, to perpetuate these values and to not rock the boat.

It is a self-perpetuating system: those in power reward submission, which in turn ensures the permanence of the existing corrupt and oppressive power structure.

Add to this some Muslim interpretation to obey authority and you can see that change is virtually impossible.

You have to bring the whole temple down and start all over again --- Tony Sayegh.