Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Arabia Discovers Women Need To Eat Food
Gender consciousness reaches Saudi Arabia:
Al-Watan published a news item last week that seems to have caught people’s attention. It told the story of women university students running off to shopping malls and hotel lobbies in Makkah, neglecting their lectures... As I continued to question these young ladies there was a common strain to their answers. They also mentioned the lack of decent on-campus cafeterias and sports facilities for women. Perhaps, they suggested, if universities treated them like they were boys - and simply offered them facilities that are found on university campuses worldwide - to pass time between classes they wouldn’t be encouraged to head off somewhere else.
Students, especially undergraduates, should be as close to campus as possible, encouraged to study and be close by so as to reduce the chances of skipping class. But can we lay the blame completely on these young women? Do they not have as much of a right to university gyms and eating facilities as men?
"Do women not have as much of a right to... eating facilities as men?" Truly a question that Western sages have pondered for centuries. We think there might be a discussion of it in Plato somewhere. Do women have a right to eating facilities? Yeah, tough question - we just don't know.
Incidentally, don't email us about how this article is a good sign because it shows that "at least some people in the Muslim world support progress". The question is not whether, over the next two centuries, women in Saudi Arabia would be allowed to have university eating facilities. The question is how we deal - right now - with a violent wave of fanatics coming from a world in which they don't.
Al-Watan published a news item last week that seems to have caught people’s attention. It told the story of women university students running off to shopping malls and hotel lobbies in Makkah, neglecting their lectures... As I continued to question these young ladies there was a common strain to their answers. They also mentioned the lack of decent on-campus cafeterias and sports facilities for women. Perhaps, they suggested, if universities treated them like they were boys - and simply offered them facilities that are found on university campuses worldwide - to pass time between classes they wouldn’t be encouraged to head off somewhere else.
Students, especially undergraduates, should be as close to campus as possible, encouraged to study and be close by so as to reduce the chances of skipping class. But can we lay the blame completely on these young women? Do they not have as much of a right to university gyms and eating facilities as men?
"Do women not have as much of a right to... eating facilities as men?" Truly a question that Western sages have pondered for centuries. We think there might be a discussion of it in Plato somewhere. Do women have a right to eating facilities? Yeah, tough question - we just don't know.
Incidentally, don't email us about how this article is a good sign because it shows that "at least some people in the Muslim world support progress". The question is not whether, over the next two centuries, women in Saudi Arabia would be allowed to have university eating facilities. The question is how we deal - right now - with a violent wave of fanatics coming from a world in which they don't.
