Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
I note that the woman who wrote this letter is exactly my age, a detail that for some reason moves me especially. The indignity and utter injustice of her predicament is so galling. But for an accident of birth--how lucky I am to have been born in America!--it could be me.
When we're done with the speech that says the obvious about the global resurgence of anti-Semitism, let's work on the speech that says the obvious about the treatment of women in the Islamic world. Why is no major Western leader giving that speech? Could this really seem unworthy of remark?
Dear,
I am 42 yr old Saudi female physician, divorced, and mother of three teenagers, and arrived back in Saudi Arabia on 3/2007, after obtaining higher medical training in the USA and working full time at a top private center. Since 3/2007, I never boarded a plane.
I wrote an article back in July 2009, using a cover up name and managed to remove travel ban obstruction opposed by my ex-husband after nearly two years. Then I applied for a replacement of lost passport in the fall of last year.
I also sent out several letters to the Ministry of Interior requesting a replacement passport without need of male guardian.There was no luck obviously, and response was "need male guardian, regardless of age, education, job title, or marital status."
Officials were nice enough to accept my teenage son as male guardian; things were okay till my Father who is retired, showed up and protested that he retains higher male guardian authority (I live with my Mother and mother's side brothers) and he declared that he has my lost passport -!- and simply does not want to issue a passport for me, although several of my father 's side bothers and sisters are abroad studying. I feel like a ball being thrown from one side to the other.
I cannot renew my medical license without attending conferences or seminars; also I am sending my son to college, supporting him financially and definitely want to be there for him step by step till he settles.
I am also financially supporting my mother and covering up for my kids' needs. This is outrageous: I am in charge of human lives, but not my own life. Jailed in simply because I am divorced from the person my father chose for me. In spite he is married now with new kids. My father who is in his late 60s, disliked by my other brothers for his outrageous interference in our lives, is holding this on me. And when my other brothers and family members tried to help, he wrote a letter with alot of nonsense wanting me to sign, and he may or may not grant me my passport.
Is there any way out?
Comments on this website, below, would be so appreciated.
There are a lot like me, but do not have the courage to express.
Gratefully,
Dr. Fadha Sultan
She says she would appreciate comments. Why don't we all leave a few words of support for her?
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
I can offer no practical advice, but I will mention the dear lady in my prayers.
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
I understand why the president and secretary of state might have to be sensitive to offending our few Muslim allies, but I don't understand why this issue has not been embraced by Hollywood or Congressmen. It's as though there is some fine set of rules of political correctness that places the offense of appearing anti-Muslim over the offense of appearing anti-woman. Or maybe it's that this particular criticism of Muslim culture has been ceded to conservatives and so no self-respecting Democrat can touch it. The "peace-talks" with the Taliban taking place in Afghanistan are equally frustrating.
I am so sorry for Dr. Sultan's situation. At the risk of being meddlesome and insensitive to the specifics, I would propose stepping up the family leverage. Does she have enough support from her brother and their wives to shut their father out of family gatherings and events. Can they gather the grandchildren apart from him? I can't imagine that families are so different that she has no personal leverage to bring to bear here. Family politics are the most powerful -- can she make a play?
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
I'll say a prayer as well.
Since she practiced in America, I wonder if the doctors she knows here could convince our embassy to apply a little pressure on the Saudi authorities. If enough of them badgered the embassy often enough, the officials might get annoyed enough to make Dr. Sultan a special case.
Jun '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
The only thing we, as Americans, can do is put pressure on our President, because our President has the leverage. Saudi Arabia is in a tough neighborhood, and needs American protection from Iran. Probably can't survive without it. And because the Saudi royals even need to buy security inside their own country, they can't very well cut off oil sales. If they lose their oil revenue, they lose all their power. That's our American leverage. We keep the royals alive in two ways. That ought to be worth something.
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
This is the usual problem described fairly well by Not Without My Daughter. It especially hits home for me because my own nuclear family consists of 3 "against" 1 (well, I do have the dog....), and all three of them are far more attractive, infinitely more likable, and exponentially more professionally accomplished than I am. The world benefits a lot more by their "liberation" than by my presence. So I am painfully aware of the price the non-Western world pays when 50% of the population is subjugated in this manner.
The alleged feminists in this country who are on the left should be pushing female freedom internationally as the only meaningful issue. Instead, we get phony nonsense like "comparable worth".
Why doesn't Michelle Obama join Mavis Leno, Camille Paglia, et al, instead of the campaign to ban potato chips and soda pop (the staples of my diet, along with ice cream)?
Of course, that doesn't bring in campaign money.
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
Why are you living on potato chips and soda pop, Duane? That can't be good for you. The left has no right to monopolize vegetables, you know. Go eat something nourishing before your teeth fall out and you develop scurvy.
At any event, I'm baffled by the lack of international outrage when it comes to the denial of the most fundamental rights to women. This one is black and white, open and shut, no moral ambiguity, the easiest call in the world. It's not just Saudi culture, it's Saudi law. As disgusting as Apartheid, as wrong as Jim Crow. Where is the leader delivering the speech on behalf of these women?
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
Well, being a conservative, wine, women, song, and banking fraud are pretty much disallowed; I have to go embrace available vices. We preach diversity here at Ricochet, so there needs to be at least one Dissipated Phood Philistine.
Recall that pizza is nature's most nearly perfect food, embodying all of the food groups- breads, fruit (tomato), dairy, protein/meat, and vegetables. Of course, for veggies, there are always onion rings. But the soda is all "diet", so any ill health flows from aspartame toxicity rather than sugar, and my teeth more or less survive.
(Topic Swivel) Just as I will embrace the desperate need for decarbonization when the global warming nazis stop flying their private jets to Bali conferences on how to get Joe Plumber to junk his pick-up truck, I will believe that the so-called feminists (NOW, EMILY's List, etc.) actually care about women's rights when they show just once that they care an undried cowpie's worth about legalized female slavery all over the world. Few topics raise my blood pressure like this one.
What kind of moron wants to be with a piece of putty with a chastity belt on her brain?
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
In my foggy memory, I remember a lot more outrage about the way the Islamic world treats women (and homosexuals, too) way, way back in 1991, around the time of the first Gulf War. Back then, if my memory is correct, we heard a lot about the backward, uncivilized social codes of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Maybe because at the time, they were our allies. And if there's one thing the media hate, it's our allies.
Now, nine years after 9/11, we rarely hear about how Hamas treats homosexuals, or how women in orthodox Muslim countries are treated, unless one is about to be actually beheaded. We hear more -- a lot more -- about France banning the burqa. Because these days, those countries are our enemies. And if there's one thing the media love, it's our enemies.
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
Yet it's because it's culture that so many keep silent. Multiculturalism is an attitude, rather than a definite viewpoint. But it asserts, if vaguely, that all cultures are equal (except for mine, which sucks) and that a society's right of self-determination is absolute (so long as it doesn't step on my yard).
It is exactly like the woman I mentioned in another thread who told me she had no right to criticize her own sister. It's much like the logic behind abortion, a view of self-determination so radical that the life of another has no bearing on one's decision.
The safety of apathy appeals to many.
May '10
Re: Saudi Physician, A Letter: She'd Appreciate Your Comments
Dear Dr. Sultan, I am appalled to read of the situation you now find yourself in.
Perhaps you know a sympathetic doctor who can have your father declaired as mentally incapacitated due to age, and his behaviour towards you and your brothers; hence unable to exercise guardianshop over you, and have that replaced by one of your brothers.
Can't believe I am suggesting a work around like this, the whole thing is so utterly evil and oppressive.