"Girls to take part in school sports
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabian girls will be allowed to play sports in private schools for the first time, according to a decision announced on Saturday, the latest in a series of incremental changes aimed at slowly increasing women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s official press agency, SPA, reported that private girls’ schools are now allowed to hold sports activities in accordance with the rules of Shariah, or Islamic law. Students must adhere to ‘‘decent dress’’ codes, the Education Ministry said (AP)."
Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we? That's after the Olympics.
"Female Muslim Olympians try to inspire, bring more progress" by Shira Springer | Globe Staff, August 09, 2012
LONDON — The first Saudi Arabian woman to run track at the Games....
For female athletes from countries that strictly follow Islamic law, progress is slow, complicated, and, it seems, carefully managed. Olympians like Attar simultaneously offer hope of social change through sports and highlight the great distance left to cover in women’s rights.
This year, for the first time in Olympic history, every national delegation sent female athletes to compete, including previous holdouts Qatar, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia.
The three Muslim countries were the only national delegations without women entered in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Many of the female representatives from Arab nations come from countries with religious and cultural restrictions placed on women that discourage or outright ban sports participation.
While female athletes from those nations have found cheering crowds and international attention in London, they often face criticism at home for having athletic ambitions and train under difficult conditions.
By competing on the world’s biggest sports stage, female Olympians from across the Arab world hope to open minds and inspire girls and women back home.
“This means a lot for me and my country,” said sprinter Tahmina Kohistani of Afghanistan. “There were a lot of people who were trying to stop me from training, but I am here. I know having a medal at the Olympics is very difficult, but I am here to open a new way for the women of Afghanistan because in my society there is no sport for females.”
Kohistani added: “I think there is a lot of girls who are praying for me. When I go back home, I’m going to tell all the girls to come and follow me.”
In Saudi Arabia, women are effectively banned from sports because they lack the facilities and opportunities to practice and compete, according to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based organization that investigates human rights abuses. The oil-rich kingdom governed by Islamic law prohibits women from driving and requires women to receive permission from a male guardian to work, travel, study, marry, and access certain medical care. Saudi Arabia did not commit to sending women to the London Olympics until mid-July, about two weeks before the Games started....
Neither Attar nor Shahrkhani qualified for the Olympics, but they received special invitations from the International Olympic Committee designed to encourage wider participation. Attar, born and raised in California, was an average distance runner for Pepperdine University when her invitation came. She has a Saudi father and holds dual US-Saudi citizenship. Shahrkhani was an inexperienced blue belt from a judo-practicing family in Mecca when she received an Olympic berth. She learned the sport from her father.
Before Shahrkhani became the first female Saudi to compete in Olympics, there were intense negotiations between the International Judo Federation and Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee about what type of head covering she could wear....
Overall, women’s athletics has come a long way from the 1996 Atlanta Games, when 26 countries did not enter women....
Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul Razak thought it was cool to share the track with champion US sprinter Allyson Felix. In short-sleeved T-shirt and shorts, not bound by the same strict dress code as other Arab women, Abdul Razak placed second in her 100-meter preliminary heat and advanced to the next round. In Round 1, she found herself racing Felix. Although Felix won the heat and Abdul Razak finished last, the Baghdad-based sprinter crossed the line in a respectable personal best of 11.81 seconds. She looked as though she belonged in the race and talked excitedly, emotionally about the experience.
“I’m really happy to be in the Olympics with such world-renowned people,” said Abdul Razak through a translator. “This will benefit the people of the Middle East.”
She hopes that London is the start of something much bigger, that better resources for training and better results will come in the future.
After AmeriKan liberation and all?
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Related: Saudi king OK’s women on council
But they still have to wear the veil.
IKEA’s Saudi problem
Ikea used forced labor in ’80s, probe says
Nothing wrong with that.
"EXPLOSION IN RIYADH -- At least 10 people died when a fuel truck crashed into a flyover in the Saudi capital Riyadh Thursday, triggering a blast that caused a building to collapse. TV reported that at least 50 people were hurt (Boston Globe November 2 2012)."
"Unemployment, booming population spur hidden poverty in Saudi Arabia" by Kevin Sullivan | Washington Post, December 04, 2012
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A few miles from the blinged-out shopping malls of Saudi Arabia’s capital, Souad al-Shamir lives in a concrete house on a trash-strewn alley, with no job, no money, five children under 14, and an unemployed husband who is laid up with chronic heart problems.
‘‘We are at the bottom,’’ she said, sobbing behind a black veil that left only her eyes visible. ‘‘My kids are crying and I can’t provide for them.’’
Yeah, the veil is the problem.
Millions of Saudis live in poverty, struggling on the fringes of one of the world’s most powerful economies, where job growth and welfare programs have failed to keep pace with a booming population that has soared from 6 million in 1970 to 28 million today.
Under King Abdullah, the Saudi government has spent billions to help the growing numbers of poor people, estimated to be as much as a quarter of the native Saudi population.
But critics complain that those programs are inadequate, and that some royals seem more concerned with their wealth and the country’s image than with helping the needy. Last year, for example, three young Saudi video bloggers were arrested and jailed for two weeks after they produced an online video about poverty in Saudi Arabia.
Not very different than "royals" in any country.
‘‘The state hides the poor very well,’’ said Rosie Bsheer, a Saudi scholar who has written extensively on development and poverty. ‘‘The elite don’t see the suffering of the poor. People are hungry.’’
The Saudi government discloses little official data about its poorest citizens. But press reports and private estimates suggest that between 2 million and 4 million of the country’s native Saudis live on less than about $530 a month — about $17 a day — which analysts generally consider the poverty line in Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom has a two-tiered economy made up of about 16 million Saudis, with most of the rest of the population consisting of foreign workers.
That's where your headed if immigration reform goes through.
The poverty rate among Saudis continues to rise as youth unemployment skyrockets. More than two-thirds of Saudis are under 30, and nearly three-quarters of all unemployed Saudis are in their 20s, according to government statistics.
In just seven decades as a nation, Saudi Arabia has grown from an impoverished backwater of desert nomads to an economic powerhouse with an oil industry that brought in $300 billion last year.
Forbes magazine estimates King Abdullah’s personal fortune at $18 billion, making him the world’s third-richest royal, behind the rulers of Thailand and Brunei.
He has spent government funds freely on high-profile projects, most recently a nearly $70 billion plan to build four gleaming new ‘‘economic cities,’’ where government literature says ‘‘up to five million residents will live, work and play.’’
The king last year also announced plans to spend $37 billion on housing, wage increases, unemployment benefits, and other programs, which was widely seen as an effort to placate middle-class Saudis and head off any Arab Spring-style discontent. Abdullah and many of the royals are also famous for their extensive charitable giving.
For many years, image-conscious Saudi officials denied the existence of Saudi poverty. It was a taboo subject avoided by state-run media until 2002, when Abdullah, then the crown prince, visited a Riyadh slum. News coverage was the first time many Saudis saw poverty in their country.
Prince Sultan bin Salman, a son of Crown Prince Salman, said in an interview that the government has acknowledged the existence of poverty and is working to ‘‘meet its obligations to its own people.’’
Prince Sultan said the Saudi government was ‘‘three to five years’’ away from dramatically reducing poverty through economic development, micro-lending, job training, and creation of new jobs for the poor.
The Saudi government spends several billion dollars each year to provide free education and health care to all citizens, as well as a variety of social welfare programs — even free burials. The government also provides pensions, monthly benefits, and payments for food and utility bills to the poor, elderly, disabled, orphans, and workers who are injured on the job.
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