Saudi Authorities Denied Nigerian Muslim Women
the Right to Worship Unless…
CDHR’s Commentary: As portrayed in this article,
the Saudi male-dominated cultural and political mores and practices,
especially as they relate to women, are overstepping all borders of man-made
and divine laws, including denying women their God given right to fulfill their
religious obligations. One of Islam’s five pillars is the pilgrimage to Mecca
by all “able bodies” at least once in one’s lifetime, known as the Hajj. A
group of Nigerian women embarked on an expensive and long pilgrimage journey to
Saudi Arabia to perform one of their religiously commanded pillars, but were held hostage at the port of
their arrival in Saudi Arabia and deported back to Nigeria because they were
not chaperoned by male relatives as the Saudi system demands of all women, regardless
of their status within the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia is the only country on earth where women’s
movement, education, work, marriage and health are controlled by men under a
denigrating system of institutionalized male guardianship. This system is designed to render
women as perpetual minors, regardless of how educated, achieving, intelligent,
old or rich they may be. Even though this system is attributed to tradition and
religion, it is purely crafted and put in place by the Saudi authorities for
political and economic reasons. Now the Saudi autocratic and theocratic rulers
are enforcing their contempt for women on other societies worldwide.
By insisting on its bigoted policies against women, the
Saudi regime is contributing to the divisiveness and instability of the
country. Millions of educated and aspiring Saudi women are challenging the
Saudi regime and its zealous religious establishment’s primordial policies and
practices against gender equality. Women are demanding full citizenship
including full employment, equality in the state’s segregated educational
system, voting, driving and removal of the denigrating male guardian system,
which the Saudi authorities used to deny the Nigerian Muslim women the right to
perform Hajj, pilgrimage.
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