'Suddenly, the young men stopped focusing on their food. A woman had entered the restaurant, alone. She was completely draped in a black abaya, her face covered by a black veil, her hair and ears covered by a black cloth pulled tight.
“Look at the batman,” Nader said derisively, snickering.
Enad pretended to toss his burning cigarette at the woman, who by now had been seated at a table. The glaring young men unnerved her, as though her parents had caught her doing something wrong.
“She is alone, without a man,” Enad said, explaining why they were disgusted, not just with her, but with her male relatives, too, wherever they were.
When a man joined her at the table —
someone they assumed was her husband — she removed her face veil, which fueled
Enad and Nader’s hostility. They continued to make mocking hand gestures and
comments until the couple changed tables. Even then, the woman was so flustered
she held the cloth self-consciously over her face throughout her meal.
“Thank God our women are at home,” Enad said.'
Excuse me if I thought the purpose of HIJAB (not niqab) is to set Muslimahs apart and protect them from harassment. So how is it ok for a "Muslim" man to harass a hijabed Muslimah?
I also want to call particular attention to the fact that Enad is smoking a cigarette, and that at the beginning of the story Nader is planning to ask a front desk girl for her phone number.
While the Saudi culture may be the base of their problems, the youth are the perpetrators, particularly the MALE youth.
I'm not an expert on the KSA or Saudi culture, but I can tell you from my point of view and from my interaction with Saudis I have yet to meet a bigger bunch of hypocrites.
Of course not all Saudis are bad, but the extent to which I have seen this or similar interactions play out in real life and before my own eyes leads me to believe that it is indicative of the population as a whole with the exception being just a few.
But who is more damned? The perpetrators of the evil, or those who allow the evil to go unchecked?
The people of Salah (a'lehi wa salaam) were damned as a whole for not stopping the actions of a handful of men.
This type of shit is what makes me sick of a lot of "Muslims." This is why I stand in the crowd and scream about the difference between Islam-as-culture and Islam-as-religion.
There is a difference, and the culture of the KSA is the biggest, ugliest, slimiest example of it.
Here is the article about the Saudi female side, although you may need to register to read it.
And here is the article about youth in Egypt.
