Sanuk wrote:
Are women allowed to leave Saudi Arabia? A woman would find it very difficult to leave on her own. They have a "Wilaya System" where women need the consent of a guardian to do anything. The guardian is a male (father, husband, brother) who has to give their approval for the woman to get an education, apply for healthcare, travel etc. If a guardian approved her to go and she left, he would open himself up to punishment. They recently relaxed it a bit and now in some cities, women can go to school and get healthcare without her guardian approval but those changes will be slow.
Saudi Arabia probably has other laws that should be discussed, but this one doesn't seem like a reason we should not work with them.
The problem comes when you call out some countries for human rights abuses and then align closely with Saudi Arabia when they are doing the same or worse. The Global Gender Gap in 2016 ranked the Saudis 141st out of 144 countries in terms of women's rights with only Yemen, Pakistan and Syria scoring slightly worse (
the fact that they are all Muslim is a co-incidence).
I think the bigger issue in terms of the Saudis is how they export terrorism. They fund madrassas around the world, exporting their Wahhabism and they, along with Pakistan (and Egypt) are the real problems in the world. And, the U.S is an ally of each and provides military aid to both Egypt and Pakistan (the military aid was reduced to Pakistan).
Couple of points. First, the comparison in this thread was strictly about North Korea and Saudi Arabia; it is entirely possible to call out North Korea for their abuses which are far, far greater than anything Saudi Arabia does. It's not even close.
Secondly, Saudi Arabia does not "export terrorism." Wahhabism does not equal violent jihadism. Yes, there are a number of Wahhabists that have turned to terrorism, but it's a stretch to essentially say that exporting Wahhabism is exporting terrorism. That's a leap not borne out by facts. Here's a good article that explains why focusing on Wahhabism is a problem:
https://www.nytimes.com/...m-for-terrorism.html
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