Love Revolution
Consider the real agent of Middle East change
SOMETHING momentous happened in the Middle East last week and it didn’t involve war or fanaticism: Saudi Arabia let its citizens celebrate Valentine’s Day.
For years hard-line clerics there condemned V-Day (and happiness in general) as poisonous to Islam and a Western snare. Last year, the religious police were throttled back a bit, but this Feb. 14 no one interfered with the commerce of mushy cards and overpriced flowers.
This is the first truly telling sign that — against all odds — positive change may be possible in the Kingdom.
Yes, women are to be allowed to drive in the future. Public harassment by state organs has been reduced. Women can attend some sporting events. And the new crown prince has sponsored a (possibly hopeless) crackdown on corruption. But it’s a simple display of affection — of loving respect between two human beings — that could shift history.
To some American feminists, who see Valentine’s Day as anathema, this may sound repugnant and backward. But to enjoy the right to reject something, you first have to possess it. What might seem patriarchal elsewhere represents a significant breaking of chains.
Roses for Rana from Riyadh? Countless thorns remain, but this slight liberalization of human interactions in the most repressive society on earth is a glimmer of hope.
If the Middle East has a worthy future, a tomorrow in which life is decent or at least bearable, the women of the region may be the key.
In Iran — already far less-restrictive than Saudi Arabia — women have been at the fore of demonstrations for reform, and brave individuals, in public and on-line, have cast off their headscarves and chadors. This, too, may seem a minor thing, but it takes a great deal more courage to defy the Tehran regime and face imprisonment (and possible sanctioned rape or a staged “suicide”) than it does to march down a safe American street in a pink pussy cap.
A glaring weakness of Ameri- can feminism has been its exclusive nature: It’s been a movement for the already privileged. Our feminists have done much good and made important gains, but usually for their sisters from Harvard or Berkeley. Well-educated feminists don’t move to Appalachia to stand beside diabetic moms on food stamps (those “deplorables”). And the plight of foreign women largely goes ignored.
The #MeToo movement is long, long overdue (personally, I’d go full Medieval dungeon on men who inflict violence, sexual or otherwise, on women). Shame those bastards. But the fight has to be global and not parochial.
Meanwhile, women in the Middle East literally fight for their place in society. Women on the barricades? You bet! Female Kurdish fighters have been on the front lines, dying in combat to build a better world.
In Pakistan, courageous women and girls struggle for elementary human rights, for education and safety from abuse. In doing so, they risk death. Their valor should shame us. Yes, the Islamabad government sanctions terrorism against our troops — but it also tolerates quieter terror toward a hundredmillion women within its borders, disgracing its religion.
In Egypt — recipient of major US aid — proponents of women’s rights face violence, imprisonment, kangaroo courts and worse. But they won’t quit.
Can we name a single one of them?
As more bombs fall in Syria and terror ravages much of the Middle East, we’re missing what may be the most powerful shift in the region’s history: The slow recognition that women are as fully human as men.
Our own progress has been imperfect, but it’s real. In the lifetimes of many readers, American women have gone from being condemned to a handful of professions (teaching, nursing, secretarial work) to flying combat jets and leading multinational corporations. In historical terms, the velocity of change has been astonishing, even if it seemed slow to those living through it.
Our wealth today has many sources, but a primary factor behind our power and prosperity has been the transition of onehalf of our population to full employment rights. We doubled our human capital. The math of success ain’t hard.
The Middle East has a much longer way to go than did Western social orders, but the current examples of women’s valor in the region should inspire us. Men overthrow governments, but women change societies.
And if Saudi Arabia, the grotesque autocracy that gave birth to al Qaeda, can begin to change for the better, there really is hope. One day, humanity may look back in wonder that, for all the bombs that fell in the Middle East, the real agent of change was a Valentine’s card.