The Saudi husband vs the Finnish husband

This post is not to be taken too seriously it´s just a humorous comparison of the typical Saudi man and his Finnish counterpart as husbands..

The Saudi man is very romantic, sweet talk is what he knows.
The Finnish man doesn´t talk or kiss as the saying goes.

When the light bulbs need changing the Saudi man calls the Pakistani electrician to the rescue.
The Finnish man thinks, I might as well change them all to new.

If the wife is in a bad mood the Saudi man sends her to her mother's house for pampering,
while the Finnish man is stuck with the wife and her constant rambling.

When the Saudi man comes home he expects a hot meal.
The Finnish man only can only dream of such a great deal.

When the wife is not home the Saudi man orders home delivered shwarma because he doesn´t know how to cook.
The Finnish man creates a nice dinner by looking in the cooking book.

If the Saudi´s favorite football team looses he heads for the sheesha place to unwind.
The Finnish man is already in the bar watching ice hockey and getting drunk out of his mind.

If the team wins the Saudi man calls his friends to celebrate.
The Finnish man will stay in the bar until very late.

When the car needs the oils changed the Saudi man sends the driver to get it fixed.
The Finnish man asks his wife to do it and not to forget the beer and chips.

When their child is born the Saudi man goes to the souq to get his wife gold and diamonds.
The Finnish man heads to the bar to get drunk with his friends.

The Saudi husband leaves a trail of thobes and ghutras for the wife to launder,
while his Finnish counterpart wears the same socks for a week then throws them on the floor for the wife to pick up and murmur.

As soon as he comes home the Saudi man sits on the couch to watch football and wants his wife to bring tea,
while the Finnish man sits watching ice hockey and asks for a beer or three.

If the pipes need plumming the Saudi man calls an Indian plummer to do the job,
while the Finnish man pours some vodka down the drain to flush out the clog.

The Saudi husband shows his love by giving his wife chocolate and a foot massage,
The Finnish husband thinks it´s enough he took out the garbage.

Saudi women's long journey from back seat to front seat

 June 17^th is here and Saudi women will start driving their cars!

The last time Saudi women sat in the drivers seat was in a protest back in 1990.

I'm so excited about this and wish I could participate but this is a cause for the Saudi women to fight themselves. They don't need help from foreigners; they can do it their selves! And they need to show the men in this country that it can and will be done. Women in Saudi-Arabia will sit in the driver's seat. No more suffering from nasty drivers and running after taxis!

The main reason why Saudi women haven't driven so far is fear. Fear from the women's side that something awful will happen to them and fear of going against the law. But after Manal Alsherif's example women have become more confident and determined that now is the time to end the ban on women driving. Manal was not arrested for driving but they charged her for other reasons. Saudi men on the other hand fear giving their women rights equal to theirs. They are literally afraid of setting their women free.

But why are some Saudi men so afraid of their women? Because they have all reasons to! Saudi women are intelligent, creative, determined, educated and ambitious. If given equal opportunities in the labor market, the women might be better at some jobs that men now hold, or even become their bosses! Some insecure Saudi men could not handle that.

Why was there a ban in the first place? Women driving cars is not haram (forbidden). There is no proof of this from Quran or Hadith, it's actually quite the contrary. However the late sheikh Bin Baz said it is haram and even went and issued a fatwa(religious ruling) on it. On a side note, this is the same sheikh that issued a fatwa saying Saudi men studying abroad can marry a western woman with the intention of divorcing her when he leaves back to KSA. I think this says enough of this dudes respect for women and all humanity and how seriously his rulings should or should not be taken.

Saudi women have started driving as we speak. Some poor insecure Saudi men must be peeing their pants. They can no longer control the women's movements like before! Some loosers even started a campaign on Facebook calling for the beating of women who dare to start driving! What weaklings. Really I feel sorry for men like this who don't even have the balls to let their womenfolk drive cars. Seriously I even feel a bit sorry for them.. No wait-I don't!

Some spineless men try to desperately convince themselves that women driving is "not important" or "insignificant to women's rights" etc nonsense, saying that there are other much more important issues that need to be solved. Well here's a newsflash for you men out there: By saying women driving is such a small insignificant thing, you are actually making it a big deal. Because if you really thought it's so unimportant then why do you even care if women started driving? Since you think women driving in KSA is secondary to other causes why not solve it then and get it out of the way of the more important issues like the unjustice justice system, slavery mahrem system, or unemployment issues.

Can you answer that? I didn’t think so.

The Shoura council has dismissed the issue of women driving as irrelevant, despite that they have been approached with two petitions they refused to discuss the issue.

I wish all the brave Saudi women out there all the best of luck! Remember to buckle up and keep driving until a royal decree on the matter is ordered!

The Eternal Veil

Imagine a man that has never seen the face of his wife, ever. How about a son or a daughter that does not know how their mother looks like?

Such men and women still exist in Saudi-Arabia.

Recently in the news was the story of a Saudi man that had never seen his wife's face. After 10 years of marriage the man had become too curious to control his desire to look at the woman he married. He had made the mistake of trying to sneak a peak under the veil at night. The wife had however woken up and now wanted a divorce. She had "lost face" so to say.

The women that practise this custom of never revealing their faces come from a very small majority from certain tribes of the Najdi region.

What's most peculiar is that some of these women refuse to remove their veils even in the company of female relatives including their own daughters, sisters and mothers!
How does this effect the child?

This reminded me of how I found out about this custom through a patient of mine.
She was being treated for cancer and was on the ward with her two daughters who acted as her sitters (caretakers). The daughters were perhaps 7 and 15 years old, hard to say because of the veil.

I remember going about my normal routines measuring her blood pressure and asking her some questions and making a note to myself that I had not yet seen their faces. I wondered why the patient and daughters all sat in the room eating in their colorful dresses without abayas but they hadn't removed their niqabs (face veils).

I then requested for the patient to remove her veil for me to check her and made a gesture with my hand indicating she lift her niqab. She went ballistic!
She shouted "haram" at me and I could see I had upset her but I still didn't realize what I had done.
On the side note, some Saudi patients might be a "bit" demanding or like some nurses say "crazy" so I just thought of her behavior as the norm, smiled and left her.

Later on a female physician told me that these bedouins (she referred to them as nutters) never removed their veils, not even in presence of women. She said it has nothing to do with Islam, it's just their tribes that have these weird traditions of hiding the women's faces. The permanent veil imposed a huge problem as to how to treat this woman and it was driving the doctor crazy.

The patient had demanded an all female medical team and none of the male doctors were ever allowed to enter the room. The major issue was that she needed surgery and it didn't look like it would be possible to accomplish with her remaining veiled the whole time.
The veil would of course be in the way of surgical procedures and it would be an infection risk but the patient insisted she keep it on.

The next time I saw the patient I asked her why she always kept the veil on. At that time my arabic was still very basic and I was not able to understand her funny accent either. She kept repeating "lazim" which means "have to". So I never really understood what were the reasons behind it nor was I able to find out at what age they started veling the daughters. Did they actually veil babies?

The woman and her daughters seemed very comfortable with the veil and at night when I entered the room all three had them securely on. I wondered do the veils come off when they are in the bathroom or shower? It was as if it was a part of their bodies.

In the end the patient was discharged with her eternal veil and no procedures were done. She had refused life saving surgery rather than removed the veil.