Here is a photograph of an elegant Saudi woman, Dr. Salwa Al Hazza, in the familiar Muslim headscarf, or hijab. The burka is rarely worn outside Afghanistan, but the hijab is common.

Karen Wilson, who sent the above photo, writes:

The burka is a highly symbolic outfit in the West, the emblem of female oppression in Muslim societies. In fact, outside of Afghanistan it is rarely worn. I have visited most Muslim countries, except Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and I have seen fewer burkas there than I have seen in London. Most Muslim women wear no headscarf, a simple headscarf or in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states they wear the hijab. This garment covers the face but the eyes are seen. It’s not nearly as bad as it is made out to be in the West. The Arab women have beautiful eyes and they make them up in brilliant colours. The French cosmetic companies make special colours for them. Under the black cloak they dress beautifully, wear large amounts of jewellery and perfume and have super make up. Their faces are more vivid than Westerners, their large brown eyes more expressive. They communicate with their eyes. 

The hijab can be worn like a veil to obscure the face and the wearer can see out but others cannot see the wearer’s face. In my experience, it is the men who find this most disturbing. When they are trying to haggle with women in shops to sell them a handbag or pair of shoes, they become very disturbed as they can’t read the facial expressions of the customer and have difficulty knowing whether they are going to make a sale and if so at what price. They become so irritated they often just give up trying to persuade the customer to buy. They seem to become disorientated. 

Muslim women don’t regard the headscarf as such a big deal. It covers the hair on a bad hair day and flattens it on a good hair day. They wear it whilst in their own countries but abandon it as soon as they get on the plane to leave. For them the issues are driving and lack of exercise. They can’t go for walks or jog and as a result many have no interests except eating and shopping. They are becoming obese and unfit and hence unsuitable for bikinis. They are not interested in Western style feminism as they have got most of what they want without it. They are adept at manipulating the system to their advantage. Women in Saudi Arabia own most of the bank accounts, have the largest savings and own over 50% of property and businesses. They thus have control over much of the country’s finance.

John Esposito, an Islamic affairs professor at Georgetown University and a rare Western scholar who can write about Islam with a clear head, estimates that 70 percent of the savings in Saudi banks are owned by women. Time magazine last year pegged the value to be at about $11 billion. That ought to wake up those who feel Saudi women are under men’s thumb. In addition, a great deal of the real estate in Jeddah and Riyadh are owned by women, while 61 percent of Kingdom’s private businesses are owned by females.

 It’s perhaps that Saudi women have managed to work the system so well that the interest in women’s equal rights doesn’t rise to the level that activist organizations so desperately hope for. This is not to say that Saudi women do not want equal rights. To the contrary, but when women have worked so long and have become so adept to manipulating the Saudi system, the response often is, “Well, yes, but I have work to do.” This is the difference between East and West. Eastern women are adept at manipulating the system. Western women get manipulated by the system.

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