Saudi women get the most media attention in many parts of the world due to the special circumstances in which they live in the conservative kingdom. This focus intensified in the aftermath of 9/11 and the status of women featured among the topics getting sharper attention — along with the society's composition, schools' textbooks and the kingdom's efforts at reform.
While Western reports accused the Saudi kingdom's fabric of breeding the young people who carried out the attacks, intellectuals in Saudi Arabia refuted the charges. They, however, also acknowleged the need for introspection.
After 9/11, "armies of journalists and writers started arriving in the kingdom. They looked at the country from their perspective and way of thinking," Princess Fahda Bint Saud Bin Abdul Aziz said in a recent interview with Weekend Review in Jeddah.
Debunking notions
"The West entered through our open windows. In other words, Islam gives women their full rights. The Islamic laws exist, but they are not [fully] implemented. Therefore, they entered from this gap," said the articulate princess, referring to women's rights in Islam that are not implemented in the kingdom's laws.
Princess Fahda, daughter of King Saud Bin Abdul Aziz, the second monarch since the establishment of the Saudi Kingdom, acknowledged the hurdles in the implementation of the Islamic rules to "do God's will, and this is through justice and right" regardless of the gender.
"[Also], many laws issued in royal decrees are put in drawers because there is no follow-up [to them]. This is our problem," she added.
The princess, who was educated in the West, defended her country and rebuffed accusations that Saudi Arabia's curriculum breeds terrorists.
"Why is the West saying so now? Why are they not saying what happened in Afghanistan [in the Eighties]? The stance the US, Arab and Muslim countries took in facing the [former] Soviet Union; sending youths there was among the ways in which the seeds of terrorism were sown among the youth. Why are they not saying that those youth were not rehabilitated [back home]?" she asked.
"We have problems with education, but not the problem they are talking about. Our problem lies in ways of education [and ways of teaching'," the princess said.
Princess Fahda, who writes occasionally, has been criticised for some of the opinions she has expressed. "I wrote in one of my articles asking how I can be an anti-Semitic and I am a semit?"
While Princess Fahda quoted the report of one of the think tanks in the West talking about dividing the kingdom, she added: "Our shortfall is that we don't have an institution to study the Zionist movement. In the Arab countries, you don't find a single institution that studies the American thinking and history. While the Americans come to our country and study our societies, we implement their studies and resort to their studies to gather information. We must have institutions and research centres and depend on them to take decisions."
This, according to the princess, would give the new generation the opportunity to start thinking, take their own decisions and be creative.
The big picture
To the Saudi princess, separating women's issues from other social issues is "artificial".
"I look at it as a full package," she said. "Why should I isolate women [issues] like they do in the West? Why don't I have my own concept in the Arab world?"
Driving home her point, she continued: "We were proud of the family life we had, look what has happened to it now. Men are busy increasing their wealth, [many] women are busy being businesswomen, and the children are lost. Nobody is talking to them. It is not just about women's issues but the issues of the entire society."
The Arab society, of which the Saudi society is part, can gain sovereignty only if it stands on its feet, the princess said. And one way to achieve that is by boosting self-confidence and eliminating the "inherited inferiority complex" towards the West.
"We had started sending our sons and daughters to the West to pursue higher education in the Fifties, we have many experienced and experienced specialists but bring our advisers from abroad. They arrive with theories and try to implement them on us, they end in failure," she said. "We have to regain our balance."
From a daughter, with love
Princess Fahda studied in an elementary school in Riyadh until 1964 before moving to Beirut to pursue higher education. She completed her bachelor's degree in political sciences from Beirut College for Women (now the Lebanese American University) in 1974.
In 1976, she did her master's degree in political sciences from the American University of Beirut. She then studied in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, for one year.
The princess moved to Paris to study art and later received training on Islamic geometric patterns. She also participated in several exhibitions.
Today she heads Al Faisaliah Society, a women's organisation in Saudi Arabia. She has taken part in several conferences and has written on myriad political and social topics.
"My priorities are my son and family," she said. Among her top priorities is documenting her father's life.
Princess Fahda has compiled a book on her father's achievements and his role in establishing Saudi Arabia. One of his achievements was to establish schools for girls and encourage Saudis to educate their daughters. The princess has also organised a travelling exhibition documenting her father's life.
The exhibition and book include pictures, press clippings, political positions and royal decrees, among other documents.
"He travelled to Jerusalem twice, where he prayed in Al Aqsa and this is a fact that few people know about."
Her next goal is to establish an institution named after him so people remember his contribution to society.
"I took it as my responsibility to highlight his life and establish a website about him," she added.