{"id":19820,"date":"2012-05-28T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T06:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=19820"},"modified":"2012-05-28T12:57:27","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T08:57:27","slug":"confrontation-in-a-riyadh-mall-nail-polish-v-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/confrontation-in-a-riyadh-mall-nail-polish-v-virtue\/","title":{"rendered":"Confrontation in a Riyadh Mall: Nail Polish v ‘Virtue’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last Tuesday a Saudi woman in Riyadh was followed at a major mall by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV).<\/p>\n

See the video here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They demanded that she leave the mall because she had nail polish on. She in turn refused and started videotaping the incident on her cell phone and informed the CPVPV member that she\u2019s also uploading it to social media. Then she called the police and in the second video<\/a>\u00a0you can see three police officers trying to calm the situation and hear her tell them that she\u2019s afraid to leave the mall because the CPVPV\u00a0might follow her in the car and purposely cause a car accident.<\/p>\n

Before I go any further, I\u2019m going to give the CPVPV\u00a0statement<\/a> to news organizations and a CPVPV sympathizer\u2019s witness statement:<\/p>\n

Informed sources confirmed to Sabq\u00a0that the incident occurred last Tuesday\u00a0evening, indicating that the Commission\u2019s headquarters are in the process of raising and reporting the issue to higher authorities, asking them to take necessary action\u00a0against\u00a0the girl according to the\u00a0rules and regulations in regards to\u00a0her videotaping and disseminating videos of members of the commission during their official\u00a0business on internet sites. The sources also informed Sabq that the security authorities used the mall\u2019s security cameras to see the merits of the case, especially after identifying the girl through the phone number on which she called the police accusing members of the commission of\u00a0harassing her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The witness statement<\/a> was made\u00a0by a Talal\u00a0Al Gharmoul\u00a0who claims to have been there and tweeted:<\/p>\n

By God, I stood by and witnessed\u00a0the incident, the woman does not have an atom of modesty. Her face was only covered by a transparent veil over her mouth. She also had a lot of make-up on. In addition to her wearing an abaya accentuating\u00a0her waist, very similar to a dress. She had her mobile\u2019s earphones in and she was reeling and swaying in front of the men. The CPVPV\u00a0advised her politely and respectfully. Suddenly she raged against them and started screaming until everyone heard her cries. What was of the CPVPV\u00a0men only to act leniently while she held up her cell phone. Then she sat beneath the escalators with her mobile held up and her earphones in and continued to scream at the men. She had her legs crossed with one foot swaying left and right in a shameful way. The CPVPV\u00a0men stood about 4 meters away out of modesty. The CPVPV men insisted on her leaving the mall politely and respectfully while they faced her insults and profanity such as her saying \u201cDo I look like I\u2019m naked to you?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Twitter many insist that it was not only her nail polish that upset the CPVPV\u00a0and that she was behaving immodestly\u00a0and dressed suspiciously. However if we go to the video, at the beginning she asks the CPVPV sheikh is it because of the nail polish and he doesn\u2019t deny it. Then later when the police arrive the sheikh\u00a0claims that\u00a0she wiped the nail polish off and she raises her hand and says no that she didn\u2019t. And he never says anything about her having too much make-up on. At the beginning he says\u00a0that she\u00a0has\u00a0no right to uncover\u00a0her face and instructs her to\u00a0dress like her \u201csisters\u201d\u00a0pointing at women with their faces covered. In the second video after the police arrive, he says\u00a0that he\u00a0also objects to her lipstick.<\/p>\n

Another issue that many harp on is that she shouldn\u2019t have taped and disseminated a video of government employees doing their job. And this one is such a double standard argument because it never came up when the minister\u00a0of agriculture was talking to a citizen dismissively or when the minister of civil service was talking to job applicants or when the Saudi ambassador\u00a0to Egypt spoke disrespectfully to a woman. In all of these\u00a0cases the person taking the video was hailed as a hero.<\/p>\n

And the whole\u00a0thing about the sheikh being lenient and polite is shown\u00a0on the video to be untrue. From the very beginning\u00a0he disrespectfully shouts at her \u201cYalla, yalla get out of the mall, yalla out!\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally the CPVPV\u00a0are portrayed\u00a0as sacred and the embodiment of\u00a0how Islam was at the time of the Prophet (PBUH). However everything I\u2019ve ever read points otherwise. The way a CPVPV sheikh struts around malls with a fancy cloak on his shoulders and two subordinates flanking him enjoying the atmosphere<\/a> of fear<\/a> their entrance<\/a> causes and\u00a0sometimes going as far as terrorizing<\/a>\u00a0people is not the way I\u2019ve read that the Prophet behaved. For example just a couple of weeks ago I wanted to leave a restaurant during prayer time. I simply needed to exit the restaurant but the management refused out of fear\u00a0of the CPVPV\u00a0and the manager who was obviously traumatized started shouting that he would be called an animal and spend another night in jail for opening the door to just let me out during prayer time.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile\u00a0if you actually go back to religious and historical texts you find that the Prophet (PBUH)\u00a0was known for his humility, quiet demeanor and wearing simple and humble clothing. And\u00a0ironically\u00a0the first head of anything similar to\u00a0the CPVPV\u00a0was not a man but a woman called Layla daughter of Abdullah Al Qurashi\u00a0and known by Al-Shifa.<\/p>\n

In a hadeeth\u00a0about the Prophet (PBUH) towards the end of his life, he was with another man as a beautiful woman came towards them to ask the Prophet a question. The Prophet\u2019s companion obviously liked the way the woman looked because he was staring at her. The Prophet did not harass the woman or demand that she cover her face or leave the premises as did the CPVPV sheikh last Tuesday. He simply turned his companion\u2019s face away.<\/p>\n

Here I\u2019m going to put the actual\u00a0hadeeths\u00a0I was referring to above and their sources so that people don\u2019t start accusing me of lying since Saudis are rarely exposed to hadeeths\u00a0that prove that many women at the time of the Prophet were empowered and did not cover their faces.<\/p>\n

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??? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ???????<\/p>\n

??? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ????? ????? ???? ??? ????? ??? ??????? ??? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ???????? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ??? ???? ?????? ???? ?????? ?? ?????. ??? ??? ???? ???: (???? ?????? ???? ???????? ???? ??????? ?????? ?? ????? ???????? ??????: ?? ???? ??????: ??????? ?????: ??? ????? ??? ??? ???? ????? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ????)<\/p>\n

??? ?? ???????? ? 3? ? 290 \u00a0???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ??? ?????? ???.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EMAN AL NAFJAN: The video’s gone viral but what’s the real meaning of the ‘Battle of the Riyadh Mall’? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":19831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,173,90,482,10,5],"tags":[91,18275],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}