{"id":23139,"date":"2012-11-02T11:26:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T07:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=23139"},"modified":"2012-11-02T11:27:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T07:27:07","slug":"counter-intuitive-saudi-women-welcome-id-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/counter-intuitive-saudi-women-welcome-id-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Counter-Intuitive: Saudi Women Welcome ID Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The issue of national ID cards is one that sets American conservatives\u2019 and libertarians\u2019 teeth on edge. For Saudi women, though, it can be a liberation. The Lebanese website \u201cNOW Lebanon\u201d runs an interesting piece on how progressive Saudi women are welcoming the introduction of compulsory ID cards, complete with photos.<\/p>\n

My face is my existence<\/a>
\nSaudi women and IDs<\/em>
\nHind Aleryani<\/p>\n

\u201cMy face is my human identity, the proof of my very existence. Wake up, women of the Arab Peninsula, rebel against being non-existent,\u201d Tweeted activist Lama al-Zahrani in support for the recent decision in Saudi Arabia making it compulsory for women to carry state IDs on them. \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d she told NOW, \u201cwhen the Shura Council issued the ruling, some judges and other sheikhs who are well-known in media circles were opposed to it.\u201d This is because an official ID would bear an actual photo of its female holder. However, Zahrani believes that the sheikhs\u2019 objection to the photo IDs is merely a pretext, the main problem being fear that women will break free of their male dominance.<\/p>\n

Nawwara, another Saudi activist, agreed, saying, \u201cThere are concerns regarding the autonomy of women, as they fear we will have more demands. Others, still, want to exploit women [who don\u2019t have state picture IDs]. For instance, a father may take a loan or buy and sell stocks in his daughter\u2019s name using the family [identification] card, and leave her to handle the repayment. In other cases, a brother may seize his sister\u2019s inheritance by bringing in a woman wearing a niqab, claiming that she is his sister and having her sell her share of inheritance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CROSSROADS ARABIA: An issue that usually raises the strongest opposition among liberals – ID Cards – has seen Saudi women take a divergent view <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":23140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,173,90,482,10,5],"tags":[5089,11413,18309,18275,4647,133,177],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23139"}],"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\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}