Revisiting issues that I previously have written about is not something I do often, but I'm making an exception to return to the West's most beloved human rights cause: Banning the burqa.

I last wrote about pending legislation to ban burqas in Europe more than a year ago when France first proposed laws to make it illegal to wear the burqa in public. Proposed legislation is pending with a final vote set in September.

There is no argument that can persuade me that laws designed to bully women into abandoning their cultural traditions because it makes people uncomfortable are essential in a free society. If a woman chooses to wear the niqab who are we to pass judgment? Lawmakers who argue that banning the burqa is a blow against extremism are naïve and lazy. Band-Aid approaches to fighting extremism are rarely successful. It only serves to pander to the ignorance and unfounded fears of politicians' constituents.

Yet I have grown to hate the burqa. I hate the burqa because it serves no logical purpose in Western society. The intent of the clothing is to draw attention away from the woman, but in the West it only attracts unwanted attention. Recently a Glasgow man was sentenced to prison for attacking a burqa-clad Saudi woman on the street. He ripped away her niqab. The woman was a graduate student. She has since quit her studies and refuses to leave her apartment. To her the attack was an act of rape.

I was reminded of this attack the other day as I was sitting on a bench in Newcastle's Eldon Square. I noticed a Saudi family leaving a rented apartment to walk through the square to a nearby restaurant. It was evening and the pub crowd was out and about. The mother was dressed in a burqa with niqab and she was wearing sunglasses. I watched her skirt along the edge of the square to avoid some loud young men who obviously had plenty to drink. The boys mocked her a bit but left the family alone... [Read More]

I have a friend who lives under the constant pressure of her brothers conspiring  to cheat her out of her rightful inheritance after her father died. I have another friend who has accumulated some wealth only to give in to pressure from her husband to finance her mother-in-law’s comfortable lifestyle. I have another who can’t study abroad because her mother emotionally blackmails her into believing the mother can’t survive without her adult daughter next to her every day.

These women are Saudis and all suffer from the same affliction: They are weak in the matters of family.

Many Saudi women from birth are trained to put their personal aspirations aside to serve their families. Their opinions, wants and needs are often ignored for the greater good of the family. There’s an aspect of servitude, but to be more accurate many Saudi girls I know are placed in a lifetime role of caregiver. They provide the emotional support for their sisters, brothers and parents. The men of the family readily acknowledge that the women are the glue that keeps the familial bond strong.

The warmth of the family’s embrace is strongly desired by all Saudi women, but in all too many cases that embrace never loosens. Rather, it becomes restrictive and suffocating to the point that unmarried Saudi women are still living at home well into their 30s. Perhaps worse, they have traded one gilded cage for another by marrying men who see her as a source of income and their concubine. The reality is that the caregiving role that Saudi women play is entrenched in Saudi families so deeply that it’s difficult for parents and brothers to willingly let go of their daughters and sisters.

And if these girls are permitted to live independent lives it’s often an illusion. There are brothers who insist their sisters pay their unpaid bills and act as arbitrator in family disputes. There are fathers who demand half... [Read More]

The landmark healthcare reform legislation passed by the U.S. Congress on Sunday promises to be the beginning of further reforms in the healthcare industry that guarantees that an additional 32 million Americans will receive affordable medical care by 2019 regardless of their income.

The Democrats, however, continue to be hammered for this “un-American”
and “socialist” approach to healthcare. It’s ludicrous to suggest for even a moment that legislation designed to guarantee all Americans health coverage under government supervision is the road to socialism.

Clearly the existing free-enterprise system in which health insurance companies have complete control is not working. Yet many Americans rather see their neighbors suffer than have the government put in place a sensible and equitable program.

Most Europeans, who enjoy the benefits of nationalized healthcare and view it as their right, look at these overwrought, emotional arguments against government-supervised healthcare with disbelief.

Although criticism of Saudi Arabia’s “backwardness” from certain quarters is loud and persistent, the Kingdom has a distinct edge over the United States: Mandated healthcare for all residents.

And by residents, I just don’t mean Saudis, but expatriate workers that number at least 6 million.

Although we don’t call it nationalized or socialized healthcare, the Saudi Ministry of Health, and to a lesser extent the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, the Ministry of Interior and the National Guard provide primary healthcare at about 2,000 medical facilities throughout the country. In addition, preventive care and
rehabilitation also is provided.

Consider this: A Saudi living below the poverty level and suffering from terminal cancer will receive around the clock care no matter what stage of the illness. If the patient lives in Jeddah but needs treatment in Riyadh, not only is there a bed available to him, ... [Read More]

There’s nothing like a little money to help put aside those nagging issues of principles, honor and just doing the right thing.

No, I’m sorry, it’s not a little money, but $26.7 million (SAR100 million) that eases one’s conscience. I’m referring to the Rotana Media Group that just inked a deal that gives News Corp., which owns the Muslim-hating, Saudi-bashing Fox News, a 10 percent stake in the Saudi company. The deal apparently leaves the door open for News Corp. to purchase another 10 percent of Rotana.

The agreement looks to give Rotana, a part of the conglomerate Kingdom Holding Company, a 30 percent market share in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Rotana’s regional reach will exceed the Dubai-based and Saudi-owned MBC.

News Corp. is run by Australian Rupert Murdoch, who has allowed his Fox News to run amok on cable TV with the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, a pair of conservatives who use the word “Muslim” as an epithet.

Saudi Arabia has spent considerable energy since 9/11 attempting to correct the stereotypes and outright lies about Islam, but whatever campaigns Saudis lead takes a backseat to the Fox propaganda machine.

Shortly after the Ft. Hood attacks that left 12 US soldiers and one civilian dead at the hands of a Muslim, Fox trotted out Michelle Malkin to give her two cents about the motives behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Malkin, who wrote a book arguing that interning Japanese-Americans during World War II was just fine and mass internments should be brought back today, railed against “Muslim soldiers with an attitude” who are able to “infiltrate” the US military with “jihadi intentions.”

Another Fox News host suggested that all Muslim military personnel be treated as “potential threats.”

In 2006, Glenn Back demanded the US Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
For every interfaith dialogu... [Read More]

While I was in Jeddah last month I received a telephone call from a
young woman. She was timid, nervous, upset and desperate. She was a stranger, but her story touched me as it should touch all women.

This young woman had been attending medical school in Saudi Arabia and was in her fourth year when her father died. As her sole benefactor
her father had gone to great lengths to ensure that her tuition was
paid. He saved his money from the income of his job and apparently had several other sources of income from business acquaintances that
helped fund his daughter’s education. As customary, he spared her the
details of the source of her tuition so she could maintain her dignity
and focus on her studies.

When the father died, the daughter was left without parents or any
male family members. She no longer had the money to continue her
education and the medical school suspended her studies and asked to
leave campus. The Ministry of Higher Education turned down her
requests for a scholarship.

My initial reaction was that this was impossible. How could an
intelligent, well-spoken and committed Saudi woman be denied a medical degree in a country where there are so few Saudi physicians, let alone female doctors? The Saudi medical community recruits hundreds of foreign doctors to fill its ranks, but snubs a medical student in its own backyard. Surely, a private scholarship would be available to her.

But the crux of her problem soon revealed itself. After further
questioning, I discovered this desperate woman was not a Saudi
citizen. Her mother was Egyptian and her father originated from a
small African country. Yet everything about her -- from her demeanor,
language, tone and even manners -- shouted that she was Saudi. She was born in Saudi Arabia, and knows no other country and speaks no other language other than Saudi. Sh... [Read More]

What does Europe want from the Muslim community?

Well, you got me.

Like a party host who complains that her country cousins aren't mingling with the guests, and then seats them at the children's table at dinnertime, Switzerland, Denmark and France can't make up their mind about the so-called "Muslim problem."

The French want to ban the burka. Danish newspapers like to poke sticks at Muslims by publishing offensive cartoons. Now, 57 percent of Switzerland's voters have passed a referendum to ban the construction of minarets on mosques. Yet some European government officials complain, "Why don't Muslims assimilate into our society?"

And I ask: "Why would I want to?"

For all the phony talk about Muslim assimilation into white European Christian society, some EU countries do their best to marginalize us. In Switzerland, about 6 percent of the population is Muslim, a great many who are war refugees from Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I agree that it's likely that these first-generation Muslims have difficulty assimilating into European society, but that's true of first-generation immigrants in any country throughout history. Their offspring, however, are a different story. In 20 years time we'll see many second-generation Eastern European Muslims fit right into Swiss society. That is as long as the government resists the temptation to pass discriminatory laws against their right to worship and practice their cultural customs and traditions like everyone else.

There are two troubling aspects of the minaret ban. There is little of the Islamic extremist ideology found in Switzerland that would prompt such discrimination. And the country's constitution essentially prohibits anti-religious laws.

Unlike France and Denmark, there has been little talk of the "Islamification" of Switzerland. There are few burka-clad, dark-skinned Asian Muslim women walking the streets of Geneva and Zur... [Read More]