Saudi supermarkets snub fatwa against women cashiers

[Cityboy]

Sat Nov 6,

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - Women cashiers were at work in several Jeddah supermarkets on Saturday as their employer ignored a fatwa by the country's highest religious authority forbidding female checkout clerks.


The popular Marhaba chain kept the women on the job despite the six-day-old ruling signed by Grand Mufti Sheikh al-Sheikh and six other senior religious scholars which contradicted a key government policy to create jobs for women.

A Marhaba official said the women would keep working until they received an order from the labour ministry to stop the practice, only begun in the past three months after the ministry said it was permitted.

"We will continue to let the women do their jobs. We have not received any official letter from the ministry of labour to stop the practice," he said on condition of anonymity.

"We have more than 25 women working now in all our branches" he said.

It was unclear whether Panda, another supermarket chain pioneering the use of female checkout cashiers, had its women working Saturday.

On Sunday the the official fatwa-issuing body under the Council of Senior Scholars, the top Saudi Islamic authority, ruled that the cashier jobs were not permissible because they resulted in the women mixing with unrelated men.

Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict form of Islam places severe restrictions on women in public life, requiring them to stay separated from unrelated men and to only travel with the permission of a male guardian, and forbidding them from driving cars.

"It is not permissible for a woman to work in a place where they mix with men," the fatwa said.

"It is necessary to keep away from places where men congregate. Women should look for decent work that does not make it possible for them to attract men or be attracted by men."

The fatwa, which can be cited in the courts under Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative Islamic sharia-based legal system, posed a direct challenge to a key government policy of creating jobs for women.

Seeking to address both a 28.4 percent unemployment rate for women in 2009 and create jobs for women whose families have no other means of support, early this year the labour ministry quietly gave permission to supermarket chains and clothing stores to try using female cashiers.

The first stores to start were all in Jeddah, the country's most progressive city where offices are increasingly open about allowing male and female employees to work side by side.

On Wednesday, the labour ministry told Saudi newspapers it had no reaction yet to the fatwa because they had not yet received it through official channels.

Saudi supermarkets snub fatwa against women cashiers - Yahoo! Canada News

Saudi fatwa against women cashiers sparks outrage - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Fatwa against women cashiers sparks outrage | DAWN.COM

 

[Al Bhatti]

Wanted: Phoenix to rescue us from backwardness

By KHALAF AL-HARBI | OKAZ

Published: Nov 5, 2010 23:31

In the name of 300 million Arabs, I appeal to the Chilean people to lend us their Phoenix capsule that was made to rescue those miners trapped underground.

We need it to lift us from the mines of backwardness, darkness, authoritarianism, bureaucracy, nepotism, cheating, hypocrisy, corruption and poverty. We spend our lives trapped underground!

• On Sept. 2, 2009, Okaz newspaper published a report quoting the director of a water desalination station Muhammad Farhan as saying that pollution emitted by the station would stop by the end of the year. He said this about 10 months ago. He also said a SR280 million contract was signed to put an end to the problem. Could we manufacture a capsule to extract the contract from his drawer, because the pollution is still continuing and the fumes have affected local residents!

• The Qur'an memorization school in Damad has refused to register six-year-old student Abdul Aziz Al-Shukani despite the availability of places usually reserved for the relatives of the principal and the sons of the teachers. Talking to Okaz, the principal denied accusations that he had turned the school into a family facility. I am, however, ready to provide him with the names of the enrolled students and details of their relationship to him and other teachers.

• There is no society in the world where obstacles are put in front of the woman under the pretext of protecting her privacy! At the same time, there is no society in the world, whether Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist, where men sell lingerie except in our society! We need the Phoenix capsule to save us from the contradictions of privacy.

• A teacher discovered that he had been appointed in a mechanic job at a workshop about 10 years ago. He was still “working” in the workshop. All the Labor Office did was give him a letter to give to the workshop, even though he does not know its address. The Labor Ministry needs the Chilean capsule to unmask the true extent of unemployment in the Kingdom.

• Last Wednesday, six tourist class travelers on Saudia flight 1060 to Riyadh lost their seats and the Saudi reservation officer did not know how! When they protested loudly, they were offered free seats on the next flight. No capsule in the world can rescue Saudi Arabian Airlines.

• A customs officer said six months ago a company had won a contract to make them uniforms for the summer. He said the company took their measurements, but summer came and went and they never received their outfits. I told him that no capsule would give them warmth during the winter and advised him to wear animal fur.

• Sports coaches at King Abdulaziz University complained that they were dismissed from a championship in Spain in which their university was participating. The delegation consisted of 25 students and 50 administrators who had nothing to do with sports, except for two trainers! If the academics exploit official missions so they can go on holiday, what will the other half-educated people do? Here, we need a conscience capsule.

• Female students at King Abdulaziz University in Al-Sulaimaniyah district complain that the food served to them from the only restaurant at their hostel is bad. They are dreaming of the capsule that transported food to the miners.

• Fahd Al-Ghishaiyan is the first Saudi football player to play professionally in Europe. He was also the first Saudi player to accurately diagnose what was wrong with sport in our country when he said: “We do not have professional players, but rather hypocrites and beggars.” Our sports society does not need a rescue capsule, but a police force to combat begging!

http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article181088.ece