American Bedu

Women’s names are secret and it would be very shameful for a Saudi man if his mother’s name was publicly known, or worse, those of his sisters. For women it is customary to be nicknamed ”umm so-and so” or ”daughter of…”

Two years ago there  the hashtag ”IsmOmi” (my mother’s name) was created by those Saudis who are proud of their mothers and have no problem letting the world know their names.

Saudi tweeters see this as a way to express their love and gratitude for their mothers. It is also considered a step toward empowering Saudi women. Saudi tweeter Khalid Al-Ahmed believes the hashtag is a healthy way to break down some of the social customs that he sees have unnecessarily burdened Saudi society for decades.
”Women’s names have been the obsession of Saudi men forever. They see this as something they must protect and keep unrevealed. It is shameful for them if people know the name of their mother, sister or wife,” he said. “A Saudi man would blackmail another if he knew his mother’s name,” he added.

Saudi women are frustrated by this attitude and Saudi men should be more reasonable, according to a tweet by Abeer Hamdoun. “Refraining from mentioning your mother’s name is the first step toward undermining Saudi women’s rights. The younger generation are too shy to say their mother’s names for no reason at all,” she said.
“Our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) was not shy of his mother’s name and King Abdulaziz used to call himself Akho Noura, which is Arabic for Noura’s brother,” she added. Ahmed is a 28-year-old man who changed his Twitter name to “Omima’s son” to celebrate the love and pride of his mother.
“I don’t see anything wrong with saying my mother’s name to random people. It’s like saying any other name,” he tweeted. “Without my mom I wouldn’t be here. Her name is Omima, and you bet I’m proud to mention it,” he added.

In this Saudi tv show the interviewer asks men the name of their mother. (The name of their sister would be too dangerous?) You will hear ”Wish ism Umm?/ Wish ism  Al Walda?”.  A few men do gve the name of ther mother, the old men all do, but their mother will probably be dead. Some men answer something like ”I’m not crazy to do so” or they will say ”umm Abdullah”, or Umm Mohammed”.

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As most of the Arabian peninsula was covered by a sea during the time of the dinosaurs there are no dinosaur fossils. The very few fossilized fragments which were found were of a maritime origin. Until now. A few bones of both a massive, Apatosaurus-like herbivore, and a tyrannosaur-like predator have been found in Saudi Arabia’s north-west of the red sea coast. The 72 million year old bones are considered significant because they constitute the first taxonomically identifiable dinosaur material described from the Arabian Peninsula.

“This discovery is important not only because of where the remains were found, but also because of the fact that we can actually identify them,” said Benjamin Kear of Sweden’s Uppsala University, who is the lead author a paper on the find published in the journal PLOS One.

“Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the Arabian Peninsula, with only a handful of highly fragmented bones documented this far. Indeed, these are the first taxonomically recognizable dinosaurs reported from the Arabian Peninsula,” Kear said.

Read more:

PlosOne

Nature World News

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From Al Arabiya:
Saudi women seeking to challenge a de facto ban on driving should realize that this could affect their ovaries and pelvises, Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan, a judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association, told Saudi news website sabq.org.

Driving “could have a reverse physiological impact. Physiological science and functional medicine studied this side [and found] that it automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis. This is why we find for women who continuously drive cars their children are born with clinical disorders of varying degrees,” Sheikh al-Luhaydan said.

This fascinating result of the various ”scientific studies” (wholly unknown in the rest of the world) is a new excellent reason to deny women the right to drive cars.

Meanwhile Saudi women are planning more action on October the 26th to fight for the right to drive their own cars.

More than 11,000 women have signed the oct26driving.com declaration which says: “Since there are no clear justifications for the state to ban adult, capable women from driving, we call for enabling women to have driving tests and for issuing licenses for those who pass.”

Sheikh al-Luhaydan urged these women to consider “the mind before the heart and emotion and look at this issue with a realistic eye. The result of this is bad and they should wait and consider the negativities,” he said.

The new head of the Haia, the religious police, Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh has recently come out with the comment that: ”Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving is not mandated by any text in Sharia, the Islamic legal code which forms the basis for most Saudi law”.

Edit:

This juicy bit of Saudi news has gone viral, and even news programs like The Young Turks have been covering it:

AA

read more:

Al arabiya

Women’s new campaign to drive

Forbidding women driving not part of Sharia

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