Another kind of warrior 1

Another Kind of Warrior

Saudi television personality Rania al-Baz was beaten unconscious. Then she did the unthinkable: she spoke out.

BYCHRISTOPHERDICKEY AND FAIZA AMBAH

IT WAS LATE SUKDAY ANT) the kids were asleep,” re-members Rania al-Baz, one of Saudi Arabia's fewwomen television presenters. She and her husband were arguing, as thcy often did. ^ttThe next thing I knew he was strangling me,” al-Baz told NEWSWEEK. “Then he threw me against the w'all and banged my head down on the floor. He told me to say the Sha-hadah [tlie Musi im praycr oflast rites] because I was going to die. I said it and fainted. The next thing I remember, I was in the hospital.”

For many battered wives, and not only in Saudi Arabia, the story might have ended there. But because al-Baz, 29, is a cclcbrity in a country where many women aren t allowed to show their faces in public, and because she was barely recog-nizable with her features frac-tured in 13 places, somebody took her picture. Morę surpris-ing still, the Saudi press pub-lished the gruesome image.

Then, in the fuli glare of international publicity, al-Baz spoke out for her rights as a woman and a mother.

“I spoke out because I wanted [women] to know that they have rights under Sharia that protect them from domestic violence,” says al-Baz. ^ttI also want to say that one man

beat me, but one hundred have stood bv me.

•

My boss, my colleagues at work, my fricnds, the man in the Street.” She had been battered before, but had not sued for divorce for fear that she might lose custody of her two kids. Nowshe tells her sons, 5 and 3 years old, that she fell down some steps, “and if you run without being carefiil, this is what happens."

Al-Baz’s plight, and her protest, are em-blematic of a broader struggle that is un-derway in Saudi society. It is not the stark conflict of forces that George W. Bush often envisions, between good and evil, freedom and oppression, Westem-style democracy and dictatorship. It’s a struggle within Islam over how to make Saudi Arabia a better Islamie society. People like al-Baz and her many supporters are pushing for morę eq-uitable laws in a society’ of the present, not one locked into an idealized vision of a me-dieval past. Conservatives are pushing back, and bin Ladenists are fighting a cam-ign of their own.

Days after al-Baz went public with her fory, a suicide bomber attacked one of the Saudi security service’s own administra-tive buildings, killing six people and wounding 148. The next night, police fought a run-ning gun battle with suspected terrorists in a Jidda suburb. A claim of responsibility for the bombing, posted on a funda-mentalist Web site, was couched in the language of desert justice. “There is not one house, neighborhood or tribe left that does not have a blood feud [with the royal fam-. ],”itdeclared.

Which forces are winning? hangę in Saudi Arabia may be violent or it may come, says Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations, “through consultations and signals” from the royal family. But those are often unclear, sometimes total-ly contradictory, and utterly frustrating for U.S. officials worried about the stability of prld oil prices.

A survey of morę than 000 Saudi men and women, conducted last year with gov-emment funds, suggested that a huge silent majority supports reforms promoted by Crown Prince Abdullah, including ef-forts to give women morę legał rights (such as driver’s licenses) and some tentative steps to-w*ard democracy' with munici-pal elections. Indeed, as winter began there was a kind of Saudi spring. People were speaking out in the press, on the radio and on satel-lite TV channels. But in December, Prince Nayef, the Interior minister, wamed a group of leading liberals that “their files were now with him,” according to a man who attended the meeting. Nayef ordered them not to air their demands publicly, but in private discussions with the authorities. When Nayefs waming wasn’t heeded, a dozen of the most prominent reformers v^ere jailed. Three are still in prison.

&JThe story of beautifiil, battered Rania m-Baz hit the papers just as the reformers needed some inspiration. “The message I want to give is ‘no to violence’,ⁿ al-Baz told NEWSWEEK. With her husband having surrendered to police, she and her two boys are safe for the moment. But their struggle isn t over. A human-rights group has pro-vided her with a lawyer to fight for her rights and everyone else’s. At a time when a murderous minority is trying to seize pow-er, many are hoping the silent majority isn’t silenced once again.    ■

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