No Mobile Phones for Arab Wives!
Ron Ross
BFP News
Email: ronrossbfp@hotmail.com
8th March 2007
Where is Germaine Greer when you need her? She gets quite mouthy when attacking situations that threaten freedom for women but there is an international silence on a recent story developing in the Arab world.
Six Arab states have supported a move by husbands to ban their wives from having or using mobile phones.
Some women in Saudi Arabia went to a human rights association and filed a complaint. They claimed their husbands should show them `respect'. They felt their simplest right had been violated. I guess that is the right to talk!
A Saudi computer engineer supported the husbands. He said women often confided more to the mobile phones than to their men. He said the husbands removed access to the phones because of a `lack of trust' in their wives.
This gallant warrior said, "Wives shouldn't give too much attention to their phones so their husbands do not feel the phones are better than they are."
Don't you simple love this logic? These macho men are threatened because their wives are having an affair with a phone.
Another man said, the problem was the vast bills accumulated by the women. At last, a good solid reason, but this same `expert' went on to say, "One of the reasons is the fact that the wives are failing to perform their marital duties by talking to their female friends while their husbands are at home"."
Hmmm. I guess you have to blame something for being dull and boring, why not the phone?
When the Arab Press asked the ladies for their opinion some of the responses were very sad. One woman said she had been under so much control from her father and her brothers she married the first man who came along.
She said her brothers were very authoritarian whenever she was on the phone speaking to someone. "I am the only girl and the youngest of five brothers. I was closely watched by my brothers, especially when I talked on the phone."
How did her boyfriend win her heart? While they were engaged he bought her a mobile phone, that's what! If this wasn't so sad I could say he had her number but this story is far too mind-blowing for such levity.
An Arab man explained how he divorced his wife because she refused to surrender her mobile. He was very offended because she kept it on silent mode and he could never tell when she received calls. He learned she was receiving calls from her female friends and he didn't like it.
One distraught husband said his wife spent so much time on the mobile phone she was ignoring her role as wife and mother.
There is the woman who quit her job rather than go through divorce. She worked in a public relations firm and needed the mobile monster for her job. Her husband said that wicked device had to go. So rather than have a divorce and leave her children, the woman quit her work.
This story will most likely never make the international headlines. No one dies. There's no horror smash, no bloodshed.
But it needs to be told. Maybe the West should adopt some of these great ideas from the Arab world. It may be we've been wrong all along.
Now where's my wife's handbag.
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Three years ago he joined Bridges for Peace in Jerusalem to establish international radio news and an audio service webcast at www.bridgesforpeace.com Ron was Sports Editor of WINTV for 20 years before joining the full-time missions. You can contact Ron at : ronrossbfp@hotmail.com |
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