Psychiatric confusion

I usually receive different responses on my Arabic articles, most of the times when I write about women rights…Some of these responses are flirty, some are defensive and rarely I get an objective view from a public figure where I can reflect on what I wrote and reconsider… In response to a story published in the media about the number of cases of domestic-violence handled by a newly founded women shelter in Jeddah, I wrote my latest article urging officials to relief half of Saudi nation (all women) from the system of guardianship imposed on them by the law and society, the first step in empowering the women would be to hold them accountable for their own lives, and giving them legal responsibility on their own lives, in education, work, communication and granting them decent rights at divorce for them and their kids, this was the main system (Guardianship) that hindered the women from participating fully in public and caused a lot of violence when they resisted the guardianship rules according to a recent UN report on Saudi women… So I received a response from a pronounced Saudi figure, the head of the Psychiatric unit at one of our largest hospitals, who specializes in child psychology, he objected on summing the reasons for violence against women to the system of guardianship, saying that this is an Islamic foundation, he also suspected that the newspaper wouldn’t have published this piece for me if it weren’t (exposing defects of Saudi society and inflecting pathological description on it), he went on saying that our media is not objective (I agree in general) and falls between (dark-minded) and (liberals) who both want to destroy the society, (he didn’t mention why though?), and he (warned) me from confusing the guardianship system with violence which maybe caused by other socio-economical factors or other members in the family than the main guardian…

I’m just a simple person who believes that although education about rights and wrong is important yet it’s not worthy without laws that protect the rights, since we can lead a horse to the water but we can’t make it drink… If we gave the men the power over women lives, then how can we make sure they’ll not abuse it? All of those women in the shelter were refugees from their guardians and not from socio-economic status or other members on their communities…

That doctor is the one who’s definitely confused, I responded to his email questioning his accusation of the media and inquiring how when he’s a psychologist in a big institution didn’t see such cases, when I see them on regular basis? many women don’t have chances in education, work marriage, travel or any other choices simply because of the restrictions from their guardians…

In his response, the doctor agreed on my remarks but had this general belief that we shouldn’t be showing our dirty laundry to the world, for fear of stigmatizing an Islamic-based society, and in particular Islam in general!!

The most powerful nations (e.g. US) publish their own crime rates, problems, and defects as well as achievements when they have senators and representatives who may directly raise the issues to the government away from the media…This is a must to do task in Saudi where the lack of real people representation at the level of decision making exists, the only window that can raise requests and alert officials would be the media and this is why transparency is a must even if it didn’t show us as an ideal and platonic society because of our religion, where we claim to follow but at most levels remains a wonderful scripture awaiting accurate and just interpretation…