I See You Baby, Kicking That Ass

For a Saudi woman to expose the hollow arguments of the Saudi patriarchy head-to-head on pan-Arab television is a very brave thing to do, not just morally but physically. Saudi women have been imprisoned, tortured and executed for much less.

Braver still is to use the oppressor’s own ammunition against him – and win. Saudi newscaster Buthayner Nasser is seen here in a televised debate about women’s role in public life and on tv, very publicly demolishing a male Saudi cleric’s arguments, and doing it in such a Koranically-based, logical and respectful yet totally kickass way that he can make no coherent response.

I defy you to watch this and not feel inspired.

[H/T Tenessse Guerilla Women]

Both those who see the mass of Saudi women as mere mobile, silent draperies with no voices or opinions and those who think that any feminist Moslem woman must ipso facto be automatically pro-western and pro-secular will be much enlightened and informed. Maybe it will also enlighten those self-righteous western feminists who think that they and they alone are the holy keepers of the precious feminist flame and that Moslem women are an ignorant amorphous mass just hanging around waiting to be liberated by the eventual triumph of western cultural values. There are many more ways to freedom than through the East Coast intelligentsia.

The original clip can be found here and was translated and subtitled by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which appears so far s I can tell to be a thoroughly worthy organisation in need of support.

(MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region’s media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

They also have a great back catalogue of subtitled clips from Middle Eastern current affairs and news programmes here, well worth looking at.

UPDATE

Good job I qualified that last statement with a “so far as I know” wasn’t it? From comments:

steve Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 8:01 am

Um. MEMRI are the guys whose “translation” was responsible for the whole Apple/Mecca storm in a teacup last year: for a neutral organisation, it’s quite surprising how often their translations make Arabs look bad and Israelis good….
Martin Wisse Says:

April 18th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

Actually, they have long been accused off being a crypto-zionist organisation and there have been times when their translations were …less than faithful to the original, shall we say?

I stand corrected.