By KATHERINE ZOEPF
After the 18-year-old Saudi equestrian Dalma Malhas won a bronze medal in show jumping at the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in August, she was singled out for praise by Jacques Rogge, chairman of the International Olympic Committee, in a news conference at the Games’ conclusion.
“This is indeed the first time that a Saudi woman is participating in an international event,” let alone winning a medal, Rogge said of Olympic events. Malhas’s achievement, he said, had made the I.O.C. “absolutely happy.”
The reaction in Malhas’s conservative Muslim homeland —where athletics for women are seen in some quarters as immodest, even immoral — has been far more complicated.
Physical activity of any kind is forbidden in Saudi Arabia’s state-run girls’ schools. Though gyms for women exist in major Saudi cities, they are usually unmarked, so that customers need not fear attracting attention.
Saudi Arabia does not permit women to represent it in international athletic competitions, and it is one of only three countries in the world that has yet to send women to the Olympic Games (the others are Qatar and Brunei). Though Saudi Arabia sent an official delegation of male athletes to Singapore for the Youth Olympics, Malhas — the daughter of an accomplished female show jumper, Arwa Mutabagani — had to enter on her own, at her own expense.
Now her bronze medal has placed her at the center of a growing controversy in the kingdom about what kinds of athletic activity, if any, are acceptable for Saudi girls and women.
The laws and customs that govern Saudi women’s lives are among the most restrictive anywhere. Public separation of the sexes is stringent. Saudi women may not drive or vote and must wear floor-length cloaks known as abayas and head scarves whenever they leave home. They may not appear in court.
Yet, in recent years, women’s issues have become a major battleground for liberals and conservatives. Saudi traditions regarding the rights and treatment of women have rarely, if ever, been so much in dispute. The issue of Saudi women in sports is a manifestation of this larger debate.
On July 31, the Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmed, who directs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, started a campaign called “No Women. No Play,” urging the I.O.C. to suspend Saudi Arabia from Olympic competition until it allowed female participation.
In a phone interview, Ahmed likened the position of Saudi women today to that of blacks in apartheid-era South Africa and asked why the I.O.C. had not suspended Saudi Arabia from the Games as it banned South Africa from 1964 through the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.
“Even more than political pressure, the expulsion of South Africa from the Olympics was one of the most effective tools for ending apartheid,” Ahmed said, without referring to the more prominent role accorded sports overall in South African society, or whether an Olympic ban thus had greater effect than it might on Saudi Arabia.
“The freedom to practice sports and to exercise is such a very basic issue,” Ahmed said. “It has to do with physical health. I think that once Saudi women are free to practice sports, that will open up other areas of discussion about their rights.”
Comments are closed.