3 - Symbols of Piety

Summary

My wife is an Islamic studies teacher and we have children. She is insisting that I get a maid to help with household chores. I said I will force her to quit her job rather than bring a maid without a mahram. Am I right?

Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz: Force her to quit her job. Don't bring a maid. It is better for her to stay at home with her children.

After the Mecca mosque crisis of 1979, both the state and the religious establishment felt the threat of internal Islamist forces. Juhaiman's seizure of the Mecca mosque was an important signal. His denunciation of the Saudi regime on political and moral grounds drew attention to underlying currents that questioned state development and its rationale. This chapter deals with how the collections of official fatwas on women and the compilation of religious opinions increasingly began to define the permissible and prohibited, particularly with regard to the position of women, their appearance in the public sphere, and marriage. This also became an urgent matter at a time when globalisation threatened the religious nation and undermined its imagined tradition, according to many of those debating the future of the country. The religious establishment and the state worked hand in hand to address the alleged ‘moral corruption’ of the nation by reclaiming their central role as moral guardians. While Juhaiman held the state and Al-Saud to be directly responsible for corruption, the state gave back the upper hand to the scholars in terms of decisions on matters related to women, their public presence, and marriage. Traditional and conservative religious opinions were revived, and new interpretations were constructed to create a strict moral order dependent on the conformity of women and their exclusion from the public sphere. As the public sphere started losing its distinctive ‘Islamic’ appearance, it was important to limit women's presence in a traditionally male-dominated space. The centrality of women for religious nationalism was revived in order to reflect the conformity of the nation to Islamic teachings and the piety of the state at a time when this was being questioned.