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SHE HAS BEEN CALLED the most influential woman of our time. They are among
the most disempowered women on earth. She is a self-made billionaire, with worldwide
interests that range from television to publishing to education. They are
forbidden to get a job without the permission of a male "guardian,"
and the overwhelming majority of them are unemployed. She has a face that is recognized the world over.
They cannot leave home without covering their face and obscuring their figure
in a cloak. She is famous for her message of confidence,
self-improvement, and spiritual uplift. They are denied the right to make the
simplest decisions, treated by law like children who cannot be trusted with
authority over their own well-being. She, of course, is Oprah Winfrey. They are the
multitude of Saudi Arabian women whose devotion to her has made "The
Oprah Winfrey Show" - broadcast twice daily on a Dubai-based satellite
channel - the highest-rated English-language program in the kingdom. A recent New York Times story - "Veiled
Saudi Women Are Discovering an Unlikely Role Model in Oprah Winfrey" -
explored the appeal of America's iconic talk-show host for the marginalized
women of the Arabian Peninsula. "In a country where the sexes are rigorously
separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and
where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police,"
the Times noted, "Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new
ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives . . . Some
women here say Ms. Winfrey's assurances to her viewers - that no matter how
restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control
in small ways and create lives of value - help them find meaning in their
cramped, veiled existence." And so they avidly analyze Oprah's clothes and
hairstyles, and circulate "dog-eared copies" of her magazine, O,
and write letters telling her of their dreams and disappointments. Many
undoubtedly dream of doing what she did - freeing themselves from the
shackling circumstances into which they were born and rising as high as their
talents can take them. But the television star never faced the obstacles
that confront her Saudi fans. That is not to minimize the daunting odds Oprah
overcame. She was born to an unwed teenage housemaid in pre-civil rights
Mississippi, and spent her first years in such poverty that at times she wore
dresses made from potato sacks. She was sexually molested as a child, and ran
away from home as a young teen. It was a squalid beginning, one that would
have defeated many people not blessed with Oprah's intelligence and drive and
native gifts. But whatever else may be said of Oprah's life, it
was never crippled by Wahhabism, the fundamentalist strain of Islam that
dominates Saudi Arabia and immiserates Saudi women in ruthless gender
apartheid. Strict sex segregation is the law of the land. Women are forbidden
to drive, to vote, to freely marry or divorce, to appear in public without a
husband or other male guardian, or to attend university without their
father's permission. They can be jailed - or worse - for riding in a car with
a man to whom they are unrelated. Their testimony in court carries less
weight than a man's. They cannot even file a criminal complaint without a
male guardian's permission - not even in cases of domestic abuse, when it is
their "guardian" who has attacked them. Could Oprah herself have surmounted such
pervasive repression? Some Saudi women manage to find jobs, but Wahhabist opposition is fierce. In 2006, Youssef Ibrahim
reported in the New York Sun on Nabil Ramadan, the owner of a fast-food
restaurant in Ranoosh who hired two women to take
telephone orders. Within 24 hours, the religious police had him arrested and
shut down the restaurant for "promoting lewdness." Ramadan was
sentenced by a religious court to 90 lashes on his back and buttocks. Is it any wonder that women trapped in a culture that treats them so wretchedly idolize someone like Oprah, who epitomizes so much that is absent from their lives? A nation that degrades its women degrades itself, and Oprah's message is an antidote to degradation. Why do they love her? Because all the lies of the Wahhabists cannot stifle the truth she embodies: The blessings of liberty were made for women, too. --------------------------- Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Credit: JEFF JACOBY. Boston Globe Works Cited Jacoby, Jeff.
"Watching Oprah from Behind the Veil." Boston GlobeSep 24
2008. ProQuest. Web. 27 Sep. 2017. References Jacoby,
J. (2008, Sep 24). Watching oprah from behind the
veil. Boston GlobeRetrieved
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