We’ve had our fair share of hijab news in the United States this year. You may recall that back during the Olympics, one Muslim athlete said that she didn’t feel safe in our country while wearing her traditional Muslim garb. In the heat of the election and the weeks which followed, we heard continual stories of “hate crimes” against women wearing such apparel, even though at least some of them turned out to be hoaxes. So I suppose wearing a hijab can be considered controversial. But not wearing one can cause even more issues depending where you live.

If’ you’re worried about repression and intolerance in the United States, perhaps you should check out what happens to women in a country where the idea of women’s rights is strictly the subject of fiction. Take, for example, our friend and ally Saudi Arabia. They’ve recently demonstrated that the 21st century is still an idea they want no part of and it’s a lesson which came the hard way to one young woman who decided to go to a local cafe without her head being covered. She tweeted a picture of herself doing it and things went downhill from there. (WaPo)

The Saudi woman was going out for breakfast when she decided to make a statement. Violating the country’s moral codes, she reportedly stepped out in public wearing a multicolored dress, a black jacket and ankle boots — without a hijab or abaya, a loosefitting garment. Late last month, she tweeted a photo of her outfit, and the post circulated through Saudi Arabia, drawing death threats and demands to imprison or even execute the woman. On Monday, police in the country’s capital of Riyadh said they had arrested the woman, following their duty to monitor “violations of general morals,” a spokesman, Fawaz al-Maiman, said, AFP reported. The woman, who is in her 20s, was imprisoned after posting the tweet of herself standing next to a popular Riyadh cafe, he said. He also accused her of “speaking openly about prohibited relations” with unrelated men, according to AFP.

The first responses came not from the government, but from her own countrymen. Many responses on social media adopted a theme of, “we demand the imprisonment of the rebel Malak al-Shehri.” Many were worse, calling for her to literally lose her head. Another said her body should be dumped in the streets for the dogs. But the social outcry was only the beginning. The government soon came knocking and Ms. al-Shehri was arrested.

For not wearing a head scarf.

On the planet Earth.

In the 21st century.

It looks like she’s going to avoid losing her head, but the outcome isn’t all that much better. The latest reports indicate that she will be lashed. (Daily Mail)

A woman who received death threats after going out without her abaya in Saudi Arabia has been arrested and now faces being lashed… The Arabic-language al-Sharq newspaper said the woman was detained after a complaint was filed by the religious police. ‘Police officers have detained a girl who had removed her abaya on al-Tahliya street, implementing a challenge she announced on social media several days ago,’ Colonel Fawaz al-Maiman, a Riyadh police spokesman, was quoted as saying.

Getting a lashing in that country is more serious than a spanking from your parents. People have been known to die from it while others wind up being disfigured for life. And this is the punishment the woman received after the “religious police” freaked out because of a picture of her standing on the sidewalk dressed in a stylish fashion went viral.

If this is how our friends treat women can you imagine how it must be among our enemies?