RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- When the religious police spy a woman on the streets of Saudi Arabia whom they consider insufficiently covered, or suspect of mingling with men who are not relatives, they are quick with a terse reprimand. "Ya mutabaraja!" many will yell, using an Arabic word that translates as a woman who "displays, shows or plays up her charms, adorns herself." It is, needless to say, the kind of encounter that Saudi women, especially those in its ever increasing class of highly educated professionals, would rather not face.
These are days of agitation in the desert kingdom, and perhaps no group is more determined to push the boundaries of change than the kingdom's well-educated and articulate women. The question for these women is how to alter the ingrained tradition that men must have the last word in how they dress, where they go, what they study -- in short, virtually every aspect of their lives.
"We are treated as daughters of a tribe, not as citizens," said Fowziyah Abukhalid, a sociologist at King Saud University. "We want to be recognized as full-fledged citizens."
ILLUSTRATION MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Women tried to bring change very publicly once before, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Some 40 women took to Riyadh's freeways, protesting the unwritten law preventing women from driving. They figured that the pending threat of war would trump the traditionalists' alarm that women behind the wheel would lead to encounters with male strangers.
They were wrong. Conservative theologians denounced the protesters from the pulpit as fallen women, and the ban on driving became law.
Now, some women have decided they have a better chance of succeeding if they adopt the methods of their natural opponents, the ultraconservative religious fundamentalists. These women -- a cross section of doctors, businesswomen, professors, artists, homemakers and social workers -- want to reach back to the ancient roots of Islamic law, viewing the Prophet Muhammad's era as the golden age of women's rights.
Before Muhammad, women on the Arabian Peninsula were considered chattel, inherited along with land or livestock. Some historians who are women believe now that the prophet was initially opposed within his own tribe for elevating their status. After his death, his favorite wife, Aisha, even led men in battle during the succession wars.
"It was as if she had absorbed all the principles of Islam that women should not sit back and do nothing if they see something that is unjust," said one of those historians, Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi, a professor at King Saud University. "At the time of the prophet, laws were simple, direct and were more accurate in terms of the spirit of Islam, freeing women from being demeaned."
She argues that the prophet responded directly to women's grievances with revolutionary changes in property ownership and other laws. After women believers started to protest that too many Koranic verses focused exclusively on male believers, more verses began to refer to women.
The scholars have started to comb through Islamic texts to muster all the religious arguments that support greater rights for women, believing their strongest argument, perhaps, to be that women often petitioned the prophet Muhammad directly during his lifetime. They believe their efforts could serve as the basis for new laws, laws clearly not derived from the West, and more important, to cleave away what has developed as tradition over centuries of desert life.
"Traditions are not sacred," says Abukhalid, a small, intense, 44-year-old woman wearing jeans and tennis shoes under her flowing black robes. "Only the Koran and the Sunnah are sacred." The Sunnah is the body of writings that describe how the prophet Muhammad lived his own life, his actions and decisions in myriad situations.
"We think we have the right to reinterpret them," she goes on. "They should not be used as a weapon to exclude women from the public arena."
The women do not expect an easy battle. Mention women's rights to any gathering of religiously conservative males, even those demanding a greater public voice for men, and they immediately voice suspicions that Saudi women are agitating to live like their Western counterparts.
"Saudi women have departed from the correct understanding of Islam," said Fawaz Bin Abdulaziz al-Orifej, a 27-year-old government employee. "Islam requires women to cover completely so I consider, as a Saudi male, that it is wrong of them to show their faces."
His friend sitting nearby on the floor of an urban tent, where both of them are scrolling through e-mail and chat rooms on laptops, goes even further.
"Why is everyone so obsessed with giving a woman any kind of job?" said Abdel Malik al-Turaiki, a 27-year-old physiotherapist.
"She has a job keeping house. This is a great job for women -- to clean, to care for her children and to prepare herself for her husband."
Any radical change in Saudi Arabia invariably emanates from the top. When King Faisal wanted to open girls' schools in the 1960s, for example, he warned those opposed not to attack the schools. If they did not want to educate their daughters, he would not force them, he said, but he would not tolerate violence.
Crown Prince Abdullah has promised municipal elections for next year, but there has been no word on whether women will be allowed to vote, much less run. Women concede that given the lack of basic rights for men, it is perhaps too much to hope that women will get them in one leap. But they sense time as an ally.
"I don't think there is a force on earth that can prevent these rights," Abukhalid said. "Maybe they won't come in a royal decree tomorrow, but they are coming."
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