Criticism
The Basic Law was drafted by an ad hoc committee of the interior ministry, which Human Rights Watch accuses of egregious violations of human rights.
In the eighteenth century Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab integrated all the political and religious institutions into one governing body. The government of Saudi Arabia reserves numerous jobs for the clergy that range from preaching to judgeships.
Islamic clergy (ulema) like muftis and sheikhs who dominate the Saudi Arabian legal positions make use of the Basic Law in addition to the Quran, hadith, sunnah, and Islamic jurisprudence which all falls within sharia.
The Basic Law makes no mention of women; Amnesty International write in their 2000 report on Saudi Arabia:
Discussion of discrimination against women and their status as second class citizens has for a long time been a taboo, untouchable even by the highest of state authorities in the country despite all the misery and suffering of women for no reason other than their having been born female.
Saudi writer and journalist Wajeha Al-Huwaider writes that "Saudi women are weak, no matter how high their status, even the 'pampered' ones among them - because they have no law to protect them from attack by anyone. The oppression of women and the effacement of their selfhood is a flaw affecting most homes in Saudi Arabia."
Read more about this topic: Basic Law Of Saudi Arabia
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)