Saudi female official settles in to job

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By Jumana al-Tamimi SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

Nora al-Fayez, Saudi Arabia's highest-ranking female official, is not ready to make big pronouncements. A month after King Abdullah named her deputy education minister for women as part of a sweeping Cabinet reshuffle, Ms. Fayez told The Washington Times that she “preferred not to talk much at this stage” about plans until she has time to formulate an approach to the new job.

Still, she said, “I can say that 99.9 percent of the people were happy about my appointment, especially that it deals with issues related to women.”

Asked why she was appointed, she said it reflected the views of both Saudi intellectuals and ordinary people and was not a response to external pressure.

“The Saudi leadership makes important decisions carefully,” she said. “It has to prepare the society for change.”

The Fayez appointment was part of the biggest Cabinet shake-up since Abdullah took the throne in 2005. The king replaced the heads of the country's top judicial council and the religious police, and he named new members for a council of leading clerics whose interpretations of Islamic rules touch people's daily lives. He also named new ministers for education, justice, health and information.

“The changes came after a time when people felt the talk about reforms was just cosmetic,” said Samr Fatan, a Saudi columnist based in the port city of Jidda. Now, she said she thinks “changes are not stoppable.”

So far, however, there appears to be little change in the behavior of the religious police, run by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Visitors to a women's job training center in Mecca said that the police recently dragged a woman down the stairs of the building where she had sought shelter after being caught in a car with a man who was not a relative, the Associated Press reported.

In an another incident, Riyadh resident Mohammed al-Kahtani filed a complaint against the commission after he was beaten by religious police as he dropped off his wife at a mall. The police accused him of being with a woman who is not his wife, the AP also reported.