Free Ascent of Women by Sally Armstrong

and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch at the time, said, “Women and girls may have died unnecessarily because of extreme interpretations of the Islamic dress code. State authorities with direct and indirect responsibility for this tragedy must be held accountable.”
    There was action—not justice, but action. An inquiry was launched by the Saudi government. Prince Naif, minister of the interior, promised that those responsible for the deaths of the girls would be held accountable. The vice and virtue squad was given a public dressing-down. So was the General Presidency for Girls’ Education. The cleric in charge of the school was fired and the school was taken over by the ministry of education. As it turns out, the Saudi people didn’t like the fact that girls’ schools were controlled by the conservative religious establishment, and they had tried before to bring the schools into the public realm. This time they succeeded.
    However, in an about-face, Prince Naif refused to blame the Mutawa’een for the deaths of the girls. He claimed that the deaths hadn’t happened because the girls hadn’t been allowed to flee the fire but because of the stampede to escape. He acknowledged the presence of the Mutawa’een and said that they went there to prevent “mistreatment” of the girls. But he asserted that they hadn’t interfered with the rescue efforts and only arrived after everyone had left the building. Eyewitnesses begged to differ.
    The inquiry reported its conclusion on March 25, 2002: the fire was caused by a stray cigarette; the religious educational authorities responsible for the school had neglected the safety of thepupils; the clerics had ignored warnings about overcrowding that had led to the fatal stampede. Allegations that the Mutawa’een had prevented the girls from fleeing were dismissed.
    In the wake of the report, the International Secretariat of Amnesty International issued a statement:
Amnesty International is gravely concerned at reports that 14 girls have lost their lives and dozens of others were injured following a fire at their school in Mecca on 11 March 2002 after the religious police (Mutawa’een) prevented them from escaping from the fire because they were not wearing headscarves and their male relatives were not there to receive them. The religious police are also reported to have prevented rescuers from entering the school because they were males and therefore not permitted to mix with females.
If these reports are true, this is a tragic illustration of how gender discrimination can have lethal consequences. When state policies on segregation of sexes are implemented at the expense of human life, urgent steps are needed at the highest level. Policies and practises through which the lives of women and girls are devalued must be changed.… Saudi Arabia must take urgent measures to end all forms of discrimination against women in accordance with CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to which Saudi Arabia is a state party.
    As appalling as this story is, it is not a singular example of the blatant abuse of the rights of women and girls. The oldest atrocity, the one invariably mentioned in association with Islam, dates back to the pre-Islamic era called jahiliyah, the time of ignorancebefore Muhammad. That travesty is honour killing. Arab men of the time thought they should bury their infant daughters alive to avoid the possibility that they would grow up to dishonour the family. The Prophet moved to eradicate that practice.
    Infant girls were killed in other parts of the world because they were seen as worthless. In ancient Greece, after a baby was born, the wife would show the infant to her husband. If he decided to keep the baby, it would live. If he refused, the baby would be abandoned to die of hunger or exposure to the elements.
    The practice was also prevalent in ancient Rome. An interpretation of a letter from a Roman