Hats off to Al Ahmari for being a forward thinker

Rasha al Raisi - Never marry a woman who reads... This is the headline of an article written by the Saudi columnist Fahad al Ahmari, that was published in the Saudi Al Wattan newspaper on March 19.

For some reason, a leading Arabic women magazine took notice of it last week and published extracts of it asking for the opinions of different people on the street. The extract that was highlighted by the magazine was: “Never marry a woman who reads. Her kitchen is empty and her library is full. Her books are pots and her pots are books. The shelves of the kitchen are filled with publications and the drawers with notebooks. She fills your brain but your tummy is empty. She knows how to read but not how to cook. Her lack of cooking skills embarrasses you in front of your guests.”

The article then goes on describing the intellectual woman as a tyrant who prohibits her man from watching TV and movies. A woman who ignores her looks but works her brain. A woman with a knowledge that makes her husband feels like a lesser being, so he’d either start reading to catch up with her or ignores her and let the fire of jealousy burn up their marriage. He ends the article saying that it’s even worse when you marry a woman who writes. Never marry a woman who writes.

The magazine claimed that women in the Arab world retaliated and wrote a reply saying: “Marry an intellect and your kids will know at the age of three what you know at the age of thirty. She’ll allow you to draw on her walls and won’t care for the colours you used or the shapes you’d drawn. She’s happier for taking part in your creativity journey.”

As for the opinion of the people on the street, women took it personally, defending the status of being an intellect, numbering the advantages of marrying one and describing men who feared them as “having an inferiority complex”. While men had a more laid-back response saying that “marry an intellect if you are one”.

My initial response to the article was absolute shock. I couldn’t imagine such talk coming from an intellect, almost twenty years into the 21st century. The chauvinism and the stereotyping were too much to bear. I decided to check out Al Ahmari’s articles online to form an opinion before writing down this article. I started with this article “never marry a woman who reads” and scrolled down to see the responses of the readers.

There were few responses from men who weren’t really sure if the writer was serious or being sarcastic, and two females who lamented the backward thinking of Arab men. Then browsing through other articles for the same writer, I discovered another angle. In an article titled “Women, the annoying creatures”, Al Ahmari discusses how men’s wrong understanding of religious scripture is behind their mistreatment of women. In another article called: “Is one wife enough?” he attacks the common idea of polygamy helping in solving the problem of spinsterhood among women.

According to national statistics, the number of unmarried men in some Arab countries is higher than the number of unmarried women. So the best solution is to facilitate marriage between single people by decreasing marriage’s financial demands.

He even draws evidence from modern religious figures who agree that monogamy is preferred for these modern times, with the changes of economies and society built. Hats off to Al Ahmari for being a forward thinker with a touch of sarcasm that shocks his readers, but provokes them to consider current issues from a different angle.

Rasha al Raisi is a certified skills trainer and the author of: The World According to Bahja. rashabooks@yahoo.com