Saudi women should not have to wear abaya robes, top cleric says

[EX500rider]

Source: BBC

Saudi women should not have to wear the abaya, a long loose-fitting robe used to cover their bodies in public, a top religious cleric has said.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said women should dress modestly, but this did not have to mean wearing the abaya.
Saudi women are currently required to wear the garment by law.
The cleric's intervention comes amid moves to modernise Saudi society and relax restriction on women.

"More than 90% of pious Muslim women in the Muslim world do not wear abayas. So we should not force people to wear abayas," Sheikh Mutlaq said on Friday.



Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43017148

---

A step in the right direction for the Kingdom, color me surprised.

[PatSeg]

1. Dictating the way women dress,

while the men can wear pretty much anything they want, has always bothered me. I've seen it in fundamentalist religions in the U.S. as well. It puts a tag on a woman as a member of a closed group, while the men can fit in anywhere.

[IronLionZion]

2. Here are Afghani women in 1972

I have 2 Muslim women on my team at work who dress like anyone else. It's good to have the choice. I suppose a woman could wear the abaya if she felt like it but it's hot in the middle east to wear a long black cloth if one doesn't want to. Saudi men generally wear white.

[EX500rider]

4. Well to be clear that was the women in university in the capital Kabul..

....they still would have been hissed at or rocks thrown at them in most of the country back then.

[IronLionZion]

5. Even in the US, rural areas are more conservative

it's like that in most any country

[ornotna]

6. Rural Afghani women may not have wore mini skirts back then

But they weren't all forced into burqas either. It was quite different before the Marxist take over and Soviet invasion.

[EX500rider]

7. No doubt the Taliban and Saudi Wahhabism have made it worse.

But it was always a conservative country.

[cloudbase]

3. With the new leadership in S.A.

the clerics are finally getting some religion.

[Aristus]

8. Thank you, sir! It's about damned time!

"Dress modestly". That's what the Q'uran says. That's all it says. Nothing about burqas or abayyahs or anything. "Dress modestly". And it is intended for men, as well. BTW, Saint Paul says the same thing in the Bible.