Faithful Dialogue

To the people of Saudi Arabia — from someone born and raised in the West: Please, do not make the same mistake we made. I grew up surrounded by Western culture. I have seen feminism presented as the ultimate path to women’s liberation, as though abandoning your traditions, your modesty, your family structures and your religious identity were the price of freedom. I know this ideology from the inside, and I beg you: do not confuse Westernization with liberation. Look at the contradictions of Western society. Women are told they are empowered, yet an enormous industry profits from sexualizing their bodies, monetizing their insecurities and reducing their worth to beauty, youth and desirability. Families and communities have weakened, loneliness has become a profound social problem, and freedom is increasingly confused with individualism and consumption. These problems have many causes, but you should question a model that presents itself as the universal solution while refusing to acknowledge its own failures. Remember Algeria. French colonial authorities understood that the veil was not merely a piece of clothing: it was a symbol of cultural identity and resistance. Colonial campaigns sought to unveil Algerian women under the language of emancipation, while colonial domination brought humiliation and sexual violence. Frantz Fanon examined this dynamic in A Dying Colonialism, showing how the colonial struggle over the veil was also a struggle over power, identity and control. When a powerful civilization claims that it alone knows how to liberate your women, ask yourselves: liberation for whom, and on whose terms? The veil can be an expression of faith, dignity, modesty and resistance to a world that turns women into objects of consumption. A woman who chooses to cover herself is not oppressed; she may be asserting that her body does not exist for the approval or desire of strangers. A woman does not become free by unveiling, just as she does not become free simply by covering. Her dignity must never be measured by how closely she resembles a Western ideal. Defend her right to wear the veil without shame, discrimination or pressure to abandon it. To the Saudis and Saudi women in particular: you do not have to reject education, scientific progress or women’s dignity to preserve your Islamic heritage. You can modernize without erasing yourselves, empower women without teaching them to despise their traditions, and improve society without blindly importing another civilization’s ideology. A tradition protected through conviction is stronger than one imposed through fear. I am not asking you to reject every change or pretend that every inherited custom is perfect. I am asking you to reject the false choice between oppression and Westernization. Do not surrender your identity to earn the approval of people who consider your civilization backward simply because it follows different values. I tell you this as someone who has witnessed the West from within: learn from the world, but do not blindly imitate it. Protect your families, your faith, your cultural inheritance and the dignity of women who choose modesty. The greatest victory of cultural domination is not when a people are conquered by force, but when they begin to believe that becoming someone else is the only way to be free. Saudi Arabia, preserve what is precious before you are persuaded that you should be ashamed of it. #٢٠٣٠_بلا_نقاب26 #٢٠٣٠_بلا_نقاب