Rasheed Abou-Alsamh

By : Rasheed Abou-Alsamh

I was extremely happy to read on Friday that Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal ordered lifting the ban on young men entering shopping malls and markets on the weekend.

This banning of young men in malls, especially teenagers, had become a norm in Jeddah and other cities as a way of protecting women from the unwanted attention and harassment that they suffered from some of the young men.

But punishing all young men for the ill deeds of a few was never fair, and Prince Khaled realized this and thus lifted the ban. One major reason for lifting the ban was that shops in these malls were losing money due to the absence of young customers. And so they complained to the authorities repeatedly, asking that the ban be lifted, and finally it was. As Arab News story pointed out, young men who work or study often only have time to go shopping for clothes in malls on the weekends, exactly when the bans were in place.

In the past I would often witness scores of young guys milling about the entrances to shopping malls in Jeddah, waiting for the security guards manning the entrances to become distracted for just a few seconds so that they could slip in. Many of them would approach women entering the mall, asking if they would be willing to act like they were siblings so that they could enter the mall with them. Many times huge arguments would erupt between guards and young men insisting that they be let in to join their family who were already inside. Most of the time the guards knew this was a farce, a lie told in order to be allowed inside. And it is true that many of these young guys just wanted to get inside in order to run after young women, try to talk to them and pass them their phone numbers.

Any young men, who genuinely needed to go shopping in a mall — to buy clothes, perfume or bags — unfortunately would be caught up in this situation and also be banned from entering. Even I was stopped many times when I needed to go shopping in a mall on weekends, even though I was not that young anymore.

As the report pointed out, quoting psychologists, this shunning of young men in malls creates feelings of exclusion and rejection that they said could lead to problems such as anti-social behavior. Just excluding bad-behaving men from malls only treats the symptoms and not the cause. Saudi parents should teach their boys from early on to respect girls and women. Unfortunately the ultra-segregation that we have in our society leaves many young men without the means with which to behave properly in public with girls and women that are not part of their families.

As more Saudi women keep joining the work force problems in how men interact with women will become more prevalent. And we should not put all of the blame on the men. Many young women also act foolishly in public, teasing and encouraging young men, some even throwing them their phone numbers. This only encourages irresponsible and dangerous behavior.

As Prince Khaled noted, it is the responsibility of the security guards at shopping malls to ensure proper enforcement of the rules and protect all shoppers. There is no reason why law-abiding young men should be made to pay the price for the shenanigans of others. It is only living and interacting together in public in a decent and honorable way, that Saudi men and women will learn how to get along.

The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in the Column section are their own and do not reflect RiyadhVision’s point-of-view.

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