Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The 'Rosa Parks' of Saudi Arabia...

Nawal al-Hawsawi is outspoken, black, a qualified pilot and married to a white man - everything her critics say a Saudi woman shouldn't be.

But despite receiving waves of abuse on social media, she refuses to bow to convention and hits back at her detractors "with love".

Al-Hawsawi has become something of a star on social media. She has amassed almost 50,000 followers on Twitter, where she posts about the importance of racial diversity and marriage equality. But not everyone reading her feed is a fan.

The deluge of racist abuse that came at the end of December was just the latest flurry in a long campaign. The trolls have had al-Hawsawi in their sights for years. They send her pictures of gorillas, grotesquely photoshopped African tribespeople, and they call her the A word - a derogatory Arabic term for black people which means "slave", not dissimilar in meaning to the N word.

Growing up in Mecca, a fairly cosmopolitan part of Saudi Arabia, al-Hawsawi says until she travelled to the US she hadn't consciously thought of herself as "black". Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Saudi Arabia buys 'international silence' about its atrocities in Yemen...
  2. Uganda bans housemaids from working in Saudi Arabia...
  3. Saudi Arabia arrests Samar Badawi, human rights advocate...
  4. #SueMeSaudi: Twitter users taunt Saudi Arabia...
  5. Saudi actor arrested ‘for taking selfies with female fans in shopping mall’

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