At a secondary school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, one hot spring day in 2002, the girls had taken off their oppressive black abayas and headscarves as usual. Saudi men wear flowing white robes that reflect back the searing desert heat, but women and girls must wear black, the most uncomfortable colours for the climate. Islam sets no colour code for women's dress, but black was the traditional women's costume in the Najd region of central Arabia, from which the Al Saud tribe came, conquered the holy cities of Islam, and established its rule across the whole of what is now Saudi Arabia. Mecca was part of the colourful, urbane Hijaz region, but the puritan Najdis disliked its cosmopolitan ways. Colourful Hijazi clothing was banned in 1932, and now even these teenage girls were legally required to wear black. At least inside their all-girls school, with its all-female staff, they could take off their hijab and relax.
But on that day, 22 March 2002, a fire broke out in their school. The girls made a rush for the exit only to be met with resistance at the gates and forced by the Mutawwa'a, the Saudi religious police, back into the blazing building. They were not allowed out because they were not wearing headscarves and abayas. Fireman arrived at the site but were prevented from entering the building because there were teenage girls present with their hair uncovered. When parents arrived, the Mutawwa'a used their police powers forcibly to stop them getting in to rescue their children. Fifteen girls burned to death.
Their lives could have been saved, but Saudi Salafi Islam prioritised the rules on women's dress over the sanctity of human life. And this happened in Mecca, the home and heart of Islam. The first key principle of the sharia, first of the five Maqasid - preservation of life - had been abandoned. Pedantry of the literalist rule trumped the reason for the law.
The Saudi Salafi clerical classes, obsessed with covering up and concealing women, go so far as to argue that the aurah ('private parts') of a woman include her voice. Since a woman's voice can be seductive, that too is aurah. Once such a view is tolerated and accepted, there is no stopping it. It snowballs. Salafi clerics have argued that even a woman's name is aurah, and should not be mentioned in public. Most men in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf today will not speak the names of their wives, sisters or daughters. They refer to them, instead, as hurmah, or honour.'