Above found @: Elham Manea Twitter Acct.
"A Liberal Mother of Six Jailed for Challenging Saudi Taboos"
"When Souad al-Shammary posted a series of tweets about the thick beards worn by Saudi clerics, she never imagined she would land in jail.
She put up images of several men with beards: An Orthodox Jew, a hipster, a communist, an Ottoman Caliph, a Sikh, and a Muslim. She wrote that having a beard was not what made a man holy or a Muslim. And she pointed out that one of Islam's staunchest critics during the time of Prophet Muhammad had an even longer beard than him.
The frank comments are typical of this twice-divorced mother of six and graduate of Islamic law, who is in many ways a walking challenge to taboos in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia. Raised a devout girl in a large tribe where she tended sheep, al-Shammary is now a 42-year-old liberal feminist who roots her arguments in Islam, taking on Saudi Arabia's powerful religious establishment.
She has paid a price for her opinions. She spent three months in prison without charge for "agitating public opinion." She has been barred by the government from traveling abroad. Her co-founder of the online forum Free Saudi Liberals Network, blogger Raif Badawi, is serving a 10-year prison sentence and was publicly lashed 50 times. Her father disowned her in public.
None of it was enough to keep her quiet.
"I have rights that I don't view as against my religion," says al-Shammary. "I want to ask for these rights, and I want those who make decisions to hear me and act."
Al-Shammary is one of the most vocal and high-profile religious and women's rights activists within Saudi Arabia. Advocates here are demanding an end to so-called male guardianship rules that essentially treat women as minors, and recently sent a petition to King Salman that garnered about 14,700 signatures.
"She's very sure of what she's saying — she doesn't hesitate," says Sahar Nassief, a friend and fellow Saudi activist. "She literally comes from a Bedouin environment, a desert environment. She's very proud of her background, but this makes her a bit blunt with everyone and very blunt in what she says."
The boldness is evident in how she looks and carries herself..."
Read entire article and see photos @: ABC News.com
