A furtive new online campaign has been recently launched by Saudi girls titled “My messenger without boys” that aims to cease the addition of young men to their preferred mode of virtual messaging – most significantly Hotmail's messaging engine MSN. Already gathering steam, the campaign is based on popular Saudi networking websites such as d1g.com, m-ro7e.com, talasim.com, f1h2.com, bnaat.com, lyyal.com as well as in many other forums. The campaign organizer - remaining anonymous - explains that the main rationale behind this is that messaging services were allowing young men easy access to girls and the opportunity to develop illicit relations with them. She argues that this goes against both tradition and Islam. The Internet has been around for a long time in the Kingdom, but using virtual messaging services as an effective way to make new friends - particularly from the opposite sex - is a rather recent phenomenon. While there are no official online dating services, engines like MSN, Yahoo chat, Gmail chat and Facebook, among others, are an excellent dating alternative for both young Saudi men and women. “I started using the messenger (MSN) in my university's computer lab in 1999, when it was new to Saudi Arabia,” remarks Abdullah Al-Zahrani, a 32-year-old Saudi teacher. “At the time, I was more interested in adding girls than other guys, but I found that most girls were not Saudi, but expatriates within the Kingdom.” It was comparatively more difficult for Saudi girls to start using the Internet, let alone a messaging service, around that time because they simply weren't introduced to the phenomenon. Using MSN in particular, was initially seen in some conservative families as akin to letting a girl go out on her own. In less than a decade, much has changed, and the majority of young Saudi women now claim to have some form of a online identity. The most recent fad to hit people here has, of course, been Facebook, the hugely popular social networking site. The inclusion of a ‘chatting' option on the site has also been a great hit. “In the Kingdom, we have been on the receiving end of many new programs that allow boys and girls to talk to each other, without physically meeting. They use messaging services like MSN, or their mobile phones, and the latest technique is to chat on Facebook,” said Dr. Mesfer Al-Qahtani who conducts research at the hospital for mental health in Taif. So what has happened to make some Saudi girls initiate such a campaign? It seems like a win-win situation. Such engines give them the opportunity to communicate with members of the opposite sex, without any physical interaction. If they receive random and unwelcome messages from people they don't know, then they can just decide not to reply. However, receiving illicit messages from random strangers is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the girls Saudi Gazette met claimed to suffer extreme psychological stress because they would strike up a relationship with a ‘friend' on MSN and then find that their new-found partner would start blackmailing them via the same messaging service. Al-Qahtani indicates that more often than not, it is because the girl was naive enough to send her online friend a picture of herself, and then have those same pictures - sometimes ‘re-done' - used as the weapon of blackmail. This causes these young girls immense guilt and mental pressure, often causing them to go to extreme means to solve the problem. “It is very important to carry out such a boycott against men on messaging services, particularly where we do not have the means to explain the dangers associated with ‘chatting' to young Saudi girls, especially those who have strict families,” he added. An interesting facet of this whole situation is how successfully girls can dupe unsuspecting young men. Maha Muslim is a young Saudi girl whose brother got into a doomed relationship with a girl he met on MSN. He was the perfect example of an MSN-addict, according to Maha and was constantly chatting to this girl, at all times of the day. “At the start, he was using MSN just for entertainment purposes, but later we all started to feel that he was spending too much time on it. At times, he would become very expressive and we would see him look either joyful or sad, or very angry. He became very moody,” said Maha. “Ultimately we asked him whether he was in an online relationship with this girl or not, he gave in and mentioned that he thought he was in love with this girl, but that he knew almost nothing about her. For instance, he did not know how educated she was, what kind of family she belonged to or even what she looked like!” “We started getting worried when we found out that this girl was asking my brother to bring presents for her (including mobile recharge cards), but she would ask him to leave the presents in a certain place and then leave. He never met her, and we all thought that was strange,” added Maha. Online messaging services have undeniable benefits, even in the sphere of romance where some people have managed to find marriage partners via such engines, but who is to know what a young man is really thinking?” remarks Dania Al-Sharif, who researches such social issues. However, Al-Sharif is of the opinion that most young people use these messaging services, just because it allows them to rebel against rules and regulations, and select a partner for future marriage that is of their own choice. There are often happy endings to this arrangement. “My brother initially started a relationship with a Saudi girl via MSN only for the purpose of having fun, but he later fell in love with her and asked her to marry him,” said Rua Qurashi, a pharmacist in Jeddah. “When my family found out about this, they refused outright but my brother worked on convincing them and he persuaded them to travel to Taif to ask the girl's hand in marriage from her family. Interestingly, her family never found out that her daughter had met my brother via a messaging service!” The pros and cons of online dating apart, it really is important for young Saudis to learn how to really benefit from the Internet and the opportunities it throws up. “Messaging services are useful if we use them to connect to writers, academics, doctors and other professionals from around the world,” says Al-Qahtani, adding that some Saudi youth have started doing just that, but need to be educated about this further. He also advises families to focus on this issue, not in terms of the traditional and religious boundaries it trespasses, but the wide range of benefits it can bring. Educational institutes, likewise, must work harder to support the sensible and responsible use of the Internet and of messaging services as well.
