The Saudi women afraid to go home

The name of one of the women in this story has been changed to protect her identity. We refer to her as Arwa throughout.

"This is it," Arwa said as she sat in the US immigration office on the outskirts of Houston, Texas last month. Having fled Saudi Arabia two years earlier, her 7 a.m. appointment would reveal if her application for asylum had been successful or whether she would be forced to leave America.

"What I really want is just to live normally without fear and not have to pretend to be somebody else, that's all I ever want," Arwa told CNN on the eve of her appointment.
"What really scares me is that I wouldn't get this asylum, and I would be returned and I would die young, and that I would lose everything that I tried to build, that I would just fail."
Arwa initially came to the US as a student before returning to Saudi Arabia to work for several years. There she says her parents began to turn on her as she began questioning the restrictions placed on women in Saudi society.
Her frustrations grew to the point that one night she sneaked out of her family home and arranged to travel across the border to Bahrain, where she boarded a flight to begin her journey to the US.
Leaving her home and Saudi Arabia were against the wishes of her father, who is also her legal guardian, and doing either could have landed her in jail.
Danah, another Saudi woman who spoke to CNN, came to the United States to study and says she is fearful of returning home.  and quot;Girls at home are suffering,quot; she says.
Danah, another Saudi woman who spoke to CNN, came to the United States to study and says she is fearful of returning home. "Girls at home are suffering," she says.
It's not common for Saudis to seek asylum in the US. Between 2011 and 2005, more than 250,000 asylum applications were made to the United States, 111 were from Saudi nationals, 29 of which were approved, according to figures from the Department of Justice.
In the same time period, the US granted asylum to 30 British nationals. Britain is another US ally.

Wahhabism, the conservative official interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia, ensures Sharia Law in the country and helps protect the male guardian system.
Arwa and Moudi have both left Islam.
In September, CNN spoke to five Saudi women involved in the campaign to end the male guardianship system

In September, CNN spoke to five Saudi women involved in the campaign to end the male guardianship system 01:43
The short newsletter post, which she said was distributed in her local area, detailed how she and two others from her town renounced Islam on social media.
"The punishment for it can be death," the article reminds its readers.
Arwa argued that as she had publicly renounced Islam, had questioned and challenged the country's guardianship system, and had left her home and the country without the appropriate permissions from her guardian, it would not be safe to return.
She told CNN she feared being punished at home for bringing shame to her family and for not obeying her father, and was fearful the state would prosecute her if she did not return to Islam.
 
CNN asked the Saudi government if women such as Arwa and Moudi who had renounced Islam and had publicly criticized the Saudi government should be fearful of returning to Saudi Arabia. There was no response.

source:cnn