Latest Updates: saudi arabia RSS

  • johnpi 8:55 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , saudi arabia

    Conservative activists rebel against Fox News: Saudi ownership Is ‘really dangerous for America.’

    Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.

    Last weekend, at the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis, Joseph Farah, publisher of the far right WorldNetDaily, blasted Fox News for its relationship with Alwaleed. Farah noted correctly that Alwaleed had boasted in the past about forcing Fox News to change its content relating to its coverage of riots in Paris, and warned that such foreign ownership of American media is “really dangerous.” ThinkProgress was at the speech and observed attendees of the conference murmuring and shaking their heads in disapproval.

    The Saudis get demonized from every point on the US political spectrum. The writer of the above at the liberal Think Progress blog then points out:

    With the Citizens United Supreme Court decision essentially freeing corporations to spend unlimited amounts in campaigns, theoretically Alwaleed can pressure the American corporations he owns stock in to spend millions — or even billions — of dollars attacking candidates he opposes.

    Problem here is that the Saudis sometimes appear in American political discourse as a proxy for ’scary Muslims,’ and so I see these kind of comments as skewing dangerously close to anti-Muslim fearmongering.

     

  • johnpi 1:02 am on February 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , saudi arabia, ,

    Working Saudi women spend more than a third of their salaries on drivers and taxis. The solution is – women-only buses.

    It could be promoted as a ‘green’ solution to the problem – and the Saudis are all about marketing themselves as ‘green friendly’ right now. By maintaining the ban on women driving they are preventing more cars from being on the road. Very responsible of them…

     

  • johnpi 10:30 pm on January 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , saudi arabia,

    In wake of US supreme court decision allowing unlimited corporate cash in elections, progressives highlight Saudi Arabia as a country that will take advantage.

    Saudi Arabia’s economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions. “It’s one of the biggest threats that we are facing,” said Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change and a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry. [...] Climate talks posed a bigger threat, Sabban said, and subsidies for the development of renewable energy were distorting market economics in the sector, he said.”

    Presumably because of the Citizens United ruling, Saudi Arabian-owned subsidiaries operating in the United States can now spend unlimited amounts advocating the defeat of candidates who support clean energy legislation. According to a ThinkProgress investigation, foreign-oil backed lobbyists in America are already instigating efforts to kill clean energy legislation.

    Juan Cole takes this apart a bit, pointing out some interest in Saudi Arabia for green energy, but I’m skeptical of his skepticism. It wasn’t long ago that he belittled the extremist threat in Pakistan as largely limited to the ethnic Pashtun regions of that country, and that certainly turned out to be wrong (though wrong in service of the greater good of puncturing inflated rhetoric at the time about the Taliban being poised to overthrow the Pakistan government).

     

  • arif 11:38 am on January 21, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , saudi arabia

    Saudi cleric claims there is no religious justification for child marriage. Not that they own a monopoly over world’s diverse Muslim cultural practices, but whatever helps.

     

  • johnpi 5:15 pm on January 20, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , saudi arabia, ,

    This story is a few weeks old but we never blogged it here at TI: Saudi royal family member produces a rap video, then disappears.

    The video is against suicide and encourages troubled people to find solace in God.

    In a country in which music and dancing are forbidden, the public screening of any film results in a strict crackdown and suicide is the most taboo subject imaginable, it would be difficult for Prince Faisal Bin Mansour bin Thunayan Al Saud to have transgressed more cultural fault lines than by making an MTV-style rap video.

     

  • johnpi 11:19 pm on January 13, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia, ,

    The dirty seven letter words of Saudi Arabia.

    In Saudi, if you would like to be dismissed and have everything you write or say never taken seriously, all you have to do is to declare yourself a liberal or secularist. That’s it. You’re done. You might as well be screaming in a thunder storm.
    ….

    There is no clear definition of liberalism and secularism in Saudi. However in a dichotomy they seem to be the opposite of being a God-fearing decent person.

    For example, Saudis who believe that sciences and math should be the focus of the school day and not Islamic studies get categorized as secular. If they think that the PVPV should be merged with the police then they most definitely have secularist tendencies. Any type of idea related to keeping up with the rest of the world is deemed secularism. Insinuating that the ban on women driving goes against basic human rights, will brand them liberal.

     

  • johnpi 11:44 pm on January 6, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , saudi arabia,

    Responses in the national medias of countries that are on the new list of states whose citizens will receive heightened security attention entering the US in the wake of the Flight 253 attack.

    Pakistan:

    In forcing the administration to be reactive and blindly discriminatory in the aftermath of the bombing attempt, Al Qaeda may have scored an even more significant ideological victory than would have been afforded by an attack on a plane.

    Lebanon:

    [Quoting an American analyst] “The vast majority of the Lebanese have nothing, and want nothing, to do with terrorism. And we should want them and welcome them here in the United States,” he said.

    Saudi Arabia:

    The extra check means, he said [Abdul Rahman Al-Zamil, president of the Riyadh-based Export Development Center], Saudi companies would not be able to send their executives and representatives to the US easily.

    “No doubt, the new measures will also affect delegations that play a big role in boosting trade ties,” he said.

    Al-Zamil said most countries would avoid participation in exhibitions or conferences in the US in order to avoid a possibility of their officials and representatives being harassed and getting into trouble in the US.

    “This measure is going to affect major projects in the Kingdom, as some products related to these projects are being manufactured in the US and engineers from Saudi Arabia have to go there to inspect them. Importing these products from other countries will affect the standards set by the projects,” he pointed out.

     

  • johnpi 10:13 am on January 1, 2010 | 7 Permalink | Reply
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    Top 10 good news stories from the Muslim world in the last year, according to Juan Cole.

    10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University.

    9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years.

    8. A Pew Forum on Religion and Life poll finds that American Muslims are unusual in the degree to which they are integrated into mainstream American society and demonstrate moderate attitudes, condemning religious extremism and violence.

    7. The information revolution is making strides in the Arab world.

    6. Albania has averaged 10 percent a year growth for each of the last four years, and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2009.

    5. The small Gulf oil monarchy of Kuwait took steps toward greater democracy and rule of law.

    4. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world at about 230 mn., had successful parliamentary elections in 2009, further consolidating the country’s decade-old democracy.

    3. Turkey, which averaged 5.8 percent a year economic growth between 2002 and 2008, was slowed but not devastated by the world’s financial crisis.

    2. Stability returned to Lebanon.

    1. The greatest political awakening in Iran for 30 years.

     

  • johnpi 10:35 am on December 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Abdulmutallab praised the 9/11 attacks as a teenager.

    The bomber also praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was a teenager, telling one schoolfriend they were “an act of war”. The unnamed friend said: “We were talking about 9/11. I was saying under no circumstances could it ever be OK to kill all those innocent people. He was much more equivocal.

    “He called 9/11 an act of war – American troops were on Saudi soil and had humiliated Muslim countries so these actions might be necessary. That’s the only time I had an argument with him.”

    US troops were invited into Saudi Arabia by the royal family. There is precedent for making military alliances with Western nations. No less an authority than Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Mr. Wahhabism) and Ibn Saud entered into an offensive alliance with the English to help bring down the Ottoman empire, since it was unconscionable to them as ethnic supremacists that a Turk could be considered equal to an Arab, let alone govern Arabs. “Abd al-Wahhab was, in part reacting to the old ethnocentric belief tht only Arabs can represent the one true and authentic Islam.”

    You can’t condemn one and not the other without being a hypocrite, but hypocrisy was never a problem for Wahhabis:

    While consistently condemning non-Muslim influences and rejecting any form of cooperation with the West, in reality the Wahhabis were incited and supported by English colonialists to rebel against the Ottomans, which effectively meant that Wahhabis sided with non-Muslim Englishmen against their Muslim Ottoman enemies. Moreover, while condemning all forms of nationalism as an evil Western invention, in reality Wahhabism was a pro-Arab nationalistic movement that rejected Turkish dominance over Arabs under the guise of defending the one true Islam.

     

  • johnpi 11:31 am on December 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , saudi arabia, tatweer program

    What is the Tatweer program in Saudi Arabia? Asma Uddin has an article at AltMuslim about Saudi Arabia’s new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) that provides some fascinating background information about the Tatweer program that I thought should be highlighted.

    …King Abdullah launched the Tatweer programme as an educational reform body independent from the country’s ministry of education in 2006. The programme’s goal is not only to see more students graduate prepared for jobs but also to create a citizenry that is open and able to deal with religious differences – and less likely to harbour extremism.

    Tatweer reform involves changing school curricula throughout the country to include more open debate and discussion as opposed to rote memorisation. Yet, as Kelly McEvers’ Slate.com article “Changing the Way Saudis Learn” reveals, little has changed in Saudi Tatweer schools. Even while students are encouraged to look at varying perspectives on any given issue, the understanding is always that the final – and in other words, correct – point of view can be found with the kingdom’s senior clerics. Moreover, Nina Shea’s 2008 study of Saudi curricula shows that hatred of the non-Wahhabi continues to permeate public school textbooks from first-grade on, teaching students that “It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet,” and “True belief means … that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly.”

    This type of top-down control of discourse not only espouses hatred but also limits the free-flowing marketplace of ideas, where viewpoints are distinguished on the basis of their substance, persuasive power and/or utility. Until ideas can flourish in Saudi without the authoritative power of the government, modernisation will never be possible.

     

  • johnpi 4:21 pm on December 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , saudi arabia

    Head of Saudi religious police says gender mixing is halal.

    The head of the Saudi religious police came out last week and declared that gender mixing “was part of normal life for the Ummah [Islamic nation] and its societies.” He continued:

    Those who prohibit the mixing of the genders actually live it in their real lives, which is an objectionable contradiction,” he said. “In many Muslim houses – even those of Muslims who say mixing is haram [forbidden]– you can find female servants working around unrelated males.”

    Religious and political intrigue ensued:

    Sheikh Al Ghamdi’s comments caused a flood of criticism from hardline Saudi religious figures, some of whom have appeared on Saudi television accusing the sheikh of threatening the place of the religious police in the kingdom.

    Then on Tuesday, unconfirmed rumors that Al Ghamdi has also been fired were all over the Saudi press.

    “Everyone is shocked,” Eman Al Nafjan, an influential Saudi blogger, told The Media Line. “Nobody knows what’s going on.”

    “The way Sheikh Ghamdi phrased his comments it was interpreted as him speaking on behalf of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” she said. “That’s probably what got the religious police to work behind the scenes to get him dismissed, but apparently it wasn’t the king who dismissed him so maybe he will intervene.”

     

  • johnpi 11:57 am on December 16, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Allah's punishment, , Jeddah, , , saudi arabia

    Last month in Saudi Arabia, flash floods in Jeddah killed 120 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Unprecedented criticism is breaking out there now directed at government incompetence and negligence for not building a functioning sewer system despite the country’s wealth.

    A Saudi opposition group called for elections in the Gulf monarchy and criticized royal family members after heavy flooding devastated the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah.
    ….

    The level of open criticism is unusual in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy established in 1932 by King Abdul Aziz, where political dissent isn’t tolerated by the royal family.

    This blogger, a medical student based in Jeddah, is imploring against those who have argued that the flood may have been a punishment or signs from Allah (swt), and are thereby dilluting the campaign to hold officials accountable for negligence.

    What happened could and might be a result of our sins. It could be a wake up call to return to Allah. It could be hidden messages to guide some people or whatever. But we mostly forget that it was the result of negligence coming out from people who had powers and trust to fix things in this city.
    ….

    …please, stop saying we deserved Allah’s punishment and just sit there as if you’re an Imam or something. Allah’s punishment it is, but it doesn’t mean that there are people we shouldn’t draw our attention to sue!!!

     

  • johnpi 9:49 am on December 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia

    Saudi Arabia denies it participated in extraordinary rendition to the US of Iranian scientist.

     

  • johnpi 8:02 am on December 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Saudi Arabia participates in extraordinary rendition during Hajj, ‘hands missing Iran nuclear scientist to US.’ Scientist was kidnapped while going on Mecca pilgrimage.

    An Iranian nuclear scientist who went missing in Saudi Arabia has been “handed over by Riyadh to Washington,” Mehr news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting Tehran’s foreign ministry spokesman.

    “Shahram Amiri, Iran’s nuclear scientist who had gone to hajj in Saudi Arabia, was handed over by Riyadh to Washington,” Ramin Mehmanparast told Mehr, referring to umra, a lesser pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites.

    The spokesman said Amiri was one of 11 Iranian detainees currently held in US jails. His statement was the first acknowledgement by Tehran that Amiri was a nuclear scientist.

    Iranian officials have previously said Amiri went missing in Saudi Arabia soon after he landed there as a pilgrim earlier this year.

    It sounds like anybody who is significantly involved with the Iranian nuclear program should not go on Hajj or Umrah.

     

  • wangdaiyu 10:35 pm on December 7, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , lego, saudi arabia, women driving

    A friend started a new humorous blog and asked me for a shout out. All posts will be enacted in Lego. Here is the first installment on the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia.

    http://abupokemon.wordpress.com

     

  • johnpi 10:25 am on December 6, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
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    The Taliban movement in Afghanistan, when it controlled large parts of the north and west of that country in the 1990s, had a goal of “forced reIslamization” (Rashid’s phrase) toward the other ethnic peoples they gained control over in placed like Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. The “correct” practice they sought to instill in local populations was – of course – Wahhabi-Salafism.

    So can “forced reIslamization” work? the answer is ‘yes,’ and it’s been done before – in Saudi Arabia. But it comes with a price, and by looking at the Saudi-Wahhabi project we can estimate and make some projections.

    Khalid Abou El Fadl writes about it in The Great Theft.

    …the various Wahhabi rebellions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very bloody, as the Wahhabis indiscriminately slaughtered Muslims especially those belonging to Sufi orders and the Shi’i sect. In 1802, for example, the Wahhabis executed a large number of Sunnis in Mecca and Medina, whom they considered for one reason or another heretical. The number of those executed or massacred by the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance has never been counted, but from historical accounts it is clear that it is in the tens of thousands if not more. In the course of the second conquest of the Arabian peninsula, for instance, acting under orders from Ibn Sa’ud, the Wahhabis carried out 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations.

    So what would be the comparable figures for executions and amputations today in Afghanistan? I’m going to have to make a few assumptions here, but follow along.

    The population of Afghanistan today is roughly equivalent to that of Saudi Arabia – around 28 million. The Saudi population was probably around 3 million in the 1800s. Assuming Afghanstan’s population has always been close to Saudi Arabia’s, we can set up simple equations:

    40,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million. And,

    350,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million.

    Among today’s population in Afghanistan, if the Taliban executed an equivalent proportion of the population for heresy that number would be 373,333.

    An equivalent proportion of amputations among the currently living Afghan population would be approximately 3.2 million.

    El Fadl refers to these figures as only accounting for those slain in the “second conquest,” most likely the “heretical Sunnis.” So we should probably double these numbers (at least) to capture the slain and disfigured Sufi and Shia.

    So there you have it: The price in lives would be over a half million, and the cost in amputations would be more than 6 million, following the historical Saudi model of ‘forced reIslamization.’

     

  • johnpi 8:54 pm on November 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia,

    Indonesian Muslim woman tells CNN her story of being made a sex slave in Saudi Arabia (video).

     

  • johnpi 11:13 pm on November 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia

    The history of dueling fatwas may be coming to an end.

    Nearly a year after Saudi King Abdullah warned religious scholars that issuing careless fatwas gives extremists credibility as religious experts, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Call, Guidance and Endowment has finally said enough is enough.

    Recently the Ministry issued a memo that fatwas were not to be issued to just anybody asking for one. The Ministry has ordered that Saudi imams refer people seeking fatwas to the Senior Board of Ulema. Apparently the Ulema got tired of having their own fatwas contradicted by some obscure rural cleric who thinks of himself as a religious scholar.

    This new rule, although long overdue, thrills me to no end. If ever there was an aspect of Islam that has been so thoroughly abused by people who have no idea what they’re doing it’s the fatwa.

     

  • johnpi 2:15 pm on November 11, 2009 | 14 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 'Islam under siege', , , , , , , , , , , , , saudi arabia, , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.

    Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
    ….

    Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
    ….

    Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

     

  • aziz 9:07 am on November 11, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , saudi arabia, Shi'a crescent

    Iran is throwing its weight around and getting allup in Saudi Arabia’s face.

    I look forward to seeing what John has to say about this…

     

  • johnpi 6:13 am on November 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia,

    This spring a female Saudi Arabian blogger, Hedayah Darwish, published an expose about women reporters in that country suffering sexual harassment and having to sleep with their bosses to keep jobs and get promotions. She was promptly villified and put upon by her fellow Saudi female journalists. It seemed that in a country where women are considered always to blame for sexual misconduct, her report was taken to impugn all Saudi female journalists, rather than prompting a review of the conduct of male publishers and editors who wield the power to coerce sexual favors. And the Saudi female journalists played along, with 13 of them lodging complaints against Darwish on Saudi Journalists Association letterhead.

    I was reminded of this story tonight when I saw this:

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 11:07 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: saudi arabia, , ,

    Saudiwoman blogs about the issue of runaway girls and women in Saudi Arabia, but she starts with this description of life in ultra-conservative Saudi families.

    Ultra-conservative Saudi families, and they are a majority, have a general dynamic that few Saudis could deny. Like old-fashioned western family ideologies, the father is the breadwinner, the mother takes care of the home-front, the sons are served and tolerated and the daughters are the bit of fluff that flutters around the house.

    But unlike most other cultures, daughters also have to contend with constant supervision of their every move. A job that some brothers feel falls on their shoulders. No matter what age a woman is, many families believe that as long as she is single, she is a liability. This translates into horrific intrusions of privacy and personal freedom. In one extreme case, a family I know has no locks on any of the doors including the bathroom doors, so that to insure the daughters cannot seclude themselves and do anything inappropriate; pre-approval of clothing, whether at home or when leaving the house, is common.

    A friend of mine once told me she had to sit for over two hours in an uncomfortable position because she had pajama pants on and was afraid her father, who had come early from work, would see them. And this is not only with teenage girls, but also adult women… even divorced mothers. So what’s a girl to do in this situation? Many go by the Arabic saying that translates into “a woman has only three places in this world: her family’s home, her husband’s home or her grave”.

    So the majority wait patiently for their knight to rescue them, others commit suicide and a few run away.

     

  • johnpi 10:23 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: black ribbon campaign, male guardianship, saudi arabia

    ‘Black ribbon’ campaign: Saudi women launch domestic and international campaign to end the kingdom’s male guardianship laws.

    A group of Saudi women have launched an international campaign against the kingdom’s male guardianship law, on the anniversary of a prominent protest, in which dozens of Saudi women publicly drove their cars through the country’s capital.

    The campaign calls on supporters all over the world to tie a black ribbon around their wrist signifying a call for Saudi women to be given equal rights to men and an end to the male guardianship system, in which Saudi women are represented by men in all public and official spheres of life.

    “We are calling on everybody, both Saudi and non-Saudi, to show their support of Saudi women,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, the leader of the campaign, told The Media Line. “It’s not just about the right to drive, it’s everything,” she said. “We want to have our lives back, which the male guardianship system took from us. So we are calling for everyone to wear this black ribbon and spread the word.”

    A statement by campaign organizers called for women to be given “rights to marry, divorce, inherit, gain custody of children, travel, work, study, drive cars and live on an equal footing with man.”

    “We, Saudi women activists, appeal to all those who support Saudi women’s rights, inside and outside the Kingdom, to participate in the campaign by wearing a black ribbon on their wrists as a symbolic and peaceful gesture of their advocacy to Saudi women’s rights,” the statement read.

    Under the motto “we will not untie our ribbon until Saudi women enjoy their rights as adult citizens”, the “Black Ribbon Campaign” was launched Friday to mark the anniversary of a famous event on November 6, 1990, in which 47 Saudi women publicly drove cars through the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in a protest calling for Saudi women to be given the right to drive. The women were subsequently detained by Saudi police, had their passports confiscated, and some were fired from their jobs.

     

  • johnpi 2:06 pm on November 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , saudi arabia

    Cultural disjoint: Saudi TV presenters covered from head to toe.

    A new TV show that discusses issues concerning teenage girls and female university students was recently broadcast with Saudi presenters dressed in black from head to toe, the Saudi English-language Arab News reported on Thursday.

    What’s the point of having a televised talk show where people are completely obscured? The complete covering defeats the purpose and function of a visual medium. Why not just have a black screen instead, or perhaps go to radio…

    I suppose without some visual distraction the strident among us would start regulating voice…

    Sisters – If you have a naturally soft voice, try to make it more ‘rough’ – so as not to encourage the one who may have illness in thier heart. Indeed in the extra effort this involves will come extra reward inshaAllah for wanting to please Allah

    At some point it becomes the absolute responsibility of the one with ‘illness in his heart’ to exercise self-control, rather than exhorting women to distort themselves beyond recognition to accommodate weakness.

     

  • johnpi 8:44 am on November 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , saudi arabia,

    Over 5,000 people convert to Islam through mobile hotline.

    Any person can suggest names of non-Muslims he thinks might convert to Islam through text messages to the hotline, along with their phone numbers and the language they speak.

    Later, preachers would call these non-Muslims and try to introduce them to Islam, without revealing the number of the person who suggested their names.

    Preachers would call again if the person showed a desire to continue receiving these phone calls, Okaz said, adding that around 800,000 phone calls were made, costing 120,000 Saudi Riyals ($32,000).

     

  • johnpi 10:31 am on November 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , saudi arabia,

    Saudi Arabia is serious about training a cadre of female firefighters.

    A new batch of Saudi female firefighters graduated from a civil protection course on Monday, bringing the total number of Saudi women trained in fire suppression to over 500.
    ….

    Training women in firefighting is new to the kingdom.

    Wajeha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, said the trend was a change from previous attempts to keep women out of the public eye.

    “It’s great,” she told The Media Line. “Don’t forget that women in this society are treated as irresponsible people. They always have to have a man to do things for them, so many thought this was only a show. Very few welcomed the idea.”

    Response inside Saudi Arabia continues to be mixed.

    Several people commented on their uniforms, with some complaining that they were not Islamic. One reader wrote that such courses should be obligatory in all universities and colleges, while another said that calling these graduates firefighters was “an insult to real male firemen.”

    The story does not say it, but there is no doubt the genesis of the program was the 2002 fire at a Mecca girls school where 14 died and 50 were injured when Muttawa forced the students back into the burning building because they were improperly covered. They also wouldn’t allow firefighters to physically assist the girls for fear of sexual enticement.

     

  • johnpi 8:19 am on October 26, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saudi arabia, ,

    Saudi Arabia’s king moved swiftly to pardon a female reporter who had been sentenced to 60 lashes for working for a news outlet that produced a story about a Saudi man’s raunchy single sex life.

    The reporter, Rosanna al-Yami, said earlier that the verdict was intended to be “a punishment for all journalists through me.”

     

  • johnpi 5:39 pm on October 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , saudi arabia, ,

    Arbitrary shariah: Saudi judge orders female journalist to be flogged for being associated with Lebanese TV station.

    A court on Saturday sentenced a female Saudi journalist to receive 60 lashes for her links with a Saudi-owned Lebanese TV network which broadcast a provocative racy show in July.

    Rosanna al-Yami said a Jeddah judge dropped all charges that she had been directly involved with a program on Beirut-based network LBC in which a Saudi man boasted of his sex life, outraging Saudi conservatives and leading to the man’s imprisonment.

    However, Yami said the judge sentenced her to 60 lashes for having been a part-time employee for LBC’s Saudi operations. The judge said that LBC had lacked the appropriate operating license.

    “It’s a punishment for all journalists through me,” Yami told AFP by telephone.

    “They just said the channel was illegal. But the Saudi minister of information himself appeared on LBC a couple week ago,” she said.

     

  • johnpi 9:04 pm on October 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , saudi arabia,

    Recently, US Senator Al Franken introduced an amendment that would give US citizens working for military contractors access to US courts if they have been raped by other contractor employees. Thirty senators – all Republicans – voted no.

    Someone has created a website, http://www.republicansforrape.org for the “thirty legislators who were brave enough to stand up in defense of rape and vote against Senator Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment to the 2009 Defense Appropriations bill.”

    The satirical blog writers couldn’t resist a Saudi Arabia analogy:

    (More …)

     

  • thabet 12:40 pm on October 12, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , saudi arabia, stateless people

    3,000 Rohingya families await deportation after release from prison:

    They have been described as some of the world’s most persecuted refugees, and among the most forgotten, too. During my imprisonment in Jeddah I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma.

    Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.

    There are about 3,000 families of Burmese Muslims in Mecca and Jeddah prisons awaiting deportation. Women and children are held in separate prisons nearby. The only contact the men have with their wives and children is through mobile phones.

     

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