Posted on 06/06/2006 12:38:01 AM PDT by ekeni
Monday, 5, June, 2006 (09, Jumada al-Ula, 1427)
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Western Media at It Again
Western media’s repeated criticism of Saudi Arabia betrays an inability to comprehend matters beyond the Western framework of thinking. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is the latest victim of the Western media’s malicious criticism. What has earned their wrath is a news item that inaccurately implied that King Abdullah had asked the chief editors of newspapers in the Gulf not to publish women’s photographs. This suggestion was made, according to the Western media, at the recent Gulf summit held in Riyadh.
The intolerant Western attitude toward the Muslim and Arab countries could be attributed largely to cultural differences on the one hand and the falling moral and social values in Western societies on the other.
One also wonders whether Western journalists know, for instance, anything about Jewish wedding customs, financial rights of Muslim women and the rich Islamic heritage. In general, they disapprove of the values and cultures of others and criticize anything that is not European.
Despite all the fuss about women, in the West they have been reduced to a commodity primarily for enjoyment and then for buying and selling. Women are exploited largely with the help of media advertisements and other conceivable forms of promotion.
On the other hand, Islam respects women and accords them their rights in measures far more than what the Jewish and Christian religions permit them to enjoy. Further, Islam recommends gentle treatment to allow them to maintain their natural femininity and chastity.
(Excerpt) Read more at arabnews.com ...
May Allah enlarge Hassan Tahsin's turdban.
"Islam recommends gentle treatment to allow them to maintain their natural femininity and chastity."
Such as blocking them from leaving burning buildings if they are not wearing scarves.
By the way there a little female blogger revolt going over in the good kingdom.
http://eveksa.blogspot.com/
This site gives some good background lol
http://www.sandmonkey.org/
I have some hope for these young Saudis. These Saudi Bloggers are going to have a impact
Well I did email Hassan for comment but as yet (surprise surprise) I have not had an answer. He must be checking his Koran and will be suffering from disappointment as he reads about beating his wife if she is "disobedient"(Mo alias Allah gives no definition of what he means by disobedient but the Koran gives Muslim males a "good" steer on that).
Of course the hadiths about womens spiritual and social status whilst menstruating are even worse.I imagine Hassan is deeply depressed or embarrassed at this moment.
This is closure to the truth. From RF Burton on VDH's blog:
Not long ago a young Saudi woman in Medina threw herself out of a taxi. Instead of driving to a negotiated destination, the taxi driver had changed course and headed for a secluded area. The young woman—convinced she was being kidnapped—leapt from the moving taxi, only to be struck by another car and killed. According to the Al-Watan newspaper, her proud father said, "My daughter acted courageously and that makes me happy." She had "risked her life in order to save her honor."
The young woman's death brought to mind an event I witnessed my first year here. It was a sunny afternoon in the sleepy Eastern Province town of Al-Khobar. A friend and I had stopped at an intersection for a red light. A white Buick was in the left lane ahead of us. A woman in an abbaya—the black robe women are forced to wear—sat in the backseat. Suddenly, the door flung open and the covered woman got out. The driver, a large Saudi man with white hair, jogged around the front of the car. Naively, I assumed she was going to be sick and he was coming to her aid. Instead, he shoved her violently back into the car.
"What the hell," I said.
"Don't get out of the car," Fred said. Fred had spent five years for every month I'd been in Arabia.
"She needs help. That guy could be kidnapping her."
"You interfere," Fred said objectively, "You'll be arrested and deported."
"You're kidding."
"Look around. You see anyone else running to help her?"
I looked at the people in the other cars around us. In one the driver looked straight ahead. In another, the driver smiled in amusement. In the rear-view mirror I saw a female passenger in the car behind us. She wore thick, dark sunglasses. She sat motionless. Perhaps she was blind.
"Don't get involved," Fred said.
Suddenly, the woman in the backseat of the Buick opened the door and stepped out. Her abbaya was unfastened. Her scarf and veil were gone. She had long, thick, black hair. She was a young Saudi woman, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She reached up to the sky and she cried, "Momma! Momma!" Blue nylon cord dangled from her wrists. The white-haired driver got out again and scrambled back around the front of the car. In a futile effort to resist, the young woman sprawled out on the road, stretching her arms out in front of her on the baking summer asphalt. The man pulled her arms behind her back and deftly tied them to her ankles. Then he opened the trunk of the Buick, lifted her up, and dropped her in. He closed the trunk, made a U-turn at the intersection, and disappeared into the sunlit afternoon. It was over in the time it takes a traffic light to change from red to green.
I was dumbstruck.
"You did the right thing," Fred said. "Over here, never get involved."
The next day I told my supervisor what I had seen.
"Fred's right. Don't ever get involved in a situation like that," he said, pacing in front of his desk. "You do, all you'll get for being the Good Samaritan is a trip to jail and a one-way ticket home. Even the police don't get involved. If you tried to stop that guy, right now you'd be sitting on a cement floor in the Khobar police station, along with fifty smelly inmates from God knows where, and that old guy still would have done whatever he was going to do. You can't stop that kind of thing. Besides, you're a foreigner. You don't have any rights over here."
That weekend I needed a drink, so I visited an American friend renown for the quality of his sid. Sid (short for sadikie, which means "friend" in Arabic) is pure, skull-popping white lightning, the kind of moonshine Robert Mitchum only dreamt of smuggling over the Appalachian Mountains in Thunder Road. In Arabia distilling whiskey is child's play for the Texans who ran Aramco's petroleum refineries. Unfortunately, for many expatriates sid becomes their best and final friend.
A Saudi named Ali was slouched on the couch in the living room, a tall glass of sid in his hand. After a couple of drinks I described what I had seen.
"The desert is full of voices," Ali said.
"Voices?"
"Of people buried out there."
"You think he killed her?"
"What else? He was the father or husband, probably her father. She did something to dishonor the family. Maybe the tribe," Ali said. "He lost face. He had to get it back."
"That's crazy."
"I know. It happened in my family."
Then Ali told us about his favorite aunt. One day his favorite aunt's father informed her that he had found her a husband. As is customary, she was allowed to meet her prospective husband once before the wedding. Less than impressed, after the meeting she told her father she didn't want to marry him. He was 30 years older than she. They fought about it for several weeks. Then one morning Ali's favorite aunt was dead.
"He went into her bedroom when she was asleep," Ali said, taking a long, long drink. "Then he put a pillow over her face and held it there until she stopped breathing. In the morning he reported to the police she died in her sleep."
"He killed his own daughter? There wasn't an investigation?"
"As far as the police were concerned, she died in her sleep. There was no evidence of violence. The matter was closed. Police don't get involved in matters of honor. Most of the time, the police aren't even called. The body is just taken out to the desert and buried. No one knows how many women are buried out there. When you are buried in the desert no one will ever find you. You just disappear. Happens all the time," Ali said, pouring himself another drink.
Happens all the time.
Last week a Kuwaiti named Adnan Al-Enezi murdered his 13-year-old daughter, Asma. After handcuffing and blindfolding his pleading daughter, Adnan Al-Enezi cut her throat in front of her two brothers and sister. He thought she was not a virgin. I wasn't surprised to hear that Mr. Enezi supported jihad and had established connections with known militants. Mental derangement rarely confines itself to a single segment of a person's life.
The Al-Arabiya news reported: "The murder report was the talk of the town in Kuwait, especially after people learned that forensic tests proved the girl was still a virgin and that she had not suffered any sexual assault." The italics are mine. Perhaps if forensics had found the girl was not a virgin, there would have been much less talk, though I'm sure for the sake of propriety the talking public would have preferred a pillow had been used instead of a knife.
I have lived in Saudi Arabia a long time. I know Fred and my supervisor gave me the right advice all those year ago. Still, whenever I hear of another woman being sacrificed on an imaginary altar of honor, I recall those trembling hands reaching up to the sky, and wonder which is worse: knowing I didn't do anything to help that young woman, or knowing that anything I would have done wouldn't have mattered anyway.
Why of course! They get to be one of the Jihadis' virgins!
Must resist the urge to rant on about the many unspeakable evils of Islam..... would be here for days....
Except when you need to beat them like a fractious camel, of course.
Women in Saudi Arabia can not drive,swim with their husbands and sons and must cover every part of their body. My friend was there for a year with her husband. She said it was a hell hole. She was riding on a rain and got up to move...gasp her ankle was revealed for one second. Some old crone, moral police creature hit her with a stick-nearly boke her ankle. Also, anyone who allows 11 young woman to be burned alive in a fire because their heads are not covered so they can not come out can not claim to value nor to respet women. The Muslim religion is despicable, and one of the reason is the way woman are treated.
Women in Islam are superior. Liberals are really tolerant. Islam is a religion of peace. Environmentalism is good for the economy. Abortion reduces the amount of crime. Affirmative action is anti-racist. What's old is new. Good is evil. Black is white. Excuse me while I go to the next zebra crossing...
Speak for yourself there, pard.
Please give a direct link to VDH's Blog if you can - I would very much like to read more.
Thank you in advance.
Thank you Sir.
Ah - its Victor Hansons blog! Duh am I an idiot. I should be used to what "VDH" stands for on FR.
Islam respects women....
It sure is hard to see.
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