Pilgrim Non Grata in Mecca (Maureen Dowd feels excluded in Saudi Arabia)

New York Times ^ | March 10, 2010 | Maureen Dowd

[reaganaut1]

I was tempted to turn my abaya into a black masquerade cloak and sneak into Mecca, just hop over the Tropic of Cancer to the Red Sea and crash the ultimate heaven’s gate.

Sir Richard Burton, the 19th-century British adventurer, translator of “The Arabian Nights” and the “Kama Sutra” and self-described “amateur barbarian,” was an illicit pilgrim to the sacred black granite cube. He wore Arab garb and infiltrated the holiest place in Islam, the Kaaba, the “center of the Earth,” as he called it, in the Saudi city where the Prophet Muhammad was born.

But in the end, it seemed disrespectful, not to mention dangerous.

So on my odyssey to Saudi Arabia, I tried to learn about the religion that smashed into the American consciousness on 9/11 in a less sneaky way. And that’s when the paradox sunk in: It was nearly impossible for me to experience Islam in the cradle of Islam.

You don’t have to be a Catholic to go to the Vatican. You don’t have to be Jewish to go to the Western Wall (although if you’re a woman, you’re squeezed into a slice of it at the side). You don’t have to be Buddhist to hear the Dalai Lama speak — and have your picture snapped with him afterward.

A friend who often travels to Saudi Arabia for business said he thought that Medina, the site of Muhammad’s tomb, was beginning to “loosen up” for non-Muslims. (As the second holiest city in Islam, maybe they needed to try harder.) But the Saudis nixed a trip there.

I assumed I at least could go to a mosque at prayer time, as long as I wore an abaya and hijab, took off my shoes, and stayed in the back in a cramped, segregated women’s section.

[tet68]

It’s too bad Modo didn’t ritually convert while she was
over there, she would have gotten a real look at muslim
society.(although I suspect she would have liked the
domination and caning part, with the come to Allah ending).

[Jacob Kell]

I doubt that one can be both a Marxist and a Muslim. After all, Marxism is atheistic. Besides, Obie in one of his books stated that he shared his mother’s skepticism towards religion. The bum is just a socialist machine politician.

[mvpel]

This post of mine apparently didn’t clear the NYT moderators:

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Maureen: What you took as Prince Saud al-Faisal’s \”sly demeanor\” undoubtedly indicated that he thought you were hot and wanted to nail you. His tinted aviator glasses were to hide the fact that he was scrupulously ogling your body during every single moment of your time together.

When he nodded at your naive \”Islam had been hijacked as well\” remark, he was probably just nodding off to sleep at your tedious multi-culti bowing and scraping. Was Islam also being hijacked when President Thomas Jefferson sent the Marines to fight Islamic terrorists at \”the shores of Tripoli?\”

And the reason they don’t want you in their mosques is because they don’t want you to hear the various bloodthirsty anti-Semitic rants calling for the destruction of Israel, attacks on Americans and other non-Muslims, and to send money to help nuclear Iran - like the sermon of imam Namer Baqer al-Namer delivered in al-Awamiya in Qataif on July 11 2008, proudly posted on his website - since hearing that might offend your western sensibilities even more than the despicable treatment of women and non-Muslims in their nation.

You got a glimpse into the repressive, misogynistic, xenophobic core at the self-described center of the Islamic world, and yet you are still unable to \”connect the dots,\” as President Obama put it.

Amazing.

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[AppyPappy]

Actually, they don’t want her in there because she is an infidel woman.