She'd get my vote! Hubba hubba!
Posted on 09/25/2011 6:06:31 AM PDT by AnAmericanAbroad
Saudi King Abdullah announced on Sunday he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, the only public polls in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
I honestly have no idea who they would vote for.
Saudis are a different type; knew a guy from Dubai, living in Prague with his wife, also from Dubai. She never wore a covering or headscarf, drove, went out with her lady friends. About the only difference between Mahmoud and Khadija from everyone else was they didn’t drink, and didn’t eat pork. Oh yeah, they were spectacularly rich, too! His dad’s a sheik if I recall correctly. They were westernized. They both spoke excellent Czech, too, far better than I can muster.
Needless to say, I don’t see that happening in the Kingdom (acting like Westerners), to be honest. At least, not for the next 600 years or so. But then again, my friends were from Dubai, not the KSA.
He’ll be sorry. Sixty percent of them consistently vote for the candidate who promises to take care of them. The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.
She'd get my vote! Hubba hubba!
What a lot of folks may not even be aware of is, that Saudi Arabia wasn’t even allowing or holding municipal elections at all until just very recently in April as part of the Family’s concern over the “Arab Spring”. There were Municipal polls for municipal councils in 2005, but that was the first time in over 40 years, and from 2005 until now nothing.
At the time of consideration for such polls, there was some discussion about allowing women to vote in the polls.
So this is all part of concerns and reforms to stem any possible activism in the Kingdom from Baathist types (Arab Socialists like Iraq had) and such.
However, one of the concerns some Saudi men have regarding the moves to begin opening up voting rights to women is, even though women wear the Hijab – in “conservative” black and covering most of their body except the upper nose, eyes, and eye brows – that their same wives (and yes girl friends) really like to wear “beads” (necklace of various beads like used in New Orleans, and also other types of jewelry including of course gold) under the garb … that way one can “hear the beads click” just showing “you’re cool” … And the concern express by some Saudi men is, opening up the vote to them will only mean that “they (women) will simply vote themselves beads …. Selfish and dangerous …”
In that event, His Highness has nothing to worry about! Aside from being the King, he’s the Number 1 sugar-daddy in the whole Kingdom! The Royal Family doles out the money like there’s no tomorrow......keeps the peasants in bread and circuses.
Will the men just be allowed to appear at the polls and be given two ballots, one for the husband’s vote and the other to be filled out by the husband for the wife’s vote?
Welllllp, Saudia Arabia will now add socialism to it’s woes.
Good points. Regarding the jingly jewelry, I think there’s an injunction against that sort of thing in the Qur’an, if I recall correctly.
Just goes to show you, that outward displays of piety only serve to mask the hypocrisy in the heart.
The king’s offer is a crock. I got that.
Its a slippery slope. First you allow women to vote, then before you know it you’ll have firemen putting out the fire at girls schools rather than letting them burn with the girls inside because they are girls and it would violate sharia to save girls.
Its a slippery slope.
Jeez. What a bunch of “glass half empty” people. Does anyone realize just how significant something like this is in Saudi Arabia? Regardless of whatever parsing one can do with this, this is still a step in the right direction.
Yes as you say Dubai is _very_ different.
“they were spectacularly rich”
This fact actually really angers me. Someone I know from college is from the region, and his father has a company who makes millions from the Saudis. So this guy just buys whatever he wants, houses, cars, whatever. They’re not saudi themselves, but still, their money froms from the saudi oil money that we give them. The same oil money they use to fund mosques all over America.
Anything to do with the saudis just makes me mad. We really shouldn’t buy a drop of their nasty oil. Islam is cancer, and we are paying for it to be transplanted into us.
No it isn’t. Learn more.
Nah, it’s not just you. Even the headline pissed me off.
I think people underestimate the significance of this event....it is a major step (in theory). What remains to be seen is how it’s put into practice.
But, as you said, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
What can I say? Them’s the breaks. That region just happens to be sitting pretty on an exceptionally vital natural resource. It’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Sure, we should be using our own natural resources to lessen our dependence on their natural resources, but for a variety of factors, both political and economic, we don’t. Nothing changes until that fact changes.
Besides, in the past, Dubai’s principal export was pearls. So at least they have that. The Saudis? Not so much outside of oil, aside from religious tourism.
Not that much difference, “Ayatollah” is a clerical title, roughly comperable to “Archbishop”.
Us making the choice to boycott saudi oil would change that fact. It would force the oil companies to purchase elsewhere.
We can change ANYTHING we choose to change. Unfortunately, most people have a “cookie crumbles” mentality!
Good PR move and a move in the direction of the modern world.
Next will be a law permitting them to leave the house so they can get to the polls.
LOL! I agree women should not vote! Gotta think with your brain!
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