Posted on 07/20/2006 5:50:47 AM PDT by Valin
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saudi Arabia is making progress in removing bigoted references to religious minorities in school textbooks, and U.S. trade sanctions will continue to be withheld, the State Department said Wednesday.
"We are very pleased with the reforms that King Abdullah and his government have been making," said John Hanford, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom.
"There still are some repugnant references," and Muslims as well as non-Muslims are among the targets, he said.
Hanford, who spoke to reporters amid briefings for members of Congress and their staffs, said he had found senior Saudi officials with whom he met sincere in eliminating "textbook intolerance." "They agreed the language is inexcusable," he said.
It will take a year or two to complete a comprehensive review by Saudi officials of the text books, Hanford said.
Among the promises elicited from the Saudis are prohibiting the use of government funds for intolerant text books, retraining school principals and teachers, retraining or reassigning imams who espouse intolerance, and incorporating human rights education into the standard education curricula, the U.S. official said.
Last November, the State Department cited Saudi Arabia for denying religious freedom to non-Muslims and found fault to a lesser degree with other allies including Israel, Belgium, France, Germany and Pakistan. But sanctions were not imposed.
"In far too many countries, governments fail to safeguard religious freedom," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in releasing a survey of 197 countries and territories.
Eight countries found to be of "particular concern" were Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam.
"Freedom of religion does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, the report said. "Islam is the official religion and all citizens must be Muslims."
I wonder how much progress we are making in the US?
Now they instead of calling us pigs, they now just call us piglets.
Which books will they burn?
Oh, for heaven's sake! Could we stop playing games and just admit that the Saudis are the enemy of everything our country stands for?
That's not the way things work.
"The King Who Would Be Reformer; Is There a Silver Lining Behind the New Saud?
MEMRI / The Weekly Standard ^ | 8/24/05 | Stephen Schwartz
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475617/posts
"The King Who Would Be Reformer; Is There a Silver Lining Behind the New Saud? ," By Stephen Schwartz.
ON AUGUST 2, CROWN Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, a man in his early 80s, ascended the throne of Saudi Arabia--and all hopes for reform in the Saudi kingdom began to be put to the test. For years, Saudi dissidents had speculated that Abdullah alone among the sons of Ibn Saud (1880-1953), founder of the kingdom, understood the dangers to Arabian society represented by Wahhabism, the extreme Islamic sect that Ibn Saud made the state religion. No tyranny lasts forever, and it was inevitable that economic and social development in the peninsula would undermine the alliance, based on intermarriage, of the governing House of Saud and the House of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, responsible for ideology and religion.
Popular opinion had it that one of Abdullah's four wives (out of some 30 he has married over the years) was Syrian, cosmopolitan, and had influenced him to tolerate Islamic and other intellectual unorthodoxy. It was further said that Abdullah encouraged the private practice of Sufism, or Islamic spirituality, and various traditional Islamic customs rigorously suppressed since the Wahhabi takeover in the 1920s. One forbidden observance--common among Muslims from West Africa to Indonesia--is the commemoration of the birthday of Muhammad, which the Wahhabis and Saudis reject on the ground that it resembles the Christian celebration of Jesus' birth.
Late last year when he was still only crown prince, Abdullah lent credence to speculation about his sympathies when he appeared at the funeral of Seyed Mohammad Alawi Al-Maliki, a non-Wahhabi cleric and leading Sufi teacher.
Al-Maliki, before his death, had been a prominent victim of Saudi repression; yet Abdullah praised him for his religious and patriotic fervor.
But aside from his reputed interest in Sufi mysticism, Abdullah had other incentives to follow a different road than that of his predecessor, King Fahd, and of Fahd's powerful brothers, Princes Sultan and Nayef. As Saudi defense minister, Sultan personally enriched himself on military contracts with the United States, and Nayef, the interior minister and an extreme Wahhabi, was the first leading figure in the kingdom to blame the atrocities of September 11, 2001, on Zionism. Fahd, Sultan, and Nayef were all members of the "Sudairi Seven," born of old Ibn Saud's favorite wife, Hussah bint Sudair. Abdullah, their half-brother, was outside the Sudairi circle.
All these men, admittedly, are old. Nevertheless, Abdullah may have just the necessary window to begin a transition to normality for his country, from its present standing as the richest but most backward ideological state in the world, a kind of Middle Eastern North Korea or Cuba.
(snip)
Also:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1669059/posts
Leading Saudi Sheik Pronounces Fatwa Against Hezbollah
Interesting
I know. I'm just having one of those days when I wish we could be honest.
Politics and honesty?
Nah, a profession of creative wording.
I know, I know. Wears me out.
"Mister President Bush, we are eliminating these books (points at pile of books) that contain the foul indoctrination and Jew-hatred you disapprove of. We will now use these books instead (points at sealed box of books)."
I know just what you mean.
Remember the object is not to go to war with as many countries as we can, but to change for the better a very backward part of the world. And this is going to take a long time. This is what the President means when he says this is going to be a long war. Will it work? I don't know as I've misplaced my crystal ball, but the alternative is not something that is in our history. 300 years from now I don't want some historian writing 'and then America went mad and killed millions of Muslims'.
Thanks for the link. When reading this kind of thing I always remember that the Saudis and Iran (and Egypt) are in a battle for leadership of the Islamic world.
I agree with that objective, too. I just think that lying to ourselves, about who our enemies are and what they want to do to us, doesn't help.
Could be I'm just getting old! 40 in two days :-).
This is laughable.
"Middle age is having a choice between two temptations and choosing the one that'll get you home earlier."
Dan Bennett
Happy Birthday.
How so?
According to WaPo very little progress is being made.
Look what's left "after" the intolerance is removed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901769.html
Some progress, eh?
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