I know that's not a surprise to any of us, but when I read actual details of what life is like, particularly for women, in Saudi I can't help but feel horrified. Take for example this article in the NY Sun. Allahpundit linked to the piece because it reports of the possibility that the Saudis may ban the letter X because it looks too much like a Christian cross - and Allah has determined from research that the report is accurate. As crazy and outrageous as that is, what sickened me came a few paragraphs later:
The Saudi commission has shaped life and death: declared jihad against Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, banished women from public life, and forced piety at the tip of the whip and the sword. Its edicts have hindered business, education, travel, women's rights, and life itself, creating a fertile ground for terrorism and producing the 15 Saudis who participated in the September 11, 2001, attacks -- and many others like them.
Among the commission's deeds is the famed 1974 fatwa -- issued by its blind leader at the time, Sheik Abdul Aziz Ben Baz -- which declared that the Earth was flat and immobile. In a book issued by the Islamic University of Medina, the sheik argued: "If the earth is rotating, as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom." Another bright light of the commission, Sheik Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, recently stopped a government reform proposal aimed at creating work for women by allowing them to replace male sales clerks in women's clothing stores. Sheik al-Sheikh damned the idea, saying it was a step "towards immorality and hellfire." The underlying logic is breathtaking: Women are more protected by buying their knickers from men! Over the years, the commission has rendered Saudi Arabia a true kingdom of darkness. Movie theaters are banned, as are sculptures, paintings, and music, and the mixing of sexes in public.The commission really has it in for women. They must don the all-enveloping veil, or niqab, in public; they cannot drive themselves nor ride anywhere without a male guardian, and they cannot travel alone domestically or abroad.
The commission also excels at banning the construction of houses of worship -- other than mosques -- even though the majority of the 8 million expatriates working in the kingdom come from Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths. Indeed, celebrating a private Sunday Mass inside a home could lead to jail, public lashings, and expulsion.
One of the most criminal travesties committed by the commission's foot soldiers, the Mutawaeen, or religious police, was dramatically reported by the muzzled Saudi press itself on Friday, March 15, 2002, when the Mutawaeen forcibly prevented girls fleeing a burning school from leaving the building because they were "improperly dressed."
The day after, the Saudi Gazette newspaper quoted witnesses as saying the police stopped men who tried to help the girls, warning the men: "It is sinful to approach them."
Of the 800 teenage pupils in Mecca, 15 burned to death and more than 50 were injured. Yet, the commission and its royal enablers thrive.
Conform to the rules; nothing else matters, not even innocent human life. Actually, in the eyes of those on the commission, these girls weren't innocent because they broke the rules by not wearing commission-approved clothing. Their punishment: suffer and die by being burned alive.
I know I'm not writing anything that's new to those who are familiar with what life is like for people living in countries run by radical Islamic leaders, but each time I read stories like this one I'm still mortified. I can't help but think what a sad and cruel stroke of fate it is to be born into Islam in Saudi Arabia, or any radical Islamic culture for that matter. To be born in a country like this leads to a lifetime filled with more fear and cruelty than those lucky enough to be born in the US can imagine.






Comments (22)
This is why we must make it... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Scott | January 16, 2007 10:39 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
This is why we must make it clear to the world that we will not submit. Ever.
1. Posted by Scott | January 16, 2007 10:39 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 10:39
2. Posted by mojo | January 16, 2007 10:55 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Malignant idiots. The whole country is full of malignant idiots...
2. Posted by mojo | January 16, 2007 10:55 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 10:55
3. Posted by jpm100 | January 16, 2007 10:56 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Yet we've done nothing to stop the spread of radical islam (sans those directly involved in violence and funding) from establishing a growing foothold here.
3. Posted by jpm100 | January 16, 2007 10:56 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 10:56
4. Posted by Jeff | January 16, 2007 11:28 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
A large number of American mosques and Islamic "charities" are fund by these savages. Close them all down ... they are simply Consulates for Terrorism ...
4. Posted by Jeff | January 16, 2007 11:28 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 11:28
5. Posted by Mac Lorry | January 16, 2007 11:32 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Nuclear energy and weapons resulted largely from research done by Jewish scientists. We need to keep shoving that fact in the faces of practitioners and supporters of radical Islam and soon there will be a fatwa declaring nuclear technology is evil and practitioners of it as infidels.
5. Posted by Mac Lorry | January 16, 2007 11:32 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 11:32
6. Posted by JohnAnnArbor | January 16, 2007 11:57 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
We need to keep shoving that fact in the faces of practitioners and supporters of radical Islam and soon there will be a fatwa declaring nuclear technology is evil and practitioners of it as infidels.
The Nazis actually tried to define and marginalize "Jewish Physics" for a while.
6. Posted by JohnAnnArbor | January 16, 2007 11:57 AM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 11:57
7. Posted by observer 5 | January 16, 2007 1:01 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
The Saudi commission has shaped life and death: declared jihad against Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan,
Well, so they can't be all bad. They helped liberate millions by helping the Evil Empire to fall.
Of course, there was a little "blowback," but I'd rather be facing a few rag-tag terrorists (it's too bad we're too incompetent to catch or kill OBL) than worrying about the Group of Soviet Forces in Europe, the Warsaw Pact, and the Strategic Rocket Forces of the USSR on alert, with about 10 megatons in MIRVed warheads targeting my city.
How soon people forget.
7. Posted by observer 5 | January 16, 2007 1:01 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 13:01
8. Posted by blackcat77 | January 16, 2007 1:43 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
It was equally cruel to be born into the world of David Koresh or Fred Phelps. Radical religion of ANY type is malignant...
8. Posted by blackcat77 | January 16, 2007 1:43 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 13:43
9. Posted by bryabD | January 16, 2007 1:51 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
blackcat77, rent "Waco: Rules of Engagement". (sheesh!)
9. Posted by bryabD | January 16, 2007 1:51 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 13:51
10. Posted by Jaquei | January 16, 2007 2:13 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Our government allows the Saudis to spread their bigoted, sexist, religous, hatred in our nation's mosques, schools, and prisons.
Those in government who are enabling the Saudis to infiltrate the U.S. should be investigated and charged with providing support for a foreign government set on subverting our constitution by spreading religous hatred against American Citizens who are not of the wahabbi Muslim faith.
10. Posted by Jaquei | January 16, 2007 2:13 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 14:13
11. Posted by crosspatch | January 16, 2007 3:20 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
So ... what's their take on the letter "T"?
11. Posted by crosspatch | January 16, 2007 3:20 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 15:20
12. Posted by Jimmy | January 16, 2007 5:31 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
That place should just be nuked
12. Posted by Jimmy | January 16, 2007 5:31 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 17:31
13. Posted by nogo postal | January 16, 2007 5:50 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Kim...as you know bin Laden and 15 of the hijacker/killers on 9/11 came from this country...
yet we don't and won't condemn them....
We crawl on our bellies and beg for their oil...
"Cut and Run" in Iraq a sign of weakness?
Sucking up to the Saudi royal family while they encourage their clergy and their religious schools to teach hatred toward Israel and anything from the "western culture"....now that's a sign of weakness....
13. Posted by nogo postal | January 16, 2007 5:50 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 17:50
14. Posted by John | January 16, 2007 7:46 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Jaquie writes;
In the almost 6 years of his presidency, Dubya had never vetoed a single bill. There was only one bill - only one that he guarenteed he would veto, and that was regarding a congressional action to block the sale of marine port operations for about 30% of American ports to a Saudi owned company.
Fortunatly, the deal was killed before the issue came to a head, and we never got to see him excercise his first veto which would have greenlighted the sale of our port security to the Saudis.
So, yeah... By all means, I'm for investigations...
14. Posted by John | January 16, 2007 7:46 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 19:46
15. Posted by Mitchell | January 16, 2007 9:01 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
The True Flat Earth Society.
Sheesh, there aren't too many societies this horrid, failed. Stuck in the past about 1000 years ago.
15. Posted by Mitchell | January 16, 2007 9:01 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 21:01
16. Posted by civil behavior | January 16, 2007 9:35 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Is this the same Saudi Arabia, the same country that Georgie boy holds hands with the princes who supply us with oil?
No, really?
16. Posted by civil behavior | January 16, 2007 9:35 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 21:35
17. Posted by Robert | January 16, 2007 10:30 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I have this arguement with my brother, the Conservative all the time.
The luck is being born in America (and white, and male, and to good parents, etc).
Yet the loss of innocent Iraqi lives is "just the cost of war".
I'll ask you, what i ask my brother: What did YOU do to be so lucky? And why is it so difficult for you to put yourself in someone else's shoes, particularly when the ENTIRE thing is a matter of luck?
17. Posted by Robert | January 16, 2007 10:30 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 22:30
18. Posted by MikeSC | January 16, 2007 10:58 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I'll ask you, what i ask my brother: What did YOU do to be so lucky? And why is it so difficult for you to put yourself in someone else's shoes, particularly when the ENTIRE thing is a matter of luck?
Well, not siding with genocidal maniacs helps us tremendously.
Again, if you hate America, NOBODY really cares if you go. You're free to leave.
-=Mike
18. Posted by MikeSC | January 16, 2007 10:58 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 22:58
19. Posted by John Burgess | January 16, 2007 11:05 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I wrote about this on my blog Crossroads Arabia, where I keep track of real issues in Saudi Arabia, not the paranoid fantasies of people like "John" who can't tell Saudi Arabia from Dubai.
The story about "X" actually broke in a Saudi newspaper in an op-ed written by a Saudi, Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal, in 2002.
There certainly are reactionary, even dangerous Saudis. The majority of Saudis are not radical, are not extremist, but instead are ultra-traditionalists who see no reason to change the way they've been doing things for 1400 years. They're particularly adverse to change when yahoos start threatening to nuke them if they don't.
It might prove informative to see what Saudis actually talk about among themselves; it sure isn't the fantasies being projected here.
And a question for Jaquie: Does your condemnation extend to those USG employees who send Saudi religious scholars to visit parochial or other religiously-oriented schools in the US in order to demonstrate that it's possible to instill religious values without demonizing other religions? I did that, starting in 2003, from the US Embassy in Riyadh. That program still continues. I just want to know if I should be getting out my law books some time soon.
19. Posted by John Burgess | January 16, 2007 11:05 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 23:05
20. Posted by John | January 16, 2007 11:26 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
To John Burgess,
Aw, dammit.... My appologies. You are correct. It was Dubai, not Saudia Arabia.
Thanks for the correction.
20. Posted by John | January 16, 2007 11:26 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 23:26
21. Posted by blackcat77 | January 16, 2007 11:45 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Bryab: I've seen "Rules of Engagement" several times and it raises many valid issues. However, it does not change the basic fact that David Koresh was a full-blown religious nut who sacrificed over 80 people to the principle that he was God's messenger on earth.
21. Posted by blackcat77 | January 16, 2007 11:45 PM |
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Posted on January 16, 2007 23:45
22. Posted by jacquei | January 17, 2007 6:12 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
And a question for Jaquie: Does your condemnation extend to those USG employees who send Saudi religious scholars to visit parochial or other religiously-oriented schools in the US in order to demonstrate that it's possible to instill religious values without demonizing other religions? I did that, starting in 2003, from the US Embassy in Riyadh. That program still continues. I just want to know if I should be getting out my law books some time soon.
Yes. Because, until American religious scholars of the Christian and Jewish faiths are allowed into Saudi Arabia in a similar fashion, then Saudi religious scholars should not be allowed into the U.S. to preach their ideology in any fashion. I have to ask why you would set up such a one-sided program in U.S. schools and not insist that the Saudis set up a similar programs in Saudi schools?
22. Posted by jacquei | January 17, 2007 6:12 AM |
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Posted on January 17, 2007 06:12