Middle East Focus: Land of Desperate Poverty? a Child for Sale in the Land of Billionaire Princes…………

Arabia Deserta

Land of Desperate Poverty? a Child for Sale in the Land of Billionaire Princes…………

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF

“A Saudi father who was reported last week to have put his son up for sale in Facebook for $20 million has denied he intended really to sell the six-year-old boy, saying he had done so only to draw attention to his ordeal. Saud bin Nasser Al Shahry said he made the announcement online after he was stricken by poverty and all doors were shut in his face. But Shahry was strongly attacked by a prominent Islamic scholar in the conservative Gulf Kingdom on the grounds he violated Islam by offering to sell his child despite his financial problems. “Of course I never intended to sell my son…I only made this announcement to attract the attention of decision-makers in the country to my tragedy after I became jobless and started to beg for food and clothes,”………..”

Saudi unemployment is extremely high, in double digits, and it is over 30% for young adults. I suspect that unemployment is even higher for the al-Saud princes, possibly near 100%. Yet we never read or hear of a prince selling his son or daughter (well, at least not his son). Oddly, these unemployed princes don’t seem to be suffering. They seem to be thriving as the misery of the average Saudi increases: could the two trends be related? Is there a causality here?
It is also possible that the father was a nutcase (or even a drug addict). Yet, even then, there had to have been an element of desperation. In the Kingdom without Magic.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com