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“ANHRI condemns the ongoing severe deterioration of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as well as the arbitrary detentions of citizens and expatriates. Most recently, the Saudi Morality Police detained an expatriate in Riyadh in the New Year’s Eve as he was walking on a street holding balloons on which it was written “happy new year 2012″. It is forbidden to celebrate this holiday in Saudi Arabia, and thus the Morality Police arrested him and handed him over to the competent authorities for investigation. The balloons have been seized. Severe restraints are imposed on freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as international organizations say that the authorities continue to detain dozens of people without a charge or trial. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment while in custody are widespread. Non-Muslims are still not allowed to practice their rituals publicly. Shiites are continuously suffering from discrimination. Expatriate workers and their families are deprived of their most basic rights. “Saudi Arabia is on top of the list of countries hostile to freedoms which use repression in the name of religion. The policy Saudi Arabia pursues is nothing but a desperate apparatus that will not work out, the same way it did not with other despotic regimes in the Arab world when the winds of change and freedom crossed over them. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia apparently has not learned the lesson” said ANHRI……………”

You’d think New Year’s or Christmas are Shi’a (Shiite) religious holidays, the way the Wahhabi Salafi religious police crack down on them. Yet these are the main holidays of the allies of the Saudi princes, the ones with whom they share such cherished (at least by me if not by the current U.S. Congress) American values as freedom and justice and equality. I suspect if
Prince Whatishisface were not a Wahhabi Muslim, he’d be given a standing
ovation in the U.S. Congress for sharing American values. I mean after a
hustler and serial bull-shitter like Bibi Netanyahu was granted the
honor last year, who is left?
That is not all: the baboons have also regularly raided private homes where “the wrong” people celebrate these occasions privately. “Wrong people” means people of little or no means and influence in the Kingdom without Magic (you can get beheaded for having anything to do with magic or maybe even Disney). Yet the religious cops of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (affectionately called the Haia by the princes) turn a blind eye to “not-so-private” parties by the potentates where alcohol flows like water does outside the Arabian Peninsula, where alcohol is not the only thing flowing freely.
In December, the country’s top Muslim cleric and mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al Shaikh, aka Al, fatwad that all celebrations of the New Year, birthdays and marriage anniversary are un-Islamic (aka un-Wahhabi). He did not, however, fatwa against observing the King.s anniversary.
Cheers
mhg


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