Category Archives: Middle East Women

Israel, Middle East Women, Salafi

Powerful Salafis of Israel…………

    

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“A female audience member who was invited to participate in a circus performance in Modi’in on Sunday was removed from the stage after a religiously observant viewer complained. Rafi Vitis, an acrobat and host of “The Shambuki Show,” at the city’s Anabe Park, consented to the request of an ultra-Orthodox woman who found the participation of women offensive. He invited a male volunteer to replace the teenage girl, but was forced to suspend the show for a few minutes because other members of the hundreds-strong audience objected to the switch…………” Haaretz

Yep, they are getting more Middle Eastern, more Salafi by the day. Once all the Arab states are ruled by fundamentalists, they can apply for membership of the Arab League. They would rename the Salafi Islamic heritage Revival Society as Semitic Heritage Revival Society.
Cheers
mhg


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Middle East Women, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Dual Obsessions: Americans and Gas Prices, Saudis and Foreign Housemaid Prices………

    

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“No, no es amor, lo que tu sientes, se llama obsecion,
una ilusion en tu pensamiento, que te hace hacer cosas, asi
funciona el corazon…………“  Obsession (Aventura)



“The chairman of the National Recruitment Committee of the Saudi Council of Chambers expects the recruitment of housemaids from foreign countries to cost between SR15,000 and SR17,000 when the new recruitment companies start working, Al-Hayat newspaper reported yesterday. Saad Al-Baddah said this figure would include the cost of recruitment and travel, but not the salaries, which would be fixed later. Al-Baddah said the Saudi Recruitment Company, which was established by a number of investors, would commence operations in June. “Procedures of its establishment are currently being completed,” he said. Al-Baddah said the company had received a number of applications for recruitment due to the current market for housemaids. “The company, however, will not commit to any of these requests until it starts operations,” he explained. He said so far, there were no new developments in the stoppage of recruitment of housemaids from Indonesia and the Philippines, but he expected recruitment from these two Southeast Asian countries………...”

People are really the same all over the world. They may dress differently, talk differently, even eat differently, but when it comes to basics they are all the same. Take the American gasoline obsession and the Saudi (and Gulfie) obsession with cheap housemaids. There are  lot of similarities there.
Saudi Arabia has been having serious trouble recruiting Asian or African housemaids to come and work in the kingdom. There have been many reported cases of abuse, and some of these countries have at times cut off the ‘traffic’ (the pun was just too good to miss). Several of these women have been executed by beheading, others are on death row. The government had sent official missions around looking for new and cheap sources of housemaids. With the emphasis on cheap. Now it looks like they have agreed to raise the wages. A serious shortage of maids would be the last straw for the people: they may decide that they will join the rest of the Arab world in rebellion after all.
This is no different from the dilemma of the American government with the price of gasoline (benzene). A per-gallon price of gasoline over $5 may doom Mr. Obama to a one-term presidency. I know, I know, the Republicans are ‘influential’ in keeping gasoline prices high, but that is just politics. Yet the USA depends on foreign oil just as the Saudis depend on foreign housemaids. Actually, Americans dependence on foreign oil is less, it is not as total a dependence as the Saudi (or Gulf) dependence on Asian and African housemaids.
Just as Obama may lose the election if the price of gas exceeds $5, the Saudi king may lose his election if the price of housemaids exceeds so many riyals.  Still, I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton’s visit to Riyadh is for doing the ‘umrah‘ pilgrimage. I doubt that it has to do with gasoline prices either but I can be wrong.
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Middle East Women, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi

Saudi Shura Council and Sexual Harassment: Frustrated Males Shopping for Shmagh without Satan……..

    

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“The Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia, also known as the Shura Council, will vote this month on a draft law that will set punishments in cases of sexual harassment. Council member Sadaqa Fadel said the law classifies sexual offenses into categories and assigns particular punishments to each category. Fadel told Saudi al-Eqtisadya newspaper that punishments range from warning flogging and imprisonment. The draft law came after Saudi Arabia, which has strict sex segregation rules, saw growing presence of women in various work places and after single men were allowed into shopping malls. Fadel said there will be monitors in malls and in workplaces to watch for cases of sexual harassment and that monitoring will be conducted in accordance with Shariah law. “Sexual harassment is a criminal offence whose perpetrator must be punished. The people who commit sexual offences are mostly men, but this does not mean that some women do not harass men, and this was taken into consideration in the new regulation,” Fadel said. He added that the new draft law requires employers to separate between men and women……………”

This consultative council is an unelected group of men appointed by the Saudi king to pretend that they form some kind of parliament. Last year or so the absolute king issued a fatwa extending the term of the current council until the king decides when to replace them. They pretend that they create legislation and pass bills, but they deal only with select issues suggested by some minions of the king and princes. They usually deal with banal issues like: who can enter a shopping mall between 5 and 8 pm or (possibly) whether the breasts of she-camels (nooq) and she-goats (skhool or ma’iz) should be covered in public (lest they excite and provoke the extremely frustrated male population).
Last week, the Saudi government issued a permit allowing single males (men) to enter shopping malls, but only for the purpose of shopping. Shopping as in for clothes, watches, underwear, shmagh, serwal mkassar, and other inanimate objects. Before that only women, children, and males accompanied by females were allowed into shopping malls. They were worried that the devil, Satan, will get in there and do what the devil usually does when men and women are within fifty meters of each other, according to Wahhabi Salafi doctrine. Apparently Satan has signed a pledge to stay away from the shopping malls during certain curfew hours.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Europe, Middle East Women, Sanctions, Syria, US Foreign Policy

The War against Bashar al-Assad’s Mother……….

    

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“The year-long effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and his government has failed. Two or three months ago, it seemed to come close to succeeding, as insurgents took over enclaves in cities such as Homs and Deir el-Zour. There was talk of no-fly zones and foreign military intervention. Severe economic sanctions were slapped on Syria’s already faltering economy. Every day brought news of fresh pressure on Assad and the momentum seemed to build inexorably for a change of rule in Damascus. It has not happened. Syria will not be like Libya. The latest international action has been an EU ban on Assad’s wife, Asma, and his mother travelling to EU countries (though, as a UK citizen, Asma can still travel to Britain). As damp squibs go, this is of the dampest. …………. “

They sanctioned his mother? The widow of Hafiz al-Assad and the mother of Bashar? The widow of the man all Western and Arab leaders were courting and kissing up to for thirty years?
Cockburn is absolutely right here: they can’t figure out what else to do about him. This is scraping the bottom of the ‘moral’ barrel. What next? The wife of the king of Bahrain? Mrs. Ahmadinejad? How about Sarah Netanyahu? Or a favorite concubine of the king of….…
Cheers
mhg


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Human Right, Middle East Women, Racism, Saudi Arabia

Holy Airlift! Two Ethiopian Maids in Every Saudi Home…….

 

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“Saudi Arabia plans to import 45,000 Ethiopian nationals into the kingdom every month in order to meet its requirement for domestic workers. Maids from the African nation have been in high demand since the Gulf’s most populous nation placed a ban on recruiting workers from the Philippines and Indonesia after those countries imposed stricter employment conditions, the Saudi Gazette reported. Noor Adeen Masfa, Vice Consul for Economic Affairs in Jeddah, said his department had met with committees from the Ethiopian Ministry of Labour in a bid to facilitate the transfer of Ethiopian workers to the kingdom. However, the lack of sufficient flights between Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and Saudi hubs has caused delays………..”

This after the Indonesians refused to export their women without adequate pay and better treatment. Indonesian women were the favorite in the kingdom, but some of them have been executed by beheading and there are reportedly some 21 of them waiting on death row in the kingdom. The Philippines also have put some conditions and limits on the abuse of their female citizens. Now it is the turn of Ethiopia. Forty five thousand per month. At this rate they’d need flights straight out of Addis Ababa dedicated for this type of ‘trade’. It would be quite an airlift, a ‘holy airlift’, no doubt general-ed by prince Khaled Bin Sultan, the defeated ‘hero’ of the  Huthi War.
They’d eventually have enough to provide every house with an Ethiopian housemaid. I suspect this must be part of their new Five-Year Plan: to have two foreign housemaids in every home.
I just hope they’ll allow these people to practice their religion freely (openly or secretly). This is, after all the domain of King Abdullah whom Western PR firms advised to sponsor a “dialog of faiths”. A dialog of faiths in Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Luxembourg, the USA, etc, etc, etc. Anywhere but not in Riyadh or Taif or any other place in Saudi Arabia, where there are no churches or synagogues or temples, where private group worship at homes is seriously frowned upon. ‘Seriously’ means public flogging, maybe some prison, then deportation. At least they don’t get beheaded, unlike sorcerers and witches and magicians. In the absolute Wahhabi Kingdom without Magic.
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, GCC, Iran, Middle East Women, Muslims, Saudi Arabia

Sigheh (Mut’ah) and Misyar: Iran’s Hookup Marriage, Gulf’s Hookup Marriage………..

 

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“This week, Iran’s parliament approved a new amendment to a controversial law in the civil code that allows men to have as many sexual partners as they want – all sanctioned by sharia law under the term “temporary marriage”.
Sex outside marriage is a crime in Iran punishable by 100 lashes or, in the case of adultery, potentially a sentence of death by stoning. However, a man and a woman can marry for a fixed period of time after performing specific religious rituals, in a practice called sigheh. The marriage can last for a few minutes up to several years without need to be officially registered. The man can end the sigheh almost at any time, but there is no divorce right for women in temporary marriages.
The new amendment, passed on Monday by 104 MPs who were all male, requires registration in certain circumstances such as those leading to a pregnancy but still largely allows sigheh without formal registration. An opposing MP, Sattar Hedayatkhah, was quoted in the reformist newspaper Etemaad as saying: “From tomorrow, no woman can be sure that her husband is not in a sexual relationship with another woman. Therefore, there is now no difference between here [Iran] and the west. Anyone can have a sexual relationship………………..”


The Shi’as call it Mut’ah in Arabic and Sigheh in Persian. The Sunnis also have their own version in some Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, called the Misyar. There are also other variations of the same theme. They are based on some ‘reported’ practices in early Islamic history when men traveled far and for long periods away from their wives. Some senior religious leaders in both sects oppose these so-called marriages. They are basically sexual oriented arrangements, with little commitment between the partners. It is almost equivalent to the Western “hooking up”, but it can last longer and has a veneer of ‘legality’. All these forms of funny marriage should be banned, or called what they really are, sexual “hook-ups”.

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, Middle East Women, Polygamy, Salafi, Slavery

Tunisian Islamists, Gulf Islamists: Welcome to their Concubines?…………

 

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A Tunisian Islamist party has called for a new law allowing polygamy and/or allowing the system of concubines, just like the old days. Islam allows up to four wives, (although there is a condition of equal treatment). Islam also allowed men to have intercourse with their female slaves in addition to their wives (no, the reverse was not allowed).
The leader of the Infitah (Openness, Open-minded) Party has asked for a law allowing a man to enjoy his concubines as well as his wife. He did stipulate that only a man who has one wife can be allowed to own concubines. Tunisia’s previous secular regime had banned polygamy since the days of first president Habib Bourguiba at independence from France.
I also recall that Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of Libya’s National Transitory Council (NTC), said a few months ago, as soon as they controlled Tripoli, that they will cancel a Qaddafi law that restricted polygamy and required permission of the first wife. The good news for Tunisians, for most of them, is that other political parties are rejecting these demands.
Look for Salafi and other Islamist and tribal types from North Africa to the Gulf to start demanding a return of concubines. A certain segment of the population on the Gulf loves polygamy, and they have been pushing incentives to encourage men to take more wives. And not just the Salafis. For the potentates, polygamy is considered de rigueur; almost as de rigueur as the jet black dyed goatee beard. I firmly believe that nobody can become king of Saudi Arabia without having a jet black dyed goatee and at least two wives, preferably more. If they had a constitution, insistence on a goatee would be the first article if that constitution. Insistence on polygamy would be the second article of the constitution.

(No, there will be no concubines, at least not yet. Even the Salafis are too worried to actually demand it, no matter how much they would love to).
Cheers
mhg


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Culture and Sports, Middle East Women, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabian Women: Renting IOC and Owning FIFA…………

   

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“When Women’s World Cup soccer fever can overwhelm Twitter, it may be hard for Americans to imagine a place where women are banned from all playing fields. That is Saudi Arabia today. In Saudi, women do not get to compete in elite sport—let alone exercise, play, or even participate in physical education. They can’t even watch a sports match. “No women allowed” is what life is like for girls and women in Saudi Arabia who aspire to run, throw a ball, swim, or ride a bike. In six months, the London Summer Olympics will open with fireworks and fanfare. Teams from every country will parade proudly at the Opening Ceremony. One team, Saudi Arabia, plans to send only men. The International Olympic Committee is the keeper of the Olympic flame, and has immense power over national Olympic committees. In the same way we demand that athletes play by the rules, Saudi Arabia should not be allowed to violate the Olympic Charter’s ban on “discrimination of any kind.”………….”

Okay, we can add IOC and FIFA to Formula One and Interpol and Malaysia and Bahrain and Waziristan and the Salafi groups to the list of organizations (and countries) that the Saudi princes own.  Now that impressive Saudi portfolio has expanded to include the League of Arab States, the GCC, the Organization of Islamic Countries, the Taliban, Fox News (partly), among others. Even the mighty U.S. government can’t claim anything like that. Hell, even the Koch Brothers can’t came close.
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Europe, Islamophobia, Middle East Women, Muslims, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Somalia

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Reinvents the Islamic Wheel, the Holocaust and the Two Phobias………….

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“The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression ……… The Christophobia that has plagued Sudan for years takes a very different form. The authoritarian government of the Sunni Muslim north……..”

There are three people the Western media often resort to when they want “objective” opinion on Islamic-Western relations. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one. Not that I disagree with ‘everything’ she espouses: I probably agree with her on some points. Ali hasn’t been on television as much, mostly writings and ‘utterances’. Ali makes sure everyone knows she has nothing but contempt for Islam: all its aspects, not just how it treats women. She does not distinguish between the faith and the “faithful”: an easy shot, some would say a cheap shot. We all know the “faithful” do not all follow the faith. That applies equally to Muslims and Christians. Fair enough, that is her opinion. There is room enough for both Islamophobia (of which she has a severe case) and Christophobia.

Now Christians and the world-wide assault on Christianity is apparently the cause du jour, even in the ongoing Campaign 2012. She certainly is not missing that bandwagon. In these days of fundamentalist ascendancy in the Middle East (and America), the fate of Christians is a legitimate concern. Yet is it a tit-for-tat Fox News (dare I say Geert Wilders) type of approach she takes? The point is: the West is free and democratic, and the Muslim world is mostly dictatorial, that is a fact. It is silly to insinuate that the West should persecute Muslims simply because, for example, Saudi Arabia bans any kind of worship other than Islamic even in private. That is why the West is what it is and Saudi Arabia is not. Could she be angling for a speaker’s slate at the Tea Party Republican National Convention next summer?

I am eager to read her future writings on the Endlösung and how Christians killed 6 million Jewish civilians in gas chambers in a Europe that was nearly free of Muslims. And about the 40 million (or is it 50 million) people of all faiths that were killed in the last European war. No need to mention the mass rapes and the genocide and mass graves of Bosnia. Everybody has a house of glass, but some houses are more so.
There is also a Syrian dude whom the American right wing has been celebrating for years; he is their favorite “witness” in Muslim and Islamic hearings. I suspect if anyone, he will be the one to speak at Tampa (you see, Muslim men rule, even in the Tea Party).
Cheers
mhg


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Libya, Middle East Women, North Africa, Polygamy

Et Dieu… créa la femme: Colonel Qaddafi Playing Sigmund Freud……..

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Green Book: “It is an undisputed fact that both man and woman are human beings. It follows, as a self-evident fact, that woman and man are equal as human beings. Discrimination against woman by man is a flagrant act of oppression without justification for woman eats and drinks as man eats and drinks; woman loves and hates as man loves and hates; woman thinks, learns and comprehends as man thinks, learns and comprehends. Woman, like man, needs shelter, clothing, and transportation; woman feels hunger and thirst as man feels hunger and thirst; woman lives and dies as man lives and dies. But why are there men and women? Human society is composed neither of men alone nor of women alone. It is made up naturally of men and women. Why were not only men created? Why were not only women created? After all, what is the difference between men and women or man and woman? Why was it necessary to create men and women? There must be a natural necessity……..”

I bet there is a “natural necessity”; in fact there are at least two, or three.
No doubt the colonel had women issues: his female guards, his hitting on female Western journalists, his alleged obsession with HIV risks, among other things. But then, which male isn’t? Yet he seemed more obsessed about women ‘issues” than a typical leader (which he was not).
Come to think of it, Qaddafi had many fewer children than, say, rulers of a certain large Arab Democratic People’s Kingdom who usually have tens of offspring from tens of women (often recycled, of course).

Cheers
mhg


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