“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
Maybe the heading of this posting should be “What’s new pussy cat?”
Arab media report that Shaikh Abu Itzhac al-Huweini, a famous Salafi cleric with whom I am not familiar although he is considered some kind of authority by many, has compared a woman’s face to her vagina. The shaikh opined that a woman who exposes her face is like one who exposes her vagina in public (her said nothing about fellatio, though). This is not the first time opinions like this are expressed by Salafi Wahhabi shaikhs. Only a couple of weeks ago the Saudi religious police (Commission for the Propagation of Vice) threatened, again, that women who have sexy eyes should cover them in public or they would face punishment. They didn’t exactly define “sexy eyes”, but said something about eyes that are too tempting. Now that is lowering the bar in an extremely horny society. I think that in repressed Saudi Arabia, especially in the grim Nejd region, any part of a woman, including an exposed toe, would generate orgasmic outrage among some of these guys.
“Saudi Arabia’s feared religion police smashed a prostitution ring in the Gulf Kingdom’s second largest city, involving at least 20 airline stewardesses of Arab nationality, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had watched the ring for more than four months in a bid to trap its leader, who was also caught with the other members, the Arabic language daily Sabq said in a report from the western Red Sea port of Jeddah. “The ring leader had been very careful and had managed his ring only by phone. It took the Commission members at least four months to get him,” it said. The paper said the Arab ring leader was hunted when Commission members, acting on a tip off, seized a stewardess with a Saudi manat a coffee shop……….”
One has got to be careful here. The Saudi religious cops have their own definition of “vice”. After all, these goons are now threatening to force women to cover (as too sexy) the only part of them that they are allowed to expose. That would be their eyes, especially sexy expressive eyes that drive these polygamous perverts crazy. So they caught her with a man sipping lattes at a coffee shop and that is evidence of prostitution. Imagine if they were caught having a full meal together at a restaurant: that is the Saudi equivalent of ‘going all the way’. The fact that she was with a “Saudi” man is apparently also considered some kind of proof. The logic of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice goes like this: otherwise, why else would a woman be with a Saudi man? Unfortunately it is a common “logic” on the shores of my Gulf (and apparently the Red Sea as well). Maybe that is all they do when they hook up in Saudi Arabia: drink some coffee together. Cheers
mhg
“Saudi Arabia and Austria are launching a Vienna-based inter-faith and tolerance center with the goal of promoting tolerance in Saudi Arabia. Many critics of the initiative have pointed out that the Gulf kingdom prohibits any religion from practicing in the country besides Islam and say the center is a futile attempt to support the country’s radical views. “Saudi Arabia is willing to financially participate in this project, and to place all its moral and political resources behind such a center, without infringing … on its autonomy or independence from any political interference,” King Abdullah told officials and reporters on the project……..……”
This is truly a joke of the week. Saudi Arabia is the most intolerant country in our galaxy. It has no citizen who is not a Muslim. It does not allow any other religion to be practiced. There are no churches, no synagogues, no temples, no pagodas, no ashrams. Bibles and Torahs and Hindu and Buddhist books are banned. Foreigners who practice their faith at home occasionally have their homes raided by the religious police (Committee for the Propagation of Vice). Santa Claus would be beheaded in a public square if he showed his jolly tubby self in Riyadh (so would Burl Ives). This is truly offshore tolerance: “stay tolerant in your country and we remain intolerant in our country”. Not only that: they have spread their extremely intolerant Salafi ideology to other places that now have become intolerant. Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Malaysia, some half-witted Egyptians and Lebanese and Syrians. All that in addition to their Salafi and Muslim brotherhood “fifth column” in some of the GCC states of the Persian-American Gulf. This whole public tolerance campaign is just a prepaid public relation stunt that reeks of bullshit. Spelling hypocrisy the Wahhabi way. Cheers
mhg
BFF Alarabiya network reports that the powerful Committee for the Propagation of Vice (religious police, the Wahhabi inquisition) has started a new campaign to get its message, wtf that be, across the country and eradicate certain types of behavior. The shaggy denizens of the Committee are now using large trailers equipped with latest technology in terms of multimedia to travel around the provinces and save souls. They trailers will be also chasing holiday crowds, meaning that wherever there are public festivities in that distinctly non-festive kingdom, the religious police will show up to make things even less festive (if at all possible).
The report
says they will focus on things like prayers and sorcery (magic, witchcraft) and women. Not necessarily but most likely in that order, since sorcery and magic are usually attached to women in Saudi Arabia these days (sounds familiar huh? But almost four centuries later).
This is odd, since from my travels I know that the ones whose souls really need ‘saving’ are the Saudi men, just ask any hotel manager in Beirut, Bahrain, Cairo, Dubai, Bangkok, Manila, etc, etc. A few years
ago the Committee surprised everyone by banning the acquisition of dogs and pussy (as in cats) in Saudi Arabia. They allegedly also toyed with the idea of banning women anywhere outside the bedroom but changed their minds for some reason. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Saudi Arabia has revised an anti-terrorism law and made it less severe than a leaked version that was heavily criticized by human rights groups, a Shura Council spokesman said on Saturday. “The draft that was published is not the final one,” said Mohammed Almohanna, spokesman for the advisory parliament. “It was discussed in a Shura Council session. It was a draft and some changes were made to it to ensure that the law is compatible with Sharia (Islamic law) and does not violate citizens’ rights or the country’s existing laws,” he said. He said the Shura would amend the draft further when its summer recess ends in mid-September before sending it to the king for approval. Amnesty International, which published a draft of the Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing Terrorism on its website, said on July 22 that the authorities could use the law to stifle dissent…………”
This spokesman for the Shura Council talks as if it has any power. The Shura is an appointed advisory council, just like the cabinet, and takes its orders from the ruling family. They basically rubber-stamp whatever is sent over by the princes, which usually is not much. It doesn’t matter what they have on the law books, provided there are any: they do what it takes not just to stifle dissent, but to crush it. On the bright side, they don’t chop the heads of dissidents anymore. They arrest them and throw them in prison for long periods of time, some without charges or trial. (Also these guys should not mention the Shari’a Law to the Western press. The folks in places like Oklahoma and Tennessee and Texas get panicky and start voting to ban “Sharia Law”, wtf that be in their own Bible Belt context). Cheers
mhg
BFF “A Saudi man is believed to have been gripped by jinn (ghosts) during a picnic with his friends in a valley which is reputed to be haunted. But he was later treated in an exorcist-style session by the Gulf Kingdom’s religious police. The unnamed man and seven friends from the western town of Makkah were vacationing in the nearby Taif city when they decided to descend into Wadi Al-Amak (the deep abyss) despite warnings by local people. After a short evening trip in the valley, the colour of the man’s began to change and his behavior became aggressive before he lost balance and fell down. When his friends tried to talk to him, he shouted and pushed them away while his eyes were fixed at an area deep in the valley. “Friends then overpowered him and washed his face with cold water…it was clear the man was haunted by a jinn,” Sabq Arabic language daily said. “They then decided to carry him back to town…they were told that the valley is haunted and that there were two similar cases in the past.” The paper said the man was taken to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential Islamic law-enforcement authority in the conservative Moslem Gulf nation. “The Commission brought experts in such cases and subjected the man to a session of Koran recitation and incense burning until the jinn was forced to get out of the man through his hand………” This guy’s friends first waterboarded him (splashed water on his face, my eye). Then they handed him to the religious police (Commission for the Promotion of Vice) who may cure him or they may decide to send him to trial for consorting with jinns (genies) outside legal marriage. An extramarital affair with a jinn (genie) could get a man a beheading sentence in Saudi Arabia. In end it seems like they smoked the jinn out of the man through the stink of cheap incense, or maybe the man came down from his “high” as a result. I like that part about the jinn “getting out of the man through his hand”. Could it mean the man gave the religious police exorcists the proverbial middle finger, flipped them the birdie, “made a gesture” as polite Brits would say, and they misunderstood? Or, better yet, maybe the Jinn (Genie) gave them its own middle finger.
(I am beginning that a lot goes on in Taif, Saudi Arabia, a lot more than meets the eye). Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF 
