Sometimes news stories from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia seem a lot more like tales with Alice in Wonderland themes than believable news coverage.
A number of the laws are very bizarre you come you may anticipate freakish reports. A lashing sentence for the "Girl of Qatif" who was a prey of rape ... or poor guys like Haidi Al-Mutaif, a Saudi whose jest about the prophet Muhammad earned him years in jail.
However a recent news report had me gawking.
Judge Saud al-Boushi sentenced 20 foreigners to prison terms of 3 to 4 months plus lashings for the crime of "impudent partying" in Jiddah.
What precisely is "impudent partying"? Revelers all Saudi Embassy Attestation waving their middle fingers in the direction of Mecca to the beats of Notorious B.I.G.? Group moonings directed toward the limousines of passing Saudi royalty?
No nothing quite so outrageous. These folks were dancing - dancing with members of the opposite sex in the most common time honored manner.
They weren't naked and gyrating in provocative ways. No table dancers or flashers. Just basic no-frills dancing. How outrageous! Disregard the rumors that sheiks in the kingdom have reportedly been helping to help keep sex traffickers well heeled and get up to all or any types of hanky panky inside their palatial romper rooms ... focus instead on foreign infidels who've the impudence to dance!
It gets worse. The impudent ones weren't merely dancing - they videotaped themselves while dancing. This amounts to a demand of "aggravated impudence" since narcissistic voyeurism makes it also. The evil doers weren't merely being impudent, but impudently videotaped their disco moves with the intention of impudently watching themselves afterwards.
No surprise judge Saud al-Boushi was deeply shocked. Many of them were even wearing tight fitting jeans and a some of the women impudently revealed tummy flesh once they raised their arms a couple of inches excessive during We Will Rock You. How impudently out-of-control can things get?
To include fuel to the fire, drinks were served! I don't mean coke, I am talking about alcoholic beverages.The evil brew - which presumably raised the impudence aggregate to dangerous seismic levels.
Although 20 of the impudence doers were sentenced to prison and lashings, the Saudi religious police actually arrested an overall total of 433 foreigners, 240 of them women. That's lots of impudent infidels to cram into a policeman shop.
Okay the kingdom enforces Islamic law. But why don't they focus on Muslims. Foreigners working in the kingdom who aren't Muslim and who don't adhere to Sharia law shouldn't be harassed for socializing in the manner they see fit.
This type of cultural and religious tyranny helps it be hard to view Dick Cheney and other Bush people grinning and smiling (but not too impudently), as they stroll arm-in-arm with Saudi potentates. On a single hand Bush harps about the sacred mission of exporting democracy, and on another hand he's during intercourse with robed oligarchs who deep down, despise everything democracy stands for. A little bit of a paradox?
The last time King Abdullah was at the Crawford ranch there is a photo of him leading Bush around by the arm as though the President was a small boy who would have to be told something or two. Which can be true ... just preferably not while sitting on the knee of Abdullah-of-the-Dunes.
What about the rights of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia? Shouldn't our embassies and even the kind of Condoleezza Rice have something to say when foreigners in the kingdom are threatened with lashing and imprisonment for "impudent partying"? A term that remains ambiguous at best.
Without Mecca and oil, Saudi Arabia wouldn't have a portion of the influence it has today. Those two factors were fortuitous gifts that descended upon the Saudi generations and generated both wealth and power.
A number of the laws are very bizarre you come you may anticipate freakish reports. A lashing sentence for the "Girl of Qatif" who was a prey of rape ... or poor guys like Haidi Al-Mutaif, a Saudi whose jest about the prophet Muhammad earned him years in jail.
However a recent news report had me gawking.
Judge Saud al-Boushi sentenced 20 foreigners to prison terms of 3 to 4 months plus lashings for the crime of "impudent partying" in Jiddah.
What precisely is "impudent partying"? Revelers all Saudi Embassy Attestation waving their middle fingers in the direction of Mecca to the beats of Notorious B.I.G.? Group moonings directed toward the limousines of passing Saudi royalty?
No nothing quite so outrageous. These folks were dancing - dancing with members of the opposite sex in the most common time honored manner.
They weren't naked and gyrating in provocative ways. No table dancers or flashers. Just basic no-frills dancing. How outrageous! Disregard the rumors that sheiks in the kingdom have reportedly been helping to help keep sex traffickers well heeled and get up to all or any types of hanky panky inside their palatial romper rooms ... focus instead on foreign infidels who've the impudence to dance!
It gets worse. The impudent ones weren't merely dancing - they videotaped themselves while dancing. This amounts to a demand of "aggravated impudence" since narcissistic voyeurism makes it also. The evil doers weren't merely being impudent, but impudently videotaped their disco moves with the intention of impudently watching themselves afterwards.
No surprise judge Saud al-Boushi was deeply shocked. Many of them were even wearing tight fitting jeans and a some of the women impudently revealed tummy flesh once they raised their arms a couple of inches excessive during We Will Rock You. How impudently out-of-control can things get?
To include fuel to the fire, drinks were served! I don't mean coke, I am talking about alcoholic beverages.The evil brew - which presumably raised the impudence aggregate to dangerous seismic levels.
Although 20 of the impudence doers were sentenced to prison and lashings, the Saudi religious police actually arrested an overall total of 433 foreigners, 240 of them women. That's lots of impudent infidels to cram into a policeman shop.
Okay the kingdom enforces Islamic law. But why don't they focus on Muslims. Foreigners working in the kingdom who aren't Muslim and who don't adhere to Sharia law shouldn't be harassed for socializing in the manner they see fit.
This type of cultural and religious tyranny helps it be hard to view Dick Cheney and other Bush people grinning and smiling (but not too impudently), as they stroll arm-in-arm with Saudi potentates. On a single hand Bush harps about the sacred mission of exporting democracy, and on another hand he's during intercourse with robed oligarchs who deep down, despise everything democracy stands for. A little bit of a paradox?
The last time King Abdullah was at the Crawford ranch there is a photo of him leading Bush around by the arm as though the President was a small boy who would have to be told something or two. Which can be true ... just preferably not while sitting on the knee of Abdullah-of-the-Dunes.
What about the rights of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia? Shouldn't our embassies and even the kind of Condoleezza Rice have something to say when foreigners in the kingdom are threatened with lashing and imprisonment for "impudent partying"? A term that remains ambiguous at best.
Without Mecca and oil, Saudi Arabia wouldn't have a portion of the influence it has today. Those two factors were fortuitous gifts that descended upon the Saudi generations and generated both wealth and power.
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