Saudi Arabia: Valentine’s Day
I just love this photo, from today’s Al Watan
A Saudi man shows how members of the Saudi vice squad (Religious police) crush red roses with their feet as they enforce a law banning Valentine”s Day celebrations in the conservative kingdom at a flower shop in Riyadh. The Western version of Valentine”s Day ـ lovers raining flowers, chocolates and toys, all with a red theme, on each other ـ would be a challenge in Saudi Arabia at any time of the year. Strict Islamic religious rules keep men and women separate until they are married ـ and marriages are usually arranged by their families. There is no taking a girlfriend out to a coffee shop or restaurant: the cafes and restaurants all have separate sections, one for single men and the other for women and families. (AFP)
Last updated on Sunday 15/2/2009
Kuwait Times on Morality Police
Wooo HOOOO on you, Jamie Etheridge; you bring grammar, tone and content to the Kuwait Times
Kuwait’s illegal morality police
Published Date: January 02, 2009
By Jamie Etheridge
Two female students were attacked by two youths this past week in Hawally, reportedly for not wearing the hijab. The girls were standing outside their school when two bearded young men jumped from an SUV, whacked them with a stick and then jumped back into their truck and took off. The incident sparked outrage and triggered discussions across Kuwait about the self-proclaimed morality police encouraged by a radical Islamist cleric Mubarak Al-Bathali.
In late December, Al-Bathali announced that he had established a voluntary committee for the “Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” along the lines of the dreaded Saudi mutaween. The mutaween are a sort of religious police that patrol the streets in the villages and cities of Saudi Arabia, ensuring that women are covered from head to toe, that men go to the mosque to pray and that unmarried men and women do not mix in public. They also enforce other important moral strictures, like no mixed dancing or playing rock and roll music.
Al-Bathali said that his ‘vice’ squad will patrol the Sulaibikhat area first and then slowly spread out to other areas. It’s not clear who was behind the attacks in Hawally. Some have argued that it might have been just a couple of youths having fun and playing a trick on the girls by whacking them like the mutaween in Saudi do.
Let’s hope it was a bad joke by bored teens. God help us if random groups of men suddenly start forming ‘morality’ patrols and beating women on the streets of Kuwait. A Kuwaiti mutaween would create a host of problems.
First, the morality police would be trying to enforce a brand of radical Islam and ideology many in Kuwait – both citizens and expats – do not follow. Many Muslim women in this country do not wear hijab and there are no laws that require them to do so – despite the best efforts of the fundamentalists in parliament.
Second, Kuwaitis are highly protective of their female family members and few are likely to accept strange men whacking their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and aunts in public areas. Following the 1990-1991 Iraqi invasion and occupation, some radical Islamists tried to establish a religious police and had begun even stationing ‘officers’ outside the Co-ops in Jabriya, Surra and elsewhere.
These mullahs carried short sticks and would strike women coming out of the Co-ops who they deemed to be dressed inappropriately. The women, of course, immediately called their male relatives who then rushed to the Co-ops and attacked the mullahs for attacking the women. The resulting chaos led to the banning of the self proclaimed morality cops.
Third, an ad hoc security force running loose around the country poses a real and present danger to the forces of the Interior Minister and by extension, the stability and security of Kuwait as a whole.
Nearly 20 years later, the radicals have reemerged and wider popularity – as evidenced by the fundamentalists victory in parliamentary polls – has encouraged them to reassert their plans for greater social control.
Success for the mullahs will mean failure for Kuwait’s experiment with democracy. Unlike the rest of the Gulf Arab states, Kuwait isn’t just beginning this experiment. For nearly half a century, this diminutive Muslim country has balanced tribal mores and religious identity with the Islamic and democratic ideals of freedom, dignity and self respect. Allowing roving bands of self appointed religious police to patrol the streets of Kuwait will undermine all of the country’s efforts toward balancing tradition
and modernity.
Christmas Ornaments from Here, There and Everywhere
Ten years ago when we put almost our entire life into storage, we had no idea we would be gone this long. We had no idea we would live in four different countries, and that we wouldn’t see our things again for lo, these many years.
Our first contract, I was allowed one thousand pounds. Do you know how little one thousand pounds is? Think clothing, think basic necessities – 1000 lbs. just isn’t very much.
I packed just a very few Christmas ornaments, figuring I could pick things up along the way. Fortunately for us, the next country, after Saudi Arabia, was Germany, the land of Christmas ornaments. Our tree is eclectic. It’s not necessarily a tree with appeal to anyone else; it is a very personal Christmas tree, with lots of memories and stories. Lucky for you, I won’t bore you will all of them. 😉
We are sentimental. When we can, we decorate the tree together, and we remember with each ornament. . . When he was young, our son would get so impatient with us, and our remembering!
Here is the very first ornament our son ever made in school – it is a dreamcatcher; his teacher was very into the American Southwest and American Indian traditions:
We met and married in Heidelberg, so we always have that ornament with us:
My ties to the Pacific Northwest:
AdventureMan’s love of Africa and the Middle East:
Religious symbols:
Beautiful German antique silver walnuts and pinecones:
And memories of places we’ll remember . . .
Whew! I’m tired, too! Think I will go join the Qatteri Cat in a catnap!
Rosy Rainfall in Kuwait
It’s been a long day, a productive day, and at last I can take a deep breath. My friend tells me it is cold out, but I have had the oven on much of the day, and our place is warm and cozy. I would love some fresh air, so I quietly close the door to the kitchen and step out on the balcony.
It is beyond fresh. It is fresh, and raining, and off in the distance, the sun is setting and the muezzin is calling everyone to prayer and it is purely a beautiful moment.
We didn’t have rain like this last year, or the year before. We had some rain two years ago, in December mostly, but still – not like this. This has been a wonderful, continuous, soaking rain, blessing Kuwait and preparing us for an amazing winter growing season. I would love to be able to see the flowers people tell me are blooming in the desert when it rains.
In Saudi Arabia, we spent a whole day travelling to see the tiny irises that would bloom in Tumayr. Here, there are still places you can’t go, because there are explosives left over from the Gulf War, and now and then a shepherd loses a leg by stepping in the wrong place.
Morality Police Accuse Married Couple of Being Alone Together
This is one weird story. Saw it in today’s Kuwait Times, but it is not on the online version, so I had to copy it from the Arab News website. The woman’s family and the man’s family all verified that this couple are married, but they are continually harassed by the morality police, saying they are not married.
Vice cops accused of attacking married couple in Madinah
Fatima Sidiya I Arab News
JEDDAH: A 22-year-old Saudi woman told Arab News yesterday that she and her husband of four years were stopped on a road by the religious police of Al-Jurf, west of the holy city of Madinah, accused of being an unrelated man and woman in an illegal state of seclusion (khulwa) at about 1 a.m. on Sunday.
“As we were driving home, my husband and I realized we were being followed by three men in a car,” said the woman, who did not want her name published. “They were coming from both sides of the car and (at one point in the chase) were also in front of our car. I was afraid of having an accident. The whole scene looked just like something in a movie.”
She also said that because no police officer was accompanying the three members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, her husband was afraid to stop. Eventually, the commission vehicle got in front of the car they were pursuing and forced the couple to stop, according to the woman.
Abdullah Al-Zahrani, the head of the Madinah branch of the commission, confirmed to Arab News yesterday that the commission was tailing the couple, but he maintains that the three commission members did not abuse the suspects. He also claims that the two are not married.
“The woman is neither his wife nor his cousin,” said Al-Zahrani.
When asked if the police, in response to the woman’s complaint, had questioned the commission members over what happened early Sunday morning, he said the police did not seek any clarification. “The police did not question the commission members, as they (the commission) are a monitoring body, which hands suspects over to the police for further investigation,” he said.
The couple has filed a complaint and the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution is looking into the case.
Relatives have come out in defense of the commission’s denial that the two are married. According to the woman, a commission member told her husband: “If you bring everybody in your family to tell me she is your wife, I will not believe them. You are lying; she is not your wife.”
According to the woman, she and her husband had been visiting her husband’s family and decided to return home late at night.
After the two were pulled over, said the woman, “one of them pulled my arm and was shouting at me, telling me to get into their car. I was shocked. How could a man from the commission touch a woman when he is not her mahram (a woman’s legal male escort or guardian)? He ordered me to get into the commission car and said they would keep everything secret in order to protect my reputation.”
The commission considers unrelated men and women in cars to be committing the moral crime of khulwa.
The woman said that her husband objected to her treatment, and asked the men to take him in custody instead. At that point, the woman said an older man who happened to be passing by intervened and protested against the commission members touching a woman, “but the commission member told him that I had forced him to do so.”
The woman says that two of the commission members got into her husband’s car with her and accused her of being an immoral woman for being out late at night with an unrelated man. The members of the commission also said that the woman had committed a crime and that she therefore deserved to be punished.
“This is the first time I have seen anything like this,” she said. “One of the members was totally unreasonable and was aggressive from the start. He didn’t want to hear anything that contradicted his set ideas and beliefs. He looked to be in his late 20s. Only one of the three was rational and wanted to talk to us away from the public eye. But he then went and got into their car. The members refused to come to the police during the investigation and said that I had insulted them. I did no such thing; I simply told them over and over: ‘I swear to God that I am this man’s wife.’”
The woman said that after hearing what had happened, her brothers went to the commission branch in Al-Jurf, furious and telling the commission members to stay away from their sister.
She said a commission member then hit one of her brothers and broke his nose.
“My brother became unconscious and an ambulance came and took him to the hospital,” she said.
Then, in anger another brother erroneously went to the wrong commission center to retaliate against the attack on his brother. He was then arrested.
But the police reportedly released the two brothers after confirming their identities. The woman claims that the local police view this particular branch of the commission as problematic.
Maj. Muhsin Al-Radadi, a spokesman for the Madinah police, said that the only reports they received about this incident were about the brother who went to the incorrect commission center.
“The commission members (at Al-Azizia commission branch) were attacked in their offices by a young man,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t comment on hearsay regarding the other events.
“We were not doing anything that was remotely immoral or inappropriate,” said the woman. “Even my eyes were covered. The members shamed us in the area where we live and my husband and I cannot now go out of the house.”
She says that the incident has instilled fear in her about venturing out of the house.
“I will not go to a public place or anywhere in a car unless a lot of my family is with me,” she said.
Women Are Women: Abayas and Hijab
One of the questions I get most often when I am back in the US is whether I have to cover, whether I have to wear an abaya, whether I have to cover my hair.
I tell them that in Kuwait, it is still a choice. Many Kuwaiti women do not cover their hair, but most dress modestly and are still traditional and conservative in behavior.
I tell them that in Saudi Arabia, I had to wear the abaya, but that the embassy instructions were to carry a scarf, but only to wear it if the muttawa / religious police made a fuss, as it was not the law of the country. The law stated that Moslem women would be covered, but not non-Muslim women. The Saudi women would tell me all the time that I didn’t have to cover, but when I mentioned the Muttawa – they all just sighed and nodded, and said that some people have a funny idea about religion, but that this was not the real Islam.
What I loved about women in Saudi Arabia is that they have a lot in common with women everywhere. When confined, they have ways to press the envelope. For example, the malls are full of stores with the sexiest shoes I have ever seen – and when feet are one of the few things that CAN be seen, guess where the money gets spent? There were also entire floors devoted to perfumes, and women would pass and you could nearly swoon from the delicious scents, an entire cloud of scents as they passed, cloaked in anonymity. There were glove shops, with the sexiest, laciest gloves you have ever seen. At the time, most of the abayas and scarves in Saudi Arabia were plain black, although occasionally you might see one with a discreet little trim, or a tiny little sparkle.
The kids told me they could tell their family members; they learned to identify posture and voices. They didn’t have any problems picking out their Moms and sisters.
Women would approach me in stores, standing next to me, pretending to examine some goods and whisper “Hi! Where are you from?” and “Do you like it here?” Many times, on planes, husbands would make their wives change places so as not to be contaminated by sitting by the likes of me, a wicked western woman with her hair showing, but the women would smile shyly when the husband was looking the other way. Women are women. We have our ways. We manage to get around restrictions.
On the other hand, I want to share with my Western readers the trend in abayas and scarves in the last few years. They are GORGEOUS, and there are times I am tempted to buy just because they are gorgeous.
On a deserted morning, I found these shop windows to share with you:
These are going-out-calling dresses, worn under abayas
These would probably be worn to an evening event like a wedding
Even the younger girls have special evening clothes
Not your old fashioned abayas
Love these details
Scarves to wear with abaya
Saved by a Scream
This woman had a close call. I am re-assured that the family was taking her to Saudi Arabia to kill her; it implies that the climate in Kuwait does not support honor killings. Another tidbit from the Arab Times:
Screams help officers thwart bid to kill girl for soiling family name
KUWAIT CITY : The Saudi immigration officers manning the Al-Riqei border post are said to have reportedly foiled an attempt by an unidentified GCC family to kill their daughter to save their honor, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.
According to a security source the parents with the daughter and another sibling traveled to Salmi post and to prevent the ‘victim’ from screaming for help the family’s relative who allegedly works at the post hurried through the process of stamping the passports to help the family cross into Saudi Arabia as the family waited in their car.
When the girl reached the Saudi border post she screamed for help and told the immigration officers that her father planned to kill her.
The family was temporarily detained at the post until the Saudi authorities contacted the authorities in Kuwait. After the family was returned to Kuwait under guard, the relative who helped them at the Salmi post was arrested and detained for interrogation.
The daily said it is a case of ‘honor killing’. The girl was reportedly involved in an affair with an unidentified youth inside an apartment in Salmiya and she became pregnant.
Meanwhile, the Al-Anba daily added, when the girl was in police custody the brother grabbed his younger sister and threatened to shoot her in front of the building of the Criminal Investigations Department.
He was demanding the release of his other sister who was caught having fun with the youth inside an apartment after a missing person report was filed against her.
A police sniper shot the man in the arm and rescued the younger sibling.
I can’t imagine her life will be easy, if she is pregnant, unmarried, and has a family who wants her dead. I can’t imagine that Kuwait has social services that can help her negotiate a path. Life will be difficult, but it sure beats what was about to happen to her in Saudi Arabia.
Who Will Tell the People?
This was the #5 e-mailed article from this week’s New York Times. It is a hard-hitting warning to Americans in an election year, and it has some analogies to election time in Kuwait.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 4, 2008
Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.
They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.
Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”
That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.
How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.
And us? Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in “downsized labs, layoffs of post docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions.” Today, she added, “China, India, Singapore … have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere.”
Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.
Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.
I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”
It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”
Today’s Crack-Up
From today’s Kuwait Times:
Citizen Sneaks
Border police detained a Kuwaiti citizen for attempting to sneak through the Salmi Border on foot to enter Saudi Arabia. They approached the man thinking he was a sheep, as he was wearing sheep wool to disguise himself.
On questioning him, he said he was banned from leaving the country due to alcohol cases pending against him so he planned to sneak into Saudi Arabia.
This cracks me up on so many levels. First, just the visual, the idea of a man wearing a sheep’s pelt to sneak across the border. Second, a man with alcohol problems wanting to sneak into Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is slightly less friendly to alcohol than Kuwait. You have to wonder if he was sober when he donned the sheep’s pelt?
Not New News
Just as the Qatteri Cat monitors traffic in front of our place, I monitor my blog traffic – a lot like Qatteri Cat, sort of lazily, desultory.
Yesterday, I got the most hits – a lot – on MOC bans Porno Film Sites, a post I wrote almost a year ago.
80 hits. That’s a lot for a post almost a year old. Why so much interest? Are there new movements afoot in the Ministry of Communication to ban undesirable content? Are there new technologies available that make that possible?
I knew exactly the kind of photo I wanted to include here, so I googled “saudi censorship image” and found this wonderful blog: Your World Today. I really like his blog.
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