Vigilante Volunteers
“Helping out the Ministry of Interior”
From today’s Kuwait Times
Kuwaiti activist establishes voluntary religious police
Published Date: December 27, 2008
KUWAIT: Islamist activist Mubarak Al-Bathali announced that he has established a voluntary Kuwaiti Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, like the Saudi Mutaween or religious police.
Al-Bathali said the Kuwait committee would begin its religious tasks in the Sulaibikhat area before spreading to other areas of the country. He explained that he was inspired to adopt the idea after a number of devout young people complained to him about seeing inappropriate and immoral behavior in Kuwait’s streets.
He emphasized that the committee members would focus only on advising people to avoid irreligious and immoral behavior and would never implement harsh or violent treatment on anyone.
Among the types of treatment which Al-Bathali protested against was the alleged drinking of alcohol, banned in Kuwait, at Christmas parties in the country. He reiterated that those who wished to drink alcohol should go outside Kuwait to do so.
Al-Bathali emphasized that the committee’s work would not conflict with the Ministry of Interior’s, saying that on the contrary it would help the MoI to uphold public morality and values.
From today’s Arab Times:
WE DON’T WANT YOUR HELP GUARDING PUBLIC MORALITY! responds MOI
Interior Ministry hits out at new ‘guardians of freedom’
KUWAIT, Dec 26, (KUNA): “Kuwait is an institutional state governed by law”, a statement by the Ministry of Interior said on Friday. The statement came in response to a press statement published on the front page of a local daily earlier today. The press statement talked about a group that allocated itself as “guardian” of people’s personal freedoms guaranteed by law, the ministry statement noted. The statement stressed that the ministry was the only directorate tasked with implementing and preserving the law in the country through imposing security and order, as well as safeguarding public morals. “The Kuwaiti society is a conservative, Arab and Muslim one that maintains refined morals and abides by its customs and traditions,” it pointed out.
“The ministry will counter such ‘radical’ calls with firmness,” the statement said, adding that the ministry would not allow anyone, whether individuals or groups, to interfere in the public’s personal freedoms, describing the calls as a “loud” infringement of the law as it also defied the state’s constitutional institutions. The statement concluded by saying that the ministry would take needed legal and security procedures to counter these calls and maintain the nation’s safety under the leadership of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
Meanwhile, the Citizenship and Passport Affairs Department at the Ministry of Interior has announced that citizenship will not be granted to Kuwaiti children born abroad, if they hold any other nationality, reports Al-Rai daily. The department said since Kuwait doesn’t accept dual citizenship, children born abroad, especially in western countries where citizenship is given on birth, will not be granted Kuwaiti citizenship if they accept another country’s citizenship. It applies even on children of diplomats and “the department will not grant citizenship to such children unless they give up their previous citizenship.”
It is easy to discover nationality from birth certificates, say sources. In another development, Iraqi authorities have extended invitation to Kuwait officials to visit Baghdad to locate the whereabouts of their compatriots captured during the August 1990 Iraqi invasion, reports Arrouaih daily quoting reliable Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry sources as saying. Sources added the step demonstrates the serious determination of Iraqis to see to an amicable resolution of the issues and to put to end the lingering suffering of many families who lost their loved ones during the war.
PS. I don’t want your help, either, morality volunteers, guarding my morality. My morality is between me and God. I obey the laws of the country I live in – the laws of the country, not your idea of what the laws should be. “Volunteers” guarding morality are vigilantes, pure and simple.
The Coventry Carole
In the midst of this miraculous birth, a tragedy. The wise men warn the family that they must flee, and King Herod issues an edict that all babies 2 and under will be slain. Mary tries to keep her baby quiet and hidden as they escape to Egypt:
An Eye for an Eye – Does Revenge Change Anything?
I have been following my own post with interest. The truth is, there is a huge part of me that agrees with you, agrees with Ameneh, who wants her attacker to suffer as she has suffered, to pay for the life he has stolen from her.
I used to be a lot more idealistic than I am now. I can remember the two times in my life I came face-to-face with who I am, viscerally, in my gut.
The first time, I was living in Jordan, and I awoke in the middle of the night. I heard gunfire. My husband was out of town – that happened a lot. Things like cars breaking down, heaters going out in the dead of winter, ants attacking (don’t even ask), those things always waited for my husband to be out of town. Now gunfire.
I finally called my British neighbors, who called their Security office, who said it was probably just the police shooting packs of dogs who attacked the sheep at night.
I knew, though, that night, that if I had a gun in the house, I would shoot anyone who came through the front door to protect my son. I had never thought of myself that way. I had never considered myself a killer. And I knew I could kill, without a second thought, to protect my son.
We all have times when we find out who we are, what we are made of. Men who go off to war and kill for a living have to live with their actions for the rest of their lives. Many, many live with regrets.
People who lived through the Invasion of Kuwait endured and suffered unimaginable horrors. Many won’t even talk about the things they saw or had to do.
Here is my problem with revenge – you have to live with the consequences.
If I had shot an intruder, even thinking it was a criminal, I would have to live with that the rest of my life. Even NOT shooting an intruder, I have to live with the thought that I would have, that I was fully prepared to kill. It still haunts me, even though I didn’t do anything, even though I just thought about it.
I like what This Lady said. I want this man punished, but if we choose to inflict the same punishment on him, don’t we lower ourselves to his level? I think life imprisonment would be worse. On another blog, dealing with the same topic, one Iranian woman wrote that if this man is blinded, some female in his family will be chosen to take care of him for the rest of his life, feeding him, preparing his meals. She, too, will be sacrificed, lose her own life to the obligation of taking care of this blinded villain for the rest of his life. Wouldn’t we all be better off if he were locked away, never to be free again?
I published the photo with the original article because I was shocked and intrigued by it. In spite of her blindness and disfigurement, this woman is laughing, and her mother is hugging her. In many ways, her life is blessed. Because God works in amazing and wonderful ways, we know that he can use this terrible act to do great things in her life, bring her peace, bring her new understanding . . . we don’t know what he can do, but we can trust that her life is not over, that he can still use her to fulfill his purpose in this world.
Reading your comments, trying to find my own response has been a challenge. As I said – if it were me, if it were my sister, God forbid – I know I would want revenge. I know that fiery outrage lives in all our hearts; the desire to take an eye for an eye. I know that dragon in my own heart.
And yet . . . I am left with this very uneasy feeling that revenge and retribution are neither deterrent, nor satisfying. I trust that if this sentence is carried out, God can even do great things with this violent assailant, that he can work in his heart and give him a new way of seeing, he can bring him to repentance, he can do great works, even in the heart of this sinner.
My greatest, gravest concern is for Ameneh. She seems to be a very stable, courageous woman. I fear that revenge can act as a poison in her soul, that the punishment, if inflicted, will eat away at all the goodness of her life. I fear for any of us who become obsessed with revenge at the cost of who we were created to be.
You have been very forceful in your expression of belief that the sentence should be imposed. Don’t you harbor any misgivings about this, no matter how small?
An Eye for an Eye in Iran – Penalty for Acid Disfigurement?
I found this today in the Washington Post
Woman Blinded by Spurned Man Invokes Islamic Retribution
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01
TEHRAN — Ameneh Bahrami once enjoyed photography and mountain vistas. Her work for a medical equipment company gave her financial independence. Several men had asked for her hand in marriage, but the hazel-eyed electrical technician had refused them all. “I wanted to get married, but only to the man I really loved,” she said.
Four years ago, a spurned suitor poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over her head, leaving her blind and disfigured.
Late last month, an Iranian court ordered that five drops of the same chemical be placed in each of her attacker’s eyes, acceding to Bahrami’s demand that he be punished according to a principle in Islamic jurisprudence that allows a victim to seek retribution for a crime. The sentence has not yet been carried out.
You can read the rest of the article Here.
You may think you know how I feel about this. The man stole from this woman. He violated her very life. He stole her ability to see, her ability to support herself, he disfigured her for life and stole the likelihood of the love match she was holding out for. He treated her like property – if he can’t have her, then he will have revenge.
She fought – and won – for him to be blinded with the same acid she has been blinded with. She doesn’t ask that he be disfigured, only blinded. The court in Iran agreed. The sentence has not yet been carried out.
I’m interested in what YOU think. I feel sympathy for the woman, Ahmena Bahrami. I love the way she went after her attacker in the courts. I love it that she didn’t just collapse and be a victim.
On the other hand, I wish she had gone after something different. The thought of purposely blinding someone is SO repugnant to me, I can’t support it. I wish she had gone after his money, forcing him to support her at the level she was earning, for the rest of her life – and his. I find myself thinking – what good does it do to blind him?
He committed a heinous act. Hideous, unthinkable. And yet I find the punishment equally hideous, and unthinkable. I worry that in the future, she will regret having enforced this upon her assailant. I think that revenge, getting revenge, can extract it’s own price from our character. Do you think she will feel better? Do you think she will be happier knowing he was blinded in retrubution? I kinda sorta doubt it.
What do you think?
One Step Down
It was a real eye opener, being back in the USA. AdventureMan had an interesting observation, something he learned a long time ago in a sociology class. It has to do with dining in restaurants. When a guy eats his lunch out every day, he goes to one kind of place, and then when he takes his family out for a meal on Sunday, he goes one step up, takes them to a better restaurant than he would go to every day.
As we travelled in different parts of the United States, what we saw was just the opposite – one step down. People we know still have jobs, still make their house payments, still have the same income. The PERCEPTIONS however, are very different. People are nervous, maybe even a little worried about their jobs. They are not FEELING as prosperous as they felt last year, or the year before. They are spending less. They are going to eat out, but will eat out at that one-step-down restaurant, and not the higher priced restaurant.
As we Christmas shopped, we saw HUGE differences. The Macy’s and the Dillard’s and the big delightfully fancy stores are like ghost towns, and for good reason. They have drastically cut back on their inventory. Where you had to fight your way through the crowded racks a couple years ago, there is a lot of space this year. I didn’t see anything very exciting in terms of fashions or shoes. The Targets and the Fred Meyers (a Pacific Northwest chain) were packed with shoppers, prices were cut, and products were flying off the shelves.
A newspaper article said that what people are buying are . . . appliances. Things people really use – toasters, mixers, etc. The big difference is, they are insisting on appliances in COLOR – carmine reds, blueberrys, greens – chartreuse seems to be big this year, for Christmas, for clothing, and for decorations. Even for Christmas cookies. Chartreuse and pink are this year’s Christmasy red and green. Total hoot. But when people start drawing back from spending, they buy practical things – in fanciful colors. I remember reading once that when times get tough, lipstick sales soar. Women will spend on something small to make themselves feel good, and lipstick does the trick.
The trip was a real eye opener. AdventureMan has sticker shock. I just laugh. I think Kuwait is expensive! AdventureMan doesn’t buy groceries. I remember one time we were together at the Co-op and he couldn’t believe what we were spending on milk – but what are you going to do? Not buy milk? I have always used powdered milk for baking, but with the Chinese thing, I even worry about powdered milk.
Are you going through sticker shock? Are your spending habits changing? Do you eat in restaurants, or are you eating more at home?
“Seriously Bad Men”
AdventureMan and I are on a beach, and enjoyed one of the most magnificent sunsets we have ever seen, absolutely painterly, and I took lots of shots to share with you only to discover I don’t have my card reader/uploader little stick, so I have to wait until I can share them with you.
AdventureMan is having so much fun he has worn himself out, and today he came down with a bad cold. He spent some time napping while I spent some time out on the balcony, enjoying the sun and the crashing waves. When it came time for dinner, we decided some nice hot soup and hot tea would help him feel a lot better. Went down to the car, and our car is blocked by a huge white SUV, left running, doors locked, no driver.
For a minute we thought we were back in Kuwait.
There were three guys standing outside the office to the hotel, smoking and chatting (think Hank Hill) and we asked them if the car was their’s, and they said “No, it is the POLICE. There are some seriously bad men they are after, with guns!”
After about fifteen minutes, a couple beefy cops came by and one moved the car and parked it legally. We went and had a very delicious dinner at a Japanese restaurant where, when we told the owner we live in Kuwait, he said “Salaam A’aleikum” which astounded me, but he said he was Canadian-Japanese, and grew up with Arab immigrant kids. I love America.
On our way home, we stopped at a Publix, a very wonderful food market, where we picked up some green tea and coffee and bananas, just a little something to have in the room, and we also picked up some Thanksgiving bundles – how cool is this? Publix puts together grocery bags of Thanksgiving foods for the poor and needy, and has them on a stand by the check-out stands. You pick them up, pay for them, drop them in a bin and some needy family gets food for the holidays. They make it so easy to donate. We have so much for which we are thankful. I love this place.
When we got back to the motel, the cops were still surrounding the room (not in our building) where the seriously bad guys were holed up, and now, a couple hours later, there are two great big slow moving helicopters patrolling the beach area with huge spotlights, evidently trying to spot them on the move or something.
One of the bad buys is “SWAT trained” we were told.
The locks on our doors are not very serious locks. I am just hoping they catch them and go home so I can listen to the crashing of the waves in peace.
How To Turn Kuwaiti Youth Into Law Breakers:
Lord, have mercy! Who doesn’t know that the quickest way to get young people to want to read a book or watch a movie is to BAN it?? It’s just human nature! So you take smart, tech-savvy young people and FORBID them to watch YouTube, or hey! even better – block it – and watch how fast they find a way around every attempt to block it.
There are a lot of sayings that come to mind – like “That train done left the station” or “Like getting ketchup back in the bottle” – you might as well ban water from running downhill.
Lawyer to file case against ministry over failure to ban YouTube
Al Watan staff
and agencies
KUWAIT: A leading Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak AlـTasha has said that he intends to file a case against the Ministry of Information for not blocking the Web site YouTube or at least blocking infamous clips that are considered as insulting to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
The lawyer said that since the ministry failed to carry out its promises, a law suit will be filed against it in order to ensure that this is legally binding, and added that the Kuwaiti Constitution protects freedom of expression, press and publication however such freedoms should not in any way insult Islam.
He added that the State needs to uphold the Constitution and respect it since law 70/2002 issued by the Information Ministry states that internet providers should not promote or encourage pornographic, indecent and antiـIslamic material.
A few months ago local newspapers reported that the ministry ordered local Internet service providers to block the Web site over clips that could offend Muslims.
“Since the Web site displays the Quran in the form of songs sung with the oud … and displays disrespectful pictures of the Prophet Mohammed … please proceed with immediate effect in blocking the Web site http://www.youtube.com,” read a copy of a memo obtained by Reuters.
However, following the circulation of this memo, the ministry went back on its decision and the site was subsequently not banned.
Last updated on Monday 24/11/2008
Somalia: Pirates – and Dumping
This is a report from BBC News. I published a piece previously on Somalia on March 11, and blogger Shafi said the following:
“When wealthier nations align their fleet of vessels at Somali coast to fish illegally (estimated at around $6 million as the article says) and dump toxic waste in some parts of the water, aren’t they doing a greater evil and a major harm to the shell-shattared country and her people than the pirates for whom piracy is itself a survival method?”
The statement caught me totally by surprise. I went looking to see if it was true, and it was.
Shafi has a fascinating blog, and if you have some time, go take a look. Meanwhile, I am happy to see glimpses of a fuller picture coming forth in the news:
Ex-Somali Army Colonel Mohamed Nureh Abdulle lives in Harardhere – the town closest to where the hijacked Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star is moored. He tells the BBC, via phone from his home, that the town’s residents are more concerned about the apparent dumping of toxic waste than piracy.
The Harardhere-born military man advises the town’s elders on security matters and is in his fifties.
Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 – when its last national government was forced from power.
The super-tanker is close to our coast. It is a very, very long ship. Some time ago we had our own problems of piracy in our town but that has not happened lately.
The people who have been hijacking these ships in our seas are not from our region. We do not know any of the guys on the super-tanker and they haven’t made any contact with us.
You know, our problem is not piracy. It is illegal dumping.
These problems have been going for sometime and the world knows about it. The Americans have been here in the region for a long time now – they know about the pollution.
Instead, no, the world is only talking about the pirates and the money involved.
Mysterious illnesses
Meanwhile, there has been something else going on and it has been going on for years. There are many dumpings made in our sea, so much rubbish.
It is dumped in our seas and it washes up on our coastline and spreads into our area.
A few nights ago, some tanks came out from the high sea and they cracked it seems and now they are leaking into the water and into the air.
The first people fell ill yesterday afternoon. People are reporting mysterious illnesses; they are talking about it as though it were chicken pox – but it is not exactly like that either. Their skin is bad. They are sneezing, coughing and vomiting.
This is the first time it has been like this; that people have such very, very bad sickness.
The people who have these symptoms are the ones who wake early, before it is light, and herd their livestock to the shore to graze. The animals are sick from drinking the water and the people who washed in the water are now suffering.
TimesOnline ran an article on Somalia after the tsunami, and the contaminants that had been washed ashore:
“The current situation along the Somali coastline poses a very serious environmental hazard not only in Somalia but also in the eastern Africa sub-region,” the report says. Toxic waste was first dumped in Somalia in the late 1980s, but accelerated sharply during the civil war which followed the 1991 overthrow of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Local warlords, many of them former ministers in Siad Barre’s last government, received large payments from Swiss and Italian firms for access to their respective fiefdoms.
Most of the waste was simply dumped on remote beaches in containers and leaking disposable barrels.
Somali sources close to the trade say that the dumped materials included radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, mercury and industrial, hospital, chemical and various other toxic wastes. In 1992, Unep said that European firms were involved in the trade, but because of the high level of insecurity in the country there were never any accurate assessments of the extent of the problem.
In 1997 and 1998, the Italian newspaper Famiglia Cristiana, which jointly investigated the allegations with the Italian branch of Greenpeace, published a series of articles detailing the extent of illegal dumping by a Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso.
The news is so much more complicated than it appears. How do we stop all these wrongful, hurtful things? Do not we have a responsibility toward the poorest nations? If we – meaning the richest nations – don’t stop this dumping now, is there not every chance in the world that it will come back to haunt us?
No Home Activities for Welfare Societies
A sudden and unbelievable decision bans welfare activities in private homes. This could have far reaching effects – are not most welfare activities taking place in Kuwait privately organized and funded? I have been to so many private fund raisers for charities I support – bazaars, game nights, line dancing classes – almost all in private homes. I suspect this is legislation that means well, but discourages people from reaching out to meet needs not met by the city or state.
Welfare societies banned from organizing activities in private homes
Al Watan staff
KUWAIT: Welfare and charitable societies are facing a new challenge after the Municipality has decided to suspend any such activities from taking place in private homes.
The Municipality has sent 62 official letters to the Ministry of Water and Electricity demanding that power be cut off to certain buildings in Jabriya and Salmiya after these private residencies were found to have been involved in activities of welfare societies. Undersecretary at the Ministry of Water and Electricity Yusuf AlـHajiri confirmed in a statement to Al Watan that the ministry will disconnect the electricity from properties involved in violations of housing regulations.
Representatives from a number of welfare societies and charitable organizations expressed their bewilderment at this decision and said that all their activities are licensed and were often inaugurated under government sponsorship. They added that many people will suffer from what they described as a “hasty decision.”
The decision to ban activities in private homes came directly from the Municipality General Manager Ahmad AlـSubaih who on Tuesday gave formal instructions to suspend all such activities on grounds that they violate private home regulations.
Local Municipal Councils are now able to issue violations and communicate directly with the Ministry of Water and Electricity to disconnect the power of any property which is found to be violating the terms and condition of housing tenancy.
Welfare societies and charitable organizations have already sent an official letter to the Cabinet requesting that they be allowed to expand their charitable activities and receive donations in cash to facilitate their work.
Last updated on Friday 21/11/2008
Sharing Faith
Several years ago, a woman put a book in my hands and said “I got this for you because I think you will love it.” It was kind of a shock; I didn’t know this woman all that well, but she knew me better. I loved the book, and I ordered a workbook to go with it, and I loved doing it. It was a forty day study called The Purpose Driven Life.
If you think I am trying to convert you, I’m not. Just as this woman wasn’t trying to convert me. The Purpose Driven Life is all about trying to make your walk in faith more meaningful. It starts with the premise that each one of us is uniquely created, and has a unique function to fill. The book has changed how I live my life. Intrigued? Go read the book!
I also subscribe to their daily e-mail, and today it was all about gaining wisdom from reading THE BOOK, learning from our own experiences and those of others:
Write down the major life lessons you’ve learned so you can share them with others. We should be grateful Solomon did this, because it gave us the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which are filled with practical lessons on living. Imagine how much needless frustration could be avoided if we learned from each other’s life lessons.
Mature people develop the habit of extracting lessons from everyday experiences. I urge you to make a list of your life lessons. You haven’t really thought about them thoroughly unless you’ve written them down. Below are a few questions to jog your memory and get your started:
So what?
What has God taught me from failure?
What has God taught me from a lack of money?
What has God taught me from pain or sorrow or depression?
What has God taught me through waiting?
What has God taught me through illness?
What has God taught me from disappointment?
What have I learned from my family, my church, my relationships, my small group, and my critics?
It felt like a jolt of electricity going through me when I read those questions. Sometimes, I think I am not very bright; sometimes I don’t even learn from my own experiences and mistakes! As I read these questions, I started thinking how the financial crisis has energized us and changed our plans. We thought we would have a hunk of money to work with when we retire, and suddenly that hunk has shrunk! Meanwhile, we are instigating all kinds of new strategies to make our money go farther. You would think it would be depressing, but the truth is . . . we are having fun! I’d forgotten the thrill of the hunt; getting items for good prices, finding substitutes . . . and the questions above reminded me that at one time we knew a lot about stretching money.
AdventureMan is a great cook, and truly, if we ate fewer meals out, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about our waistlines. I used to bake all our bread, when we lived in Tunis, and only had access to wonderful baguettes. I even baked English muffins, my favorite.
Every one of the questions he asked today reminded me of a lesson I had learned . . . and then kind of let go. I didn’t exactly forget, but now all these life-lessons are fresh again!
You don’t have to be Christian, or Moslem, or a even a believer to think about these questions. Take a look at the questions and see what YOU have learned from life’s circumstances.
Where do YOU find wisdom?
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 