I’d like to wish all, Christian or not, the very best of this holiday season.
I came across this video and thought it particularly well done. The Arabic is crystal clear. The images are to the point. At the conclusion of the singing is a lengthy listing of the sources of the photos (I wish more would do this!). Many originate in Maaloula and Seidnaya, Christian villages a few miles outside of Damascus, where Syriac/Aramaic is still the language in common use.
Arab News offer a look at the Camel Festival taking place in northern Saudi Arabia. The article notes that the competition is fierce, but the rewards can be substantial. There’s probably more information about camels than you really need to know, but it’s interesting…
Desert hunks with humps
Javed Iqbal | Arab NewsWhen 83-year-old Salem Saud Al-Otaibi moved to the desert of Hafr Al-Baten at the age of seven to spend the rest of his life there breeding camels, little did he know that one day he would become one of the wealthiest bedouins on the Peninsula.
Just last week, prior to having his name registered for the 26-day King Abdulaziz Annual Camel Festival at Umm Ruquaiba, 350 km north of Riyadh, Otaibi sold one of his 31 prized camels for SR400,000.
“Since the age of seven, when I first came across camels, I have been infatuated by them,” said Al-Otaibi, adding that he quit the city and adopted a nomadic life – and he’s never regretting his decision.
“I myself pulled water for camels from the well, and slept in the pen with them at night to ensure their safety from poachers,” he reminisced, and disclosed that he had taken part in every camel pageant since its start 10 years ago.
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Here’s Saudi Gazette‘s report: Camel contest ends beautifully
Sorry about the interrupting in posting. I was driving north for the holidays and did not have Internet access (as advertised) at my hotel. Posting will be light over the holidays, but I’ll be here writing.
Here, from Asharq Alawsat are a couple of pieces on the semiotics of shoe-throwing…
The first takes a look at the role shoes have played in the politics of the Middle East/Islamic World and a bit beyond. It doesn’t include any tales of Hoja/Hoca, but I’ll put one in [2-page PDF].
Politics and Shoes
Mohamed Abdu HassaneinAsharq Al-Awsat, Cairo – There has always been some kind of relationship between politicians and shoes. The use of a shoe to express a political stand has existed in political culture for a long time whether it is the politician using the shoe or the shoe being used against the politician, as occurred recently during a press conference held by US President George W. Bush in Iraq. During this press conference the American president was almost hit in the face by a pair of shoes hurled by Iraqi journalist Montadhar Al Zaidi. Though it was the most recent incident involving politicians and shoes, it certainly was not the first.
In our Arab world, the relationship between politicians and shoes dates back to the thirteenth century when the Mamluk Sultan Ezz Al Din Aybak was assassinated. The Sultan was assassinated by one of his wives, Shajar Al-Durr, who wished to take over power herself. His death was avenged by another of his wives, Um Ali, and her maids, who killed Shajar Al-Durr by mercilessly beating her with clogs.
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Diana Mukkaled offers her views on the matter. She thinks shoe-throwing is rather exaggerated and not terribly effective.
Arabs: Glorifying the Shoe
Diana MukkaledIraqi protestors are raising their shoes.
Children are playing with shoes in the streets of Baghdad.
The brother of Iraqi journalist Montadhar al Zaidi shows off his brother’s shoes with pride.
These were some of the scenes that have been recorded by the cameras in the wake of the “clear victory” that millions of Arabs have celebrated, namely the shoe-throwing incident that was carried out by the Iraqi journalist Montadhar al Zaidi who hurled his shoes at US President George W. Bush.
But let us leave Bush aside. The discussion that is taking place in our press is not focused on the American president and our opinion of him, nor do we need to remind ourselves of the disaster that the Bush administration has caused.
The issue here is about us and those shoes…
Bad court decisions can sometimes help push for legal reform. That, at least, is what I’m hoping to come from this story, reported by the British Mail on Sunday. It strikes me as a fairly typical verdict coming from a Shariah court judge who delves so deeply into the minutiae of legal texts that he loses sight of what his case involves. I’m pretty certain that this case is going to be appealed to and then reversed by a higher court. Talk about Saudis behaving badly! The father, the husband, AND the judge!
Saudi court rejects divorce plea from EIGHT-year-old girl married to 58-year-old man
A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.
The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl’s divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.
Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:”The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty.”
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Arab News has a brief write-up of the crazy stuff some Saudis will get up to. Drunks running around Taif naked? A crowd taking care of a stubborn masher… it’s all there!
The opening of a public cinema in Jeddah over the Eid holiday has certainly raised a commotion in Saudi Arabia. Happiness greeted the event. Then the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice condemned it. Now, Saudi Gazette reports, the head of the Commission ‘clarifies’ his calling cinema ‘an evil’, saying that it’s okay, as long as it’s used for good purposes.
More or no more?
Mohammed Al-KinaniJEDDAH – An excited crowd of hundreds of people turned up for Friday’s screening of the comedy film “Manahi”, capping a hugely successful nine-day run here and suggesting that a rift has opened between a section of the Saudi public that wants more cinema and a moral authority that sees it as evil.
“What’s wrong with having cinema? People enjoy cinema when they go abroad, but here it seems we are different from the others,” Salman Boghas, 22, a college student who was “lucky” to find a seat in the front rows for the last screening of “Manahi” told Saudi Gazette.
The showing of “Manahi” marked a triumphant return of cinema to Saudi Arabia after a three-decade absence. Thousands of men, women and children watched the film with multiple daily screenings over a period of 9 days in theaters in Jeddah and Taif. Turnout for the movie, produced by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s media company Rotana, was so big that the film had to be played eight times a day over a 9-day period, the organizers said. It had to be stopped in Taif due to overcrowding in the hall, Rotana spokesman Ibrahim Badi told Reuters.
Commission chief clarifies
But along with the film’s enthusiastic public reception which saw hundreds of moviegoers disappointed at not being able to get a seat at the final screening on Friday, there has also been a sharp negative response from Sheikh Dr. Ibrahim Bin Abdullah Al-Ghaith, the chief of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Sheikh Al-Ghaith made it clear that cinema was an evil and that the Commission was firmly against the opening of movie theaters in the Kingdom. “Our position on this is clear – ban it,” he said Friday. “That is because cinema is evil and we do not need it. We have enough evil already.”
On Saturday, Sheikh Al-Gaith however clarified that the Commission has “no objection to cinemas as long as they are used in matters that please Allah.”
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It seems that the Commission is finally getting the word that it needs to open its mind a bit more. Arab News carries this: Commission agrees to foster dialogue culture.
It’s certainly time, and past time, for Commission members to realize that they do not have a direct line to the unequivocal wishes of God. As commenter ‘M’ suggests, it truly appears that the religious police are being pushed back, and pushed back hard.
One of the rituals of Haj is Tawaf, the circumambulation of the Kaaba. Tawafah refers to guides or escorts who assist pilgrims in performing the various stages of the entire pilgrimage. Saudi women work as escorts for female pilgrims, naturally, but they want to be more professionalized and have a greater say in how these services are offered. Good for them!
Women demand permanent positions on Tawafah boards
Badea Abu Al- Naja | Arab NewMAKKAH: Most women officials of Tawafah establishments demand that they should be represented with a woman member on the boards of directors of the five Tawafah establishments that look after Haj and Umrah pilgrims annually.
The women workers also demand that they should be offered permanent employment covering the whole year instead of the present system of seasonal recruitment.
“The absence of women on the board of directors of Tawafah establishments, no doubt, weakens the quality of services offered to women pilgrims. On the other hand, if there is at least one member, women pilgrims could be served in a better manner. We hope that our demand will be listened to favorably,” Fatin Muhammad Hussein, chairperson of the women’s committee at the South Asian Tawafah Establishment, told Arab News in an interview on Friday.
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The always thoughtful Iman Kurdi has an interesting piece in Arab News today. She takes a look at the shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad last week and wonders what it means, what it says about Arabs. She’s not sure that ‘hero’ is the word that is most applicable to shoeless Muntadar Al-Zeidi. More to the point though, she’s pretty certain that whatever happened to Al-Zeidi in consequence of his physical expression of opinion, it’s certainly less grave than it would have been had his target been Saddam Hussein. And that says something about the level of freedom that pertains in Iraq these days. Worth reading.
Doesn’t it say something about us?
Iman Kurdi | Arab NewsThere are three ways to react to the now mythical shoe throwing that took place at US President George W. Bush’s press conference in Baghdad last week.
The first and most natural reaction is to laugh. The footage is highly comical. Bush ducks with such agility I found myself wondering whether Laura Bush likes to hurl her shoes at her husband. He seemed so well practiced at dodging flying shoes! It is made all the funnier by the poker faced Nuri Al-Maliki who did not budge one inch as Muntadar Al-Zeidi hurled one shoe and then the other at the US president standing by his side.
The second is to cheer. The image is so apt. In case you have been marooned on a desert island for the last week, here is what happened. At a press conference in Baghdad on Dec. 13, Bush stood next to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and fielded questions from the press as normal. Then one journalist, a young Iraqi named Muntader Al-Zeidi who works for an Egyptian-based channel Al-Baghdadiyah, stood and hurled his shoe at Bush shouting in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis, this is a farewell kiss, you dog.”
The shoe narrowly missed Bush’s head, as he ducked to dodge the shoe. Then Al Zeidi hurled his second shoe, shouting, “This is from the widows, the orphans and all those who were killed in Iraq.” The shoe went high over Bush’s head.
Al-Zeidi is clearly a natural at communications. First, there is the symbolism of using his shoes, and not just any shoes, he made sure he wore Iraqi-made shoes. Then there are the words that accompanied the act. In one gesture he summarized the sentiment of millions of Iraqis toward Bush. And not just Iraqis of course.
The third reaction is to ask soberly whether this is the way to treat a visiting dignitary. I may seem a party-pooper for even asking this question, but it needs to be asked. You can agree with the sentiment expressed yet ask whether this was the right way to express it. Moreover, this has tipped into an argument about freedom of expression.
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The internet outage that swept across the Middle East and S. Asia is likely to affect Saudi access for the rest of the month, Arab News reports. The cut is particularly affecting Saudi ARAMCO, according to correspondent Molouk Ba-Isa. Her very informative article gives details on what happened (they think) and how people are trying to work around the disruptions. The piece also notes that because of the outage, small businesses in Saudi Arabia are competing for existing bandwidth with P2P users and those watching streaming videos.
Internet woes may last through December
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa | Arab NewsALKHOBAR: A terse missive was put out through Saudi Aramco’s intranet, the company’s internal network, yesterday morning.
“The Internet has not been available since Friday afternoon for all business and home users,” it read. “Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) is currently working to restore service. Furthermore, information technology analysts are working with STC to establish a temporary, limited Internet service.”
Anyone who has been online in the past couple of days can confirm that the recent cut in undersea cables in the Mediterranean has once again stymied the digital flow to Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries. And involved companies are saying not to expect any improvement on their part before Thursday, and that connectivity may be hampered for the rest of the month.
Meanwhile, Saudi Internet service providers (ISPs) are scrambling to obtain more bandwidth from alternative channels.
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Arab News reports that, foreign media to the contrary, there was no particular terror threat to the Haj in Mecca this year. Thus, the Saudis took no particular counter-terror operations to thwart one, says the Ministry of Interior. Security forces were in abundance during the annual pilgrimage, but that’s always the case, the Ministry added. With close to three million pilgrims, all living and acting within a confined space, I think that likely right.
Kingdom denies counterterrorism operations in Haj
Samir Al-Saadi | Arab NewsJEDDAH: The Ministry of Interior has denied reports published in a Washington-based online newspaper that Saudi officials had launched a massive crackdown on Al-Qaeda terrorists who were allegedly planning to attack pilgrims participating in this year’s Haj.
The Middle East Times — a sister publication of the Washington Times which is owned by News World Communications — carried the report on Dec. 16 quoting unnamed US intelligence officials.
The report said the Saudi government’s operation followed alerts that Al-Qaeda planned to launch a bloody assault on pilgrims.
Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, described the report as “incorrect.” “We didn’t launch any huge counterterrorism operation,” he said, adding that there was no intelligence of an attack targeting the pilgrims.
The Times report stated that this year’s pilgrimage began on Dec. 6 under the nervous eye of Saudi security forces that included 20,000 ground troops, flights of combat helicopters and a large number of armored vehicles deployed at key locations.
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Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are in agreement: Something must be done to stabilize the price of oil. Low oil prices, says Naimi, are seriously affecting the ability of producing states to increase production. If the price isn’t high enough to sustain investment in future energy development, whether traditional or alternative, there’s going to be another demand crisis as the world economies return to normal.
LONDON – With no end in sight as oil slid to its lowest level in almost five years, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, said Friday the current price levels “are wreaking havoc on the industry and are threatening current and planned investments.”
Speaking in London during a meeting of 27 oil producing and consuming nations convened in London and attended by figures including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and OPEC chief Abdalla Salem El-Badri, Al-Naimi suggested that production levels alone did not drive oil prices.
Prices fell despite pledges by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries this week to remove 2.2 million barrels per day from its supply, which will be the largest ever reduction by the producer group.
The Kingdom would be pumping less oil in January according to its new output target, Al-Naimi said. Brown in his opening address sought action to reduce huge swings in oil prices that he said had damaged the world economy. “We will need a new partnership between oil-producing and oil-consuming countries,” Brown said.
“As with the global financial crisis, this global crisis in our energy markets cannot be solved by one nation or one continent alone.”
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So… four days ago, the re-opening of cinemas in Saudi Arabia makes the news.
A day later, the head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice declares cinema to be ‘an evil’.
As they say, quelle surprise!
Here, Saudi Gazette gives Sheikh Al-Ghaith the opportunity to explain why the world is going to hell in a hand basket and how the Commission is standing by, ready to come to the aid of the citizenry faced with the horrors of modern life.
Cinema is an evil – Commission chief
RIYADH – Cinema is an evil, the chief of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said here Friday, one day after a long awaited and much celebrated cinema festival ended in Saudi Arabia
Sheikh Dr. Ibrahim Bin Abdullah Al-Ghaith, the Commission chief, then declared that the Commission is against opening movie theaters in the Kingdom.
His statement is bound to dampen the hopes of thousands of Saudi men, women and children who had enjoyed the 9-day cinema festival Dec. 10-18 in Jeddah and Taif, the highlight of which was “Manahi,” a comedy film with a touch of Saudi culture and tradition.
Organized by Rowad Media and Kawthar Foundation and Production, the festival had marked the return of public cinema in the country after 30 years. Ayman Halawani, director general of Rotana Studios, had hailed “Manahi” as “the first film in the revival of Saudi cinema.”
But Sheikh Al-Ghaith made it clear Friday that the Commission would have none of that.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the inauguration of “The best nation (Ummah),” a 4-day annual forum held at King Fahd Cultural Center here. This year’s theme of the forum is “One Ummah.”
At an open meeting between Commission staff, media men and guests following the forum’s launch, Sheikh Al-Gaith spoke about how the Commission deals with ills in society. One prevalent problem was that of girls being blackmailed by young men. Sheikh Al-Gaith said the Commission deals with such problems in total secrecy even to the extent of not letting the girl’s family or relatives know about it. In several cases, the young men involved were taken to court or prison, he said.
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