Two years ago, a Saudi studying in the state of Colorado, Homaidan Al-Turki, was convicted of sexually harassing his Indonesia maid while keeping her in a situation of domestic servitude. His family—and a sector of the Saudi general public—believe the jury’s verdict to have been unfair. Saudi Gazette reports that Al-Turki’s appeal of the verdict to the Colorado Court of Appeals has failed. Now, the family will seek to have the case heard before the Colorado Supreme Court.
Turki’s case to be taken to Colorado Supreme Court
Faheem Al-Hamid and Mansour Al-ShehriJEDDAH/RIYADH – A team of six US law offices will appeal the Aug. 2006 verdict of 28 years imprisonment of Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki for alleged forced labor and aggravated sexual harassment of his Indonesian housemaid with the Colorado Supreme Court, the Al-Turki family said Friday.
The law offices have started to act, the Al-Turki family spokesman said after the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Al-Turki’s conviction on Thursday, ruling that the trial court correctly set limits during jury selection and that the jury’s findings were supported by evidence. It can take up to a year-and-a-half before the Colorado Supreme Court reaches a decision about the appeal, said Fahd Al-Nassar, spokesman of the Al-Turki family.
The decision of the Colorado Court of Appeals to uphold the sentence disappointed the family members who firmly believe that their son is innocent behind bars, Al-Nassar said.
The decision has compounded the grievance of Homaidan’s mother who had just lost her sister, he added.
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For earlier coverage of Homaidan Al-Turki, you can follow this link. I apologize for the typographic clutter in some of of those posts. Apparently, when this blog was moved to a new server, punctuation marks like apostrophes and quotation marks got changed to their HTML codes. I’ve not found a way to correct this problem in bulk. That means going back through nearly 5,500 posts and correcting them manually. I haven’t found the time (or energy) to do that just yet.
It’s pretty clear that Saudi society—at least as modeled by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—believes in magic, particularly the ‘black’ kind.
Asharq Alawsat reports that the Commission has ramped up its efforts to rid society of practitioners of the craft. I understand that ‘black magic’ is considered un-Islamic. But might it not be better for the Commission to demonstrate that magic is nonsense in the first place? To do that, though, it would be required to include ‘good’ or ‘white’ magic in the denunciations. That, I think, is where the problems come in, because it seems that magic has an ambiguous position in many Islamic societies. People want to believe in ‘good’ magic, that something that will give them an edge in facing the trials of life. But believing in good magic almost necessarily requires a belief in black magic as well: it provides a balancing opposite. Besides, belief in black magic offers yet another opportunity to accept responsibility for problems or to accept the need to do some serious thinking about why things go wrong. It’s much easier to assign the failure to some external source.
It appears to me that the Commission is still trying to disentangle the ties between religion and superstition. That’s going to be tough.
This effort, however, will help to reduce the number of confidence tricks—cons—to which far too many Saudis fall prey. The real solution, though, is to continue improving Saudi education to the point where people use their brains to assess the promises made by ‘sorcerers and witches’.
Saudi Religious Police Get Tough on Black Magic
Khaled al OweiganRiyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Sources within the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice [CPVPV] in Saudi Arabia have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the CPVPV will move to combat magic and those who practice it, and regulate the exercise of legitimate spiritual healing, by instituting a system designed to deal with such practices which are against Islamic Shariaa Law.
Sources close to the CPVPV leadership in the Saudi capital of Riyadh revealed that a number of legal consultancies were studying the draft version and procedural guidelines of this project. Asharq Al-Awsat managed to obtain a copy of this draft which gives the police the right to deal with witches and sorcerers, and the means to identify and convict them.
A study of this project [to combat witchcraft and sorcery] was carried out by the Center for Research and Study which is affiliated to the CPVPV and which put a number of legal opinions on the table including; a definition of magic, witchcraft, divination, fortune-telling and other similar practices, a scientific definition to magical practices, and a model in order to help uncover such practices.
The study, also clarified the signs and symbols that can be used in the practice of magic, as well as the tools used to control magic, while also advising that a system of cooperation be initiated between the various authorities involved in this fight against such practices and those who perform them.
The study also suggested that information be used in the fight against magic, and that the public be warned against it, as the CPVPV has been attempting to do.
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I’m rather surprised that the causeway linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain had closed its commercial customs section during the day. Now, reports Arab News, the customs office will be open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day in order to increase the flow of traffic and avoid long traffic delays.
Causeway traffic to ease now
MANAMA: Traffic at King Fahd Causeway will ease after a decision by the Saudi customs directorate at the causeway to remain open around the clock from yesterday.Abdulhakim Al-Shammary, chairman of the Joint Committee at the Bahrain Customs Directorate told Arab News that Saudi customs at the causeway will now “receive Saudi shipments and trucks for transit to other countries” 24 hours a day.
“This is a big development, as it would solve the traffic jam situation on the causeway,” he said.
During weekends, traffic is virtually at a standstill with trucks also in the queue due to the fixed timings when they are allowed to ply. This has led to delays in shipments. Authorities have been working since the past year to set a mechanism to tackle the situation. Al-Shammary said they had first succeeded in extending the working hours of Saudi customs officials from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
In his first few days on the job, President Obama is calling foreign leaders. On Friday, he spoke with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Harper of Canada, Prime Minister Brown of the UK, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. I guess that gives an indication of how high up the ladder he sees US-Saudi relations.
Arab News carries this report:
Abdullah, Obama discuss Mideast
RIYADH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah received yesterday a telephone call from US President Barack Obama. The two leaders discussed developments in the Middle East, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
On Thursday, Obama appointed George Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, America’s Middle East envoy. Mitchell played an important role in negotiating peace in Northern Ireland with the signing of the Belfast Peace Agreement in 1998.
In his first presidential address, Obama sent an immediate message to the world, particularly Muslims, that he would seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
Concerned about the sufferings of the Palestinians under attack by Israeli forces, King Abdullah on Monday warned that the Arab Peace Initiative would not be on the table forever.
The Arab Peace Initiative — proposed by King Abdullah and adopted by the Beirut Arab League Summit in 2002 — calls on Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967 in return for diplomatic relations with Arab states.
Saudi Gazette seems to be stuck on yesterday’s edition online, so there’s nothing available from that paper.
The White House released the following as part of a press release on Pres. Obama’s calls today to foreign leaders:
… King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. President Obama underscored the importance of a strong U.S.-Saudi relationship. He underscored his appreciation for King Abdullah’s leadership on the Arab Peace Initiative, the Interfaith Dialogue and for the pledge of assistance to the Palestinian Authority. He asked for Saudi support for efforts to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza and expressed interest in continuing counter-terrorism cooperation.
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Unfortunately, the text above is taken from Time Magazine’s website. The White House website does not appear to be set up to allow easy access to press releases (or at least, I cannot find them).
The US State Department reports that the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, called Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal today as well. State’s release of the text of today’s press conference includes a question about former Saudi Ambassador to the US Turki Al-Faisal’s recent comments about the Saudi peace plan’s not being on the table forever, but has no substantive answer.
UPDATE: The story is getting a bit more substance. CNN reports, using an ‘unnamed security official’, that Al-Shihri fled a Saudi rehab program last year. In an unsourced report, The New York Times say Al-Shihri had ‘passed through’ a program.
The far-left of American politics is viewing this story as a) an example of ‘failed Bush policies’ and b) fearmongering by the former Administration, planted in the media in order to scotch the new Administration’s plans to close Guantanamo. Bloggers on the right are, indeed, seeing this as an unfortunate consequence of pressure by the left to close Guantanamo.
The Associated Press carries an unverified report that a Saudi, Said Ali al-Shihri, who was detained at Guantanamo and repatriated to Saudi Arabia last year, is claimed to be the #2 leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. If this is so, then it means that he would have been processed through one of the Saudi government’s rehabilitation programs upon his release from Guantanamo prior to being released into the general public. If this is so, it would mark the first recorded failure of that program.
The story is based on an Internet posting, so its veracity is yet to be determined.
Report: Ex-Gitmo detainee joins al-Qaida in Yemen
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — An Internet posting purportedly by al-Qaida in Yemen says the group’s No. 2 is a Saudi national who is a former Guantanamo detainee.
The Yemeni group – known as “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” – posted the statement this week on a militant Web site that regularly carries al-Qaida messages.
It says the man returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a year ago and from there went to Yemen to join the terror group.
The Internet statement identified the man as Said Ali al-Shihri and says his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372.
The posting could not immediately be verified, and Yemen and Saudi Arabian authorities would not immediately comment on it.
The thing about work is that it’s sometimes unpleasant. There are jobs out there that society needs to be done, simply to continue as a society. Somebody needs to do them, but nobody actually willing to do them, at least without great motivation. Among the unwilling are young Saudis, many of whom have led cossetted lives that allowed them to enjoy the benefits of these jobs’ being done, but never spent much thought about who performed them.
That, reports Saudi Gazette, is changing. At its latest job fair, the municipality of Madinah is promoting jobs that Saudis had heretofore shunned. The brief list provided doesn’t strike me as including the particularly odious jobs—like sewage or other waste removal.
It sounds paradoxical, but the high cost of US universities has a beneficial side effect. Many, if not most students end up taking part-time jobs while studying. Those jobs tend to be very much ‘entry level’ jobs that expose the students to real life and the unpleasant tasks that society needs to be done and is willing to pay to be done. In Saudi Arabia, not only do students get stipends while studying, the awful jobs are all shopped out to foreign workers, putting an even greater separation between Saudi youths and real life. It seems that this sad fact is changing.
Saudis to be offered ‘culturally detested’ jobs
Khaled Al-ShelahiMadina – Young Saudi men and women will embark upon a new cultural dimension by applying to work in professions that used to be among the most detested jobs in Saudi culture during the 18th employment fair in Madina in March.
At the top of the list of professions which Saudis have traditionally found least attractive are jobs, such as, factory milking specialist, construction worker, auto-body repair worker, carpenter, and blacksmith.
The Madina Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) has invited private companies to shortlist their required jobs in 49 professions and make them available to Saudis based on their qualifications.
The MCCI has recommended that in the 18th employment fair, new positions be made available for Saudis to work as construction workers, factory milking supervisors, pump technicians, heating and cooling technicians, wood painters, and car-body workers. And as tourism has started to emerge in the Kingdom, jobs for travel guides, tourist program designers, hotel drivers and receptionists will be available.
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During the latter days of the Cold War, the mythical substance Red Mercury was all the rage. Whether it was a code word for nuclear materials, a potentiator for nuclear bombs, a ‘short cut’ to nuclear weapons—nobody knew—it was for sale at a very high price, hundreds of thousands of dollars per gram. I, personally, was approached several times while working at the US Embassy in Damascus, as well as at the Frankfurt airport in Germany with offers to purchase the material.
Now, this magical element has transmogrified itself into a substance that multiplies money, at least in the minds of some con men in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Gazette reports:
SR400,000 exposes ‘red mercury’ con
JEDDAH – In a sting operation security officials were able to arrest a Nigerian national who claimed he was able to increase the funds of potential investors capitalizing on the desire of people to get rich quick by using “red mercury.”
After being tipped off by a potential investor, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) kept the Nigerian national under surveillance and monitored his movements.
The alleged conman used several telephones to reach his customers the value of whose funds he said he would be able to increase several times over.
CID officials used their informant to pose as an interested customer looking to convert SR400,000 into SR2 million.
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There is a problem with free speech. It means if you believe in it, you sometimes have to defend people’s right to say things of which you strongly disapprove. Such is the case with Dutch politician Geert Wilders, producer of the ugly film Fitna.
While magazines and blogs that fear Islam are having a field day with a Dutch court’s decision to have Wilders stand trial for insulting Muslims, I’d rather focus on what I consider to be bad law that limits speech. Several European countries—notably Germany and Austria, and with arguably good reason—have strict laws that prohibit much discussion about Nazism and Nazis. This Dutch case has some of the WWII baggage carried over by those terms. This, too, has arguably good reason as not only did the Dutch suffer grievously under Nazi occupation, but many Dutch joined with the Nazis in perpetrating the Holocaust.
The argument, however, fails, in my opinion.
It is now over 60 years since the end of WWII. While ‘neo-Nazi’ groups certainly do exist in this day and age, it is highly unlikely that we will see governments remotely like that of Adolph Hitler arise now or in the future. Laws that criminalize anything pertaining to Nazism are outdated and should be repealed, in my book.
More troubling is the court’s decision that ‘insult’ is legally actionable. This is problematic to me because once one steps across that line, there is simply no clear end to the possibility of further and greater suppression of speech. ‘Insult’ is internally defined by the beholder. There is no stable, clear, predictable definition of what may insult someone or some group. It thus requires people to guess whether their speech can land them in jail. You might say, ‘Well, he should have known that that would be offensive!’ Perhaps, but ‘should have known’ is not a clear legal standard. It is wildly open to reinterpretation, fluctuating on the winds of changes in population, opinion, knowledge, and emotion. None of those are objective; all of them are subject to manipulation.
Free speech necessarily requires tolerance for—not approval of—odious speech. That is one of the prices of liberty.
Below is a discussion by Aziz Poonawalla, an American Muslim, posted at Belief Net, a blog about religion that’s worth visiting:
defending Geert Wilders
Aziz PoonawallaIncendiary Dutch politician Geert Wilders will be brought to trial for comparing Islam to Nazism:
Geert Wilders made headlines in March 2008 for his short-film Fitna, which juxtaposed shots of the 9/11 attacks on the US with quotations from the Quran, the text Muslims believe to be divinely revealed.
In 2007 he had called for a ban on the Quran and compared Islam to Nazism.
On Wednesday, Amsterdam’s appeals court ordered his prosecution, overruling the public prosecutor who had previously decided against a criminal trial.
A summary of the court’s decision read: “The court considers this so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders.
“The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders.”
I’m no fan of Wilders but this is indeed an affront against free speech. It should be noted though that the West’s own tradition of free speech is a recent invention, and almost entirely an American one. Europe has never been a bastion of free speech, with Holocaust denial laws (see the case of David Irving), bans on hijab, and opposition to mosque construction are just a few prominent examples of the double standard when it comes to “protected” speech for Jews and Christians, but not for muslims.
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The Wall St. Journal offers an opinion on the issue as well: Silencing Islam’s Critics. It thinks that the Dutch courts have imported ‘Saudi blasphemy laws’.
Okaz Arabic daily has a sharp commentary on the state of Saudi ‘justice’ (here translated by Arab News). The writer notes the disparity in the sentences handed down to two sheep thieves and that given to a man who beat his wife so severely that she died. You can guess who got off more lightly.
Saudi society should rightly question verdicts like this. The writer agrees that Shariah law is the proper law of the land, but questions how such unjust, or at least uneven, verdicts can be reached by two separate judges working from the same law. It’s an excellent example of why legal reform is so desperately needed in the Kingdom.
Two rams and a woman
Khaled Al-Sulaiman | Okaz, Jehat5@yahoo.comWe have an entrenched judicial system that is based on Divine Law and not personal whims. This is the reason why I could not understand two recent court verdicts handed out on the same day.
In the first ruling, two thieves who stole two rams were sentenced to three years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes each.
The second ruling of two years imprisonment and 200 whiplashes was for a husband who beat his wife until she swallowed her tongue and died.
I could not find any explanation for the great difference in the two rulings although they were reached under the same law. Are the two rams more valuable than the woman or is the life of a human being cheaper than that of livestock?
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Saudi state health care gets a drubbing in this Saudi GazetteOK piece, at least in the town of Baljurashi, in Baha Province. The article reports on the sad state of the Maternity & Pediatrics Hospital there, noting its over-crowding, lack of female doctors, and deplorable pathology lab. It says that it’s nearly impossible to get to the hospital in the first place and that it’s a 10-km drive for visitors to find a cup of coffee.
This is pretty strong criticism of a specific institution to be finding in the Saudi media.
Only one female doctor for 45,000 women
Ali Al-GhamdiBALJURASHI – There is only one female doctor at the Maternity and Pediatrics Hospital in Baljurashi, a small town where the women population stands at 45,000. Women here normally wait for long periods to get admission in the hospital or to consult the only general physician here.
Several women here have complained that they have to go to King Fahd Hospital in Baha, about 40 km from the town.
Dr. Mohammad Al-Subhi, head of the obstetrics department at King Fahd Hospital, admitted that a large number of women patients from Baljurashi are referred to the hospital. “Referring cases to us in large numbers has put us in a tough situation when a baby dies or a mother gets here in critical condition,” he said.
The maternity hospital is one of the oldest in Baha region.Several women said the services provided at the hospital are inadequate and at some times outdated. “Wards are too small with at least 10 patients in each one. And there is only one toilet,” said Abdullah Ahmad. He said there is no peace and quiet in the hospital as the incessant noise in the neighboring car auction market disturbs patients in the wards. Moreover, the approach to the hospital is very difficult and unless one has a four-wheel drive vehicle it is difficult to go to the hospital, he said.
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Saudi Gazette reports that former US Senator George Mitchell has been names as Special Envoy to the Middle East for Pres. Obama. I see this as a pretty good thing. Mitchell, of Christian Lebanese descent, is no stranger to the Middle East as he’s been involved in Palestinian-Israeli talks before. I worked to support his successful mission in N. Ireland and found him to be not only effective, but a truly nice guy.
Of course, it is not only US policy that affects the Palestinian-Israeli friction… there are all those Palestinians and Israelis who need to make some hard decisions, beginning with whether they prefer violence and death to peace….
Mitchell: An even-handed operator
WASHINGTON – George Mitchell, reportedly tapped to become Middle East envoy for the new US administration, is renowned for his negotiating skills honed in Northern Ireland and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In Northern Ireland, Mitchell, a Maronite Catholic whose mother was Lebanese, managed to bring together the leaders of the province’s two communities with a mixture of compromise and painstaking talks to sign the historic Good Friday agreement in 1998.
At the time Mitchell, a Democrat, was considered one of the only actors in the peace process enjoying the trust of all parties, earning a reputation in Belfast as a safe pair of hands and a shrewd, even-handed operator.
In a book on his experience called “Making Peace” he recounted how local political customs in the province during the talks had tested his efforts as a negotiator.
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The US Senate has also confirmed Sen. Hillary Clinton as the American Secretary of State. I worked with her in N. Ireland as well, on her ‘Vital Voices’ project that sought to empower women around the world to take control of their lives, but also to speak out about national and international issues that affected them. While her politics and mine might differ, I cannot criticize the way she throws herself into issues wholeheartedly.
The title above is an American English idiom that refers to being ultra-safe by wearing not only a belt to hold up one’s trousers, but also suspenders (for the British readers, make that ‘braces’; ‘suspenders’ is used in the UK to refer to what Americans call ‘garters’).
During the administration of the oath of office at the Inauguration on Tuesday, Chief Justice of the US John Roberts flubbed the wording of the oath. Pres. Obama tried to follow the Chief Justice’s wording, but that conflicted with the proper version he had likely memorized. As a result, the oath did not take the form prescribed in the US Constitution. That, sadly, left some on the rabid political right to declare that Obama, not being ‘properly sworn in,’ was not actually President!
Well, Americans often say that they consider themselves ‘A nation ruled by laws’. So, to ensure that even the nitpickers were satisfied, the Chief Justice re-administered the oath of office at the White House last night. Now, no one can question whether Obama is President of the United States of America. [Even more sadly, however, there are some rabid righties who question whether Obama was born in the US, a requirement to hold the office of President, but that's another tedious conspiracy that deserves no more attention.]
There has been some interesting linguistic discussion about the error in administering the oath… at least it’s interesting to me, so you get to share!
Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard, chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, and author of several excellent books on the brain, linguistics, and the innate nature of grammar, has written a piece for The New York Times:
Oaf of Office
Steven PinkerIN 1969, Neil Armstrong appeared to have omitted an indefinite article as he stepped onto the moon and left earthlings puzzled over the difference between “man” and “mankind.” In 1980, Jimmy Carter, accepting his party’s nomination, paid homage to a former vice president he called Hubert Horatio Hornblower. A year later, Diana Spencer reversed the first two names of her betrothed in her wedding vows, and thus, as Prince Charles Philip supposedly later joked, actually married his father.
On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Flubber Hall of Fame when he administered the presidential oath of office apparently without notes. Instead of having Barack Obama “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States,” Chief Justice Roberts had him “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” When Mr. Obama paused after “execute,” the chief justice prompted him to continue with “faithfully the office of president of the United States.” (To ensure that the president was properly sworn in, the chief justice re-administered the oath Wednesday evening.)
How could a famous stickler for grammar have bungled that 35-word passage, among the best-known words in the Constitution? Conspiracy theorists and connoisseurs of Freudian slips have surmised that it was unconscious retaliation for Senator Obama’s vote against the chief justice’s confirmation in 2005. But a simpler explanation is that the wayward adverb in the passage is blowback from Chief Justice Roberts’s habit of grammatical niggling.
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For those keeping track of such things, this is not the first time the oath was mangled, nor the first time it was re-administered! San Francisco Gate reports that both Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur re-took the oath following errors during the Inauguration.
Thus, the power of words…
If you find this topic interesting, you can find more discussion over at Volokh Conspiracy blog. Eugene Volokh, in addition to Constitutional Law, is also a good writer on the battle between ‘proscriptivist’ and ‘descriptionist’ rules of language!