Saudi Arabia so far avoided any death attributable to swine flu during the prime season for Umrah, the Ministry of Health reports. Saudi Gazette carries the story from the Saudi Press Agency:
No swine flu death among Umrah performers – MoH
RIYADH – A total of 128 swine flu cases among Umrah performers and residents have been reported since the beginning of Ramadan, a Ministry of Health medical bulletin said Thursday.
It said all cases had fully recovered and that no deaths among the visitors to the Prophet’s Mosque and Umrah performers have been reported so far.
Ajyad Emergency Hospital has been provided with all necessary medical equipment and facilities to meet any medical contingency.
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This is good news, of course, but it comes too late for hoteliers in the holy cities:
Arab News runs a story that serves as a useful reminder. While those in prison and rehabilitation camps are all male, that doesn’t mean all extremists are male. The Ministry of Interior talks about its program to bring women back from the fringes.
JEDDAH: The Women’s Counseling Committee at the Interior Ministry has been successful in changing the minds of schoolgirls and teachers who harbor Al-Qaeda-like extremist thoughts and ideas, says Fatima Al-Sulami, a member of the committee.
“We found women with such extreme ideas during social gatherings and were able to remove their deviant and destructive thoughts and ideologies through counseling and awareness campaigns,” she told Al-Watan Arabic daily in a report published Friday.
Al-Sulami said lack of patriotism was the main reason for women to harbor such deviant thoughts, adding that they get these ideas from websites.
An informed source at the Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said no woman is being held in prison for crimes related to extremism. “If we find any woman enticed by Al-Qaeda thoughts, she would be given advice at home,” the source said.
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Memorial lights at the WTC site, 9/11/2007
Here’s an interesting essay, appearing in Forbes Magazine, which you might enjoy reading:
Moving On, But In A Different World
What 9/11 taught me about human nature
John McWhorterIn 2005 an old friend announced that he was getting married on Sept. 11. He and his fiancée had decided it was time to “move on.” It threw me a bit. I’m not always one for “moving on”–it’s part of why one writes books.
Yet as it turned out, I myself got married on Sept. 10 of the following year–which I would have considered inappropriate a few years before. I had to admit to myself that 9/11 was becoming, five years on, history, as much as I hated to admit that about the incinerating of 2,750-plus innocent people.
However, for me, letting go of 9/11 has been less a matter of forgetting than a gradual sense that what led to it was more a part of all of us than we are often aware.
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[Photo by Ann Althouse. Some rights reserved.]
There’s something in this Saudi Gazette article that’s a little peculiar. It’s one word. See if you can find it…
Then see if you can explain it!
Rising popularity of soubiya in Ramadan
Muhammad Al-OmairiMAKKAH – The consumption of soubiya, a drink once the preserve of Makkah and Jeddah, is becoming something of a tradition at Ramadan tables around the rest of the Kingdom and the Gulf.
The beverage contains a high concentration of starches, and was originally made by soaking barley. These days, however, it is more often made from dried bread and soaked raisins. Added to these are barley, cinnamon, cardamom, water and sugar, all of which are blended and fermented for up to three days.
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Equestrian events aren’t the same as basketball or soccer, but they are athletics. So a team of Saudi women taking part in an international competition is a bit of a breakthrough, though not a major one. Still, every journey starts with a single step and many Saudi women are taking those first steps to show that they are equal to men. This Saudi Gazette article reports on next year’s GCC Women’s Games.
Saudi women to take part in GCC Games ’10
Hana Al-AlwaniDOHA – Saudi women are set to take part in next year’s second GCC Women’s Games in the United Arab Emirates in March 2010.
“We refused to hold the event without seeing the Saudi flag raised alongside the others, so we decided to include show jumping events to allow Saudi women to compete,” said Ahlam Al-Maane’, head of the Women’s Sports Committee and member of the GCC Executive Council for Women’s Sport.
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Sorcery is a concept that has been largely relegated to the Western attic since around the 18th C. That’s not the case in Saudi Arabia, where belief in it still runs rife—and through the wallets of the gullible. In the West, what had been called sorcery is now categorized either as mental illness or fraud, though there still are some who will turn away from a Harry Potter book.
In this Arab News article, the writer gives us an idea of the extent to which Saudis continue to believe in magic.
Under the spell
Laura Bashraheel I Arab NewsJEDDAH: Hardly a day passes without a local newspaper reporting the arrest of a sorcerer in the Kingdom, something that is indicative of the widespread meddling in sorcery. It is, however, not just sorcerers who make money — those who treat (or claim to treat) magic and the evil eye are also rolling in dollars. While there is mystery surrounding how magic is done, some weak-hearted people end up resorting to sorcerers to mend troubled marriages, ensure husbands remain faithful or cause harm to adversaries.
At the same time, magic is an old human practice, which has existed in many countries and religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism.
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In this week’s piece, Saudi Asharq Alawsat columnist Mshari Al-Zaydi really laces into those who find relief in conspiracy theories. While he doesn’t avoid mentioning those in the West who hold peculiar beliefs, his target is Arabs who take the easy way out in assessing situations, who just assume that there’s a ‘hidden hand’ pulling all the strings and it could never, ever, come down to a matter of accepting responsibility. As we approach the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies, Al-Zaydi reminds us of the ideas floating around that try to excuse or exclude Arab and Muslim culpability. Some of these are new to me—7th Day Adventists?!—but all hold as much merit as an alternative he offers: Blue Djinn. This is a good column.
They Feed Our Illusions
Mshari Al-ZaydiThose who carried out the 11 September 2001 attacks, were they extremist Serbian nationalists, no it was the Israeli Mossad, no, pardon me, it was a US group of Seventh Day Adventists! Not at all, the one who carried out the terrible attacks was the US Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]!
The suggestions and imaginary illusions continue to pour in the direction of evading the real consequences of the reality, which is that those who carried out the 11 September attacks were Muslim youths who believe in a hard-line interpretation of Islam, who are led by Osama Bin Laden, and who are encouraged and were then encouraged by millions of Muslims.
The idea that the Serbs were the ones who carried out the 11 September attacks to take revenge for US interference in the Serbs’ war against Bosnia and the Croats was pronounced by Hasanayn Haykal, symbol of Arab political journalists who follow the pan-Arab direction. He said it days after the explosions took place (Lebanese Al-Safir newspaper 1 October 2001).
The idea that the attacks were carried out by the Israeli Mossad (the source of all evils and mysterious events that some people do not have the stamina to investigate and scrutinize) was suggested by the Islamist writer Fahmi Huwaydi, who believed that Al-Qaeda could not carry out such an operation, but the Mossad could (Kuwaiti Al-Watan newspaper 25 September 2001).
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Here’s an interesting piece in Saudi Gazette, originating in the Arabic Al-Watan: The clamp down on charitable contributions is really affecting the way Al-Qaeda is conducting business. After abusing the Islamic imperative to donate to charities, the terrorist group is now finding that people aren’t interested in funding it any more. Perhaps attacks that wantonly kill Muslims has something to do with the lack of incentive. Certainly, controls on how money is transferred to charitable groups has weeded out those whose ends were less than charitable.
Qaeda in financial crisis due to tabs on charity – Otaibi
JEDDAH – Fawwaz Al-Otaibi, the wanted terrorist whose return to the Kingdom was announced in an Interior Ministry statement last Wednesday, has said that Al-Qaeda is in “financial crisis” and that increased vigilance of charity activities coupled with state rehabilitation programs had convinced many individuals to “return and repent.”
Speaking to Al-Watan newspaper Sunday, Al-Otaibi said that the lack of funds reaching leaders in Afghanistan had resulted in a reduction in the numbers of fighters being brought in from abroad, and that the recruitment of Arabs and Saudis was focusing on the execution of terrorist operations in their home countries.
“All the leaders said they had enough fighters and didn’t want to take on any more,” Al-Otaibi said. “They kept passing people on to the other leaders who might want to take them.”
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I think Ms. Al-Harbi says it about as well as it could be said…
Save the child bride
Khalaf Al-Harbi | Okaz, klfhrbe@gmail.comBy what reason or logic do we allow a young elementary schoolgirl to marry a man in his 80s? How could this happen without anyone raising a finger? Is it appropriate to publish this news item on the front page while the entire society considers it a personal affair?
Paradoxically, the groom insisted that he was not yet 80! Maybe he is three or four days less than 18. He boasted to the bride’s aunt that his marriage to her niece was not against Islam since it was based on mutual acceptance.
He said he proposed to her elder sister who turned down the offer because she was busy studying. He said the father then offered him her younger sister and allowed him to see her under Shariah law.
What is this? An older sister refuses to marry an old man and so the father willingly presents her younger sister. When the old groom was allowed to look at his would-be child bride, did he not notice any disapproval or sign of rejection on her face?
How do you expect a child to react? Who will tell us the difference between paternity and selling vegetables on the streets?
Before reading about this sad story, I was willing to believe that some foreign human rights organizations were targeting us. But after coming across this story, I thanked God that I was not a member of a human rights organization because I would definitely have targeted us.
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Now here’s a story from Saudi Gazette/Okaz that nicely points out a contradiction in Saudi society. Executions and floggings are held in public. Some of them are publicized on the day through announcements in newspapers. Those passing by the place of execution/punishment are encouraged to watch. The reasoning behind this is the old political adage: “Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.” Public executions and lashings certainly provide the visual aspect of that.
But—and it’s a sizable but—these things cannot be photographed. The ‘law’ that would seem to be in effect here is that certain things should not be photographed as they might bring shame or dishonor on the country. Taking pictures of slums, for instance, is generally not something the police like to see. (I’ll note parenthetically that some police in the US also have strange ideas about what can or cannot be photographed. Many of their rules seem to be creations of their own minds.)
Are public punishments shameful? If they are shameful, why are they being conducted in public? They certainly cause shame in those being punished, of course, so it is they who are being protected?
Public punishments used to be the rule in the West. There are many stories about the hangings at London’s Tyburn Tree or executions at Smithfields. The use of stocks and pillories in public squares was to be found from Vienna to Philadelphia. But then, punishments moved indoors, out of the public eye. Throughout the 20th C. in America, it wasn’t too difficult, though, to find pictures of hangings, electrocutions, gas chamber asphyxiations, even if conducted within prison grounds. Even today, an Internet search will pop up photographs that portray these things.
I suspect that this is the actual reason behind the photo ban in the Kingdom: photos are no longer in the control of the government—the party conducting the punishment—and could ‘go viral’ despite what the government sees as its interest. But if that’s the case, why have public punishments in the first place?
2 in trouble for photographing public lashings
Adnan Al-ShabrawiJEDDAH – Two Saudi men who allegedly photographed 30 convicts being lashed recently at Az-Zahra Square on Al-Arbaeen Street will soon go on trial.
The two were referred by the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution (CIP) to the Summary Court.
They were arrested and detained at As-Safa Police station before being referred to the CIP which released them pending trial.
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I’ll note with some wryness that many of the same arguments—though with a very different context—are used in calling for the sessions of the US Supreme Court to be televised. ‘Til now, the Court has rejected the arguments. With a new Justice aboard, however, that may change.
I do wonder if the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are using a real polling company—there are several in Saudi Arabia—or this is a survey they’ve created and will conduct themselves. Depending on which it is, there are likely to be very different answers, though even asking people about the religious police is going to result in spurious answers, those that the interviewee thinks the interviewer wants to hear.
Hai’a conducts opinion survey
Hazim Al-MutairiRIYADH – The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai’a) spokesman Dr. Abdulmohsin Al-Qaffari said the Hai’a is surveying the opinion of the public on its performance through field teams. Al-Qaffari said people, Saudis and expatriates, were found to understand the Hai’a’s role in dealing with several issues like sorcery and blackmailing. – Okaz/SG
Saudi Gazette/Okaz report that official spokesmen for the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are being muzzled, or at least reined in. I suspect that the new head of the Commission isn’t happy with what he’s hearing coming from the spokesmen and he’s standing them down until his directives are fully understood. It’s certainly my impression that spokesmen, in the past, have taken offensively defensive positions whenever one questions actions of the religious police. Perhaps they will be taught a bit of moderation.
Powers of Hai’a spokesmen curbed
Muhammad Sa’eed Al-ZahraniTAIF – Spokesmen for the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Hai’a) have been ordered not to speak to the media without first consulting the organization’s General Presidency at its headquarters in Riyadh. The move, which sources say obliges spokesmen to refer enquiries from the media to the General Presidency and await a reply and warns against making direct statements to the press, comes a mere three months after the naming of 13 Hai’a spokesmen and assistants to represent Hai’a offices around the Kingdom.
It is not known whether the new procedure is a temporary or permanent measure, but Hai’a officials only last month completed a program in Taif to “improve spokesmen’s skills”. – Okaz/SG