Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.
The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.
They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
Imagine what will happen – someday – when theocratic rule finally vanishes?
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Or becomes the norm for the world.
Well, it already is the “norm” for religious nutballs. Ever wandered through the rules and regs for American fundies? Some of the Latino Pentacostals or Orthodox Jewish sects?
Phew! They make Stone Age superstitions appear enlightened.
Like all stuff, if it’s too much, get’s you into trouble…
Religion it is not an exception.
ps. this goes both ways, you neocons…
Crazier? This is the same organisation that sees nothing wrong in keeping people inside a burning building.
If the guys were merely arrested, the women were probably put to death for allowing it to happen.
“Imagine what will happen – someday – when theocratic rule finally vanishes?”
Much as I might wish for the same thing, I’m guessing that Frank Herbert had it right and that once Islam rules the Third Rock, the next stop is other solar systems.
This is outrageous. The women they were flirting with must be stoned to death immediately.
I seriously think the Saudi’s are setting the stage for their own demise. Most of these guys will be in the military soon and the Royals aren’t that secure as it is.
” Are Saudi religion cops getting crazier?” No they are always been barking mad.
Aren’t we Americans different only by degree? If guys were playing loud music, dancing and hassling women in an American shopping mall — would’t security get called?
BTW, this isn’t just Saudi — this kind of behavior would be illegal in a number of Muslim countries. But, I think it would be unusual to jail them. Mostly the police would shoo them off just like in our US malls.
These guys are going to get a once-over and then released. It’s by far the best thing that could happen to them! They will become so popular in their circles that they will have to beat the girls off with a stick! (not that they don’t do that anyway..)
Now if they had been girls, well the outcome would be very, very different.
On a related thought – If Islam is so good why then do women need to be covered? Good Muslim men would not have ill thoughts towards women as Allah commands. Seems the more the women are covered the more Islam is not effective – no matter how many times the men pray.
Just a thought…
Cheers
Hey Thiz==philosophical/observational question for you: Are religions fairly characterized by their extremes?–or not at all?
Take Muslims–extremes jail women for getting themselves raped. Take Christians, they blow up abortion centers. Take Hindus–they grow long beards and live with rats. So, I’d say somewhere within the first two releigions there is some element of violence, and in the third there is not.
Lets not talk about what “most” of anything is, most people are hypocrites after all and don’t really follow the teachings they say they do?
#12, TIHZ_HO
I must admit I have mixed feeling about this topic.
I don’t remember where I saw this, but a very well spoken American Muslim girl explained her position on the burka with this point of view: (paraphrasing) Wearing a burka is my way of showing respect for myself. I do not wish to be the base object of men’s desires. I think of myself as something better and I want people to know me for who I am and not judge me for how I look.
I admired her commitment, but at the same time felt sorry for her feeling that she had to go to (what I thought) such extremes.
It resembles piety much closer to nuns than anything else I can think of, but at the same time I also agree that it does not seem to be appreciated by the population in general.
What do you think?
#13 bobbo
“Are religions fairly characterized by their extremes?–or not at all?”
In my opinion they are all the same – the “extremes” we see are only the difference of the time slot they occupy compared to “modern times”.
To explain this better..please bear with me…
We all watched Star Trek, Star Wars et al and in all of these shows space ships make noise when passing Doppler shift and all in space, they “fly” as airplanes would fly, explosions look just like we would expect – in other words space is nothing but a continuation of what we have on Earth except it’s always night.
This is as we would understand space to be from what we see in our everyday life even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Keep this in mind…
GO back in time at least 900 years even longer and the world you see is quite different from the world you know now. There is NO CONCEPT of religions as we have today.
This is a hard concept to crowbar into our heads as we take for granted there is a separation of our lifestyle, country (government, laws) and belief in god – religions.
Back then there was only god and how god wants you to live and god’s mouthpiece were the priests, holy men, rulers et al. There was no wiggle room for questions lest you are severely punished or killed.
Nations were a people and the land that god gave them.
Well people developed through the dark ages and through to our modern lifestyle in which god was separated from – its an elective like taking shop in school.
However this human lifestyle development was not uniform and some nations did not move in pace with the Europeans to use and example. They are still living how they lived 400 – 500 – 600 years ago.
The extremes we see are simply looking back through the Wayback machine to how WE used to live as well.
If we were to use our Wayback Machine to transport someone from 900 years in the past to today what would they think? To them Bush is the high priest of Republicans who are a nation of people who must follow the many gods of the USA (founding fathers) the bible is of course the Constitution. In other words there is no separation of church and state as they can only be one.
I think we are a people must revel in the world we live in and take stock that even all the bad that goes on is only a fraction of what life was back then. Accept there is crime, Hitlers, dictators, Bush, Apple, Microsoft, HD DVDs, Paris Hilton et al…its never going to change unless we all have a collective frontal lobotomy so we can all drool together.
Stop and smell the roses as there just might be a truck coming up your backside… 😉
Cheers
#14 Ah_Yea
Were we born wearing clothes? No we are naked. Why must the human form be covered particularly boobs and genitalia? Because we were told they are the “naughty bits”!!
Go to any beach in Australia…hey look at all girls just wearing bikini bottoms…BOOBS!! Thank you god!
To someone who was raised thinking these are “naughty bits” it would be shocking!! To people raised thinking there is nothing wrong its ok.
The Muslin girl you knew was raised to think that wearing a Burka is a way she can show self respect – that is her way, her belief et al. Not everyone thinks the same way. If she had a hard time about wearing a burka it is a test of her conviction. One might argue that Allah was testing her resolve but that is only a matter of view.
I have seen many girls in Indonesia wearing a burka and make up… (!?)
Respect that given and ones own self respect is all relative to culture and beliefs taught and developed.
Cheers
I’ve gotta move to Australia!
I also like well thought out answer presented in #15.
I do stop and smell the roses myself. What would life be like if we didn’t? Not worth much, I think. I have a good family and my favorite thing in life is smelling the roses together.
#17 Ah_yea
I hear ya! LOL!
18 Ah_Yea I couldn’t agree more and if more people just thought that way the world might just be better off for it. 🙂
Cheers
Catch you tomorrow!
I say No. And I only say no so that they don’t propagate anymore and they can all become extinct.
#21 …that is what they think of about you.
Surely, that’s not the answer.
Cheers
#15–Tihz==I asked you hoping for a “different” kind of answer and you gave me/us that – – but, you missed the mark. To rephrase, are religions any different from one another or are they all just peaceful, loving, and unknowable/strange to outsiders?
You answered quite remarkably well on how they are the SAME, I’m asking how they are DIFFERENT.
My answer to Ah Yea would have been that by the construction of his setup he was revealing that the Muslim laides were wearing the burka in order to protect themselves from men–not as some statement of self worth. And this ties back to myquestion–it doesn’t matter at all whether one walks around in a burka or with tits exposed but the Xians would “take action” to stop it whereas the Hindus would mind their own business. Lets just “suppose” that is true. It marks a difference between the basic structure of the religions doesn’t it and that makes them truly different with the Hindu’s coming out on top.
#23 bobbo Ok, I see your point.
But first…
Two things task and the result which is important? The task and the result?
In this case burkas (or modest covering) is the task and the result men keep their banana’s in check.
Down the line had the task became more important than the result?
A Muslim girl who is in a society where men are not prone to having banana malfunctions the burka, or modest cover is redundant, which brings me to my post #12.
Evidently in Muslim countries E.G. Saudi Arabia, Saudi men are exceptionally prone to banana malfunctions compared to non Saudi men, so the temptation for making banana smoothies must be removed – burkas or modest covering.
I would have to agree with your view that the Muslim ladies were wearing the burka in order to protect themselves from men…
Is the difference between religions based on which culture are “alpha males” centric? One might be quick to point out that Islam favors men…men are the master and women serve.
How does Muslim men differ from Hindi men? Are Hindi men less alpha male centric? One might say yes…when one compares what a Hindu man might do seeing a girl with her tits exposed…but then again weren’t they the ones who created the KamaSutra? Hmmm
What about Italians? If there ever were “alpha male” centric men it’s Italians…and they are all good Catholics. Why aren’t Italian girls walking around like nuns? Quite the opposite actually…
So this is all confused…why can’t one put one label on a religion? Religions are different just as people are different. There are extremes in all religions.
Yes, it does seem that some religions tend to be more extreme compared to more passive religions…which is what you were asking as well the point of this post, Saudi religion cops.
However as I pointed out is this the cause of the religion, Islam? Or is this the cause of the time period in which these people live? In other words they live in medieval times.
A tiger loose downtown is just as out of place as a medieval sociality is today. That is what you have here – no separation of church and state, god’s laws have “no use by date” and they cannot be questioned – PERIOD, Saudi Arabia, et al what life was like +900 years ago.
Wind back any religion +900 years and see if they don’t seem just as extreme to modern society today.
Close enough for the cigar? 🙂
Cheers
ME – Sorry for all the typos…
Cheers
#24–Tihz===I should go away and think about your posts for a few days, but then this thread will have been lost.
Seems to me to somehow be off point to base today’s issues on some unknowable state of affairs 900 years ago? And if we could time journey, I think my question would be the same and to the same point UNLESS you are saying the Xians and Hindu religions 900 years ago were the same?
So, to rephrase, at issue TODAY is what is called the clash of civilizations between the Muslim world and the West. I’d like to know “how valid” the concerns are. Are we at war and don’t even know it, or are the concerns mostly just the West’s ignorance of Muslim religion?
So, one tool I use to evaluate the validity of the concerns is to look at how any given religion (TODAY!) acts in the extreme–is it a window on what the religion really thinks and teaches as opposed to the public face they wish to offer ((as in its ok to lie to the infidels===which all religions do!))—or is it just continuing cultural bias?
Well, I will continue to think about such things. I sense the West ought not to be tolerant of intolerance regardless of the source be it religious, political, cultural, or historical or personality driven. Don’t want me to be free?==eat lead.
All civilizations have fallen when they stop killing others to remain free. ((within their own borders))
#26 bobbo – I agree, these posts age too quickly, one day and they are gone…like bees polinating flowers. I suppose there is cage match but I have yet to try that.
Thinking about what you said I would say the West is ignorant of aspects of the Saudi / Muslim world. The West is just as perverted to them as they are to us.
Its all about points of view.
Saudi moral police are just as horrified about things we take as normal as we are horrified about them.
It was an odd coincidence that most of the world’s oil lies at their feet as if it did not they would be a curiosity with no money hence no power.
I would not target religions as the problem but rather human condition. Hitler, Stalin, Mao et al were not religious fanatics…just fanatics who successfully tapped into the human condition of religious needs.
Followers of Hitler, Stalin and Mao were in a sense followers of a religion that was created by Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Hitler and Stalin particularly integrated religious style rituals into goverenment protocols – very scary shit.
As I said, until we are all just brain numb and drooling together this is our lot in life.
Its ironic and funny when you think on how much Americans promulgate democracy but can’t accept it when a majority of people get and fight for what they want – their Islamic Republics like Saudi Arabia.
On that note take moment and think about how GOUSA is right now… Ok, keep that on your mind and know that GOUSA is like that because thats what the majority of Americans want and they made it that way! 😉
Cheers
#28–Tihz==I like the “mirror image” analysis you gave.
Seems to me though you are falling into that trap of being tolerant of those who would be intolerant? And I WAS careful not to address just religion. Politics etc also has the same flaw.
I also question the whole notion of countries “voting” themselves an Islamic fascist state. As a lover of the US Constitution, I know you recall the concerns of the founding fathers regarding the “Tyranny of the Majority”–aka intolerance. We should be intolerant of such actors. ((Thought I posted this but I failed to hit submit–sorry.))
#28 Bobbo – What can one do? Be as intolerant as they are?
There is an important difference between tolerance and acceptance.
I would rather live in a society that accepts difference than one that is tolerant of same.
Tolerant just means you put up with something that you don’t accept…and maybe one day you put down that letter bag and … SNAP! “I’m not tolerant any more – BANG!”
Yes, its funny this GOUSA … Democracy only for Americans and freedom of religion as long as its one that Americans accept.
Other countries need to learn from this…or else! 😉
Cheers
#29–Tihz==you surprise me. Why should anyone accept someone else who wants to kill them?
Foolish position. And if someone as intelligent, educated, and experienced as youself can express such confusion, then ((that makes ME GREAT!!!–kidding!)) the problem of people acting against their own best interests in the name of tolerance/acceptance is of greater concern than I thought.
There is a valid distinction between mere tolerance versus acceptance BUT the issue here is NOT BEING TOLERANT and therefore the distinction is inapplicable. Acceptance consumes tolerance whereas non-tolerance and non-acceptance are pretty much the same?