This survey of Saudi people is pretty interesting. Such surveys are rare, as I can imagine, and this one helps to explain why so many suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi. There are the people who are paid billions per year for oil.
This survey of Saudi people is pretty interesting. Such surveys are rare, as I can imagine, and this one helps to explain why so many suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi. There are the people who are paid billions per year for oil.
I would love to see a survey of Saudi women given – with guaranteed anonymity- asking pointed questions as to how they view their freedoms or lack thereof and if they see their circumstances as favorable or unfavorable in light of Israeli women, etc….
If you control what passes for the media, you control the culture.
I used to work with a very old fashioned woman from India. Her parents picked her husband. Her parents talked her into dropping out of a PhD program to marry this husband they had selected (with the help of, so help me God, an astrologer). She worked very, very hard to support not just her husband and her daughter, but also her husband’s large extended (and freeloading) family.
She used to tell me that she prayed every night that her next child would be a boy, so that he wouldn’t go through what she was going through. And she felt incredibly guilty that she had a daughter, because of the future in front of her!
I used to tell this woman that she might be born of Indian ancestry, and raised Hindu…but she was a US citizen and got married in California. She could be American, free, and kick the jerks all out.
But she would never do it. She was tied up by her own traditions…and would never “shame” her family.
My guess is that many of those Saudi women don’t see their chains as chains at all. So what to do? Modernize the Saudis. Force them to enter the 20th century (since they couldn’t handle the 21st).
But then, this sort of freedom is what the Wahabists hate…
There are Saudi women doing nude shows on the internet as a form of rebellion.
Many years ago, when I was in surgical training, a young Japanese-American woman from Hawaii came in with a bowel obstruction. I operated on her, being less suspicious of human nature than I am now. Post-op she kept complaining of nausea and was seen vomiting by the nurses. Finally, one of the nurses told that she had been seen gagging herself. I asked that a nurse be present every time she was nauseated and the nausea stopped. Then she began to run a fever. She never felt hot but her temperature was always over 101. Finally, one morning while making rounds, I noticed a piece of tape on her abdomen and pulled it off. Underneath was a thermometer. She then tried to tell me that she was trying to falsely lower her temp because she wanted to go home.
We sat down and had a long talk. She was a well-educated young woman raised by farm laborer parents. They had chosen a husband for her, another farm laborer, and had ordered her to return to Hawaii. She was teaching math at Cal State LA but still had those emotional ties. She finally acknowledged that she had been faking her illness to avoid returning to Hawaii and the impending marriage.
A few months later she came by to see me. She looked radiant. She had decided to stay in LA and continue her career. Her illness had gone with her decision.
In a bizarre way, that was a hopeful story, Dr. K. I wish that the Indian woman I mentioned had been so strong, even if she was playing medical games. I haven’t seen her for many years, and I hope she is okay.
As for Saudi strippers, I hope that they are veiled. I can’t imagine what the mullahs would think of as punishment.
I remember this Saudi story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm
Oh, and Merry Christmas. My two boys are finally asleep, and “Team Santa” is ready to place all the gifts!
From what I gather inside some of my newsletters, Dubai is the #1 center for ME commerce now. They built it on a plan, intentionally circled off ‘safe’ areas for Islamics to mesh with the infidels, and have kept the place fairly cosmo. The speed bumps are there still to accomodate the conservative Arabs, veils and decorum mainly, but it’s sort of a Disneyland cum Las Vegas where the ME meets the rest of the world. Although hearing stories about it always produces conflicting accounts. Jim Rodgers, the commodity legend, travelled in Saudi Arabia and wrote that for the richer Saudis there much of the trappings of strictness were left at the front door. Fair amount of liquor flowed behind the outer walls, satellite broadcasts from the west, and the women were able to drop the veil, so to speak. One account I read talked about how you got a real good look at some non-Islamic goings on by checking out the advanced google sat maps that showed some very western styled activity around luxurious courtyard pools. All stories though. You don’t know until you see it for yourself. My suspicion is that a good number of Islamics are much like their counterparts in the west in that they ‘wear’ their religion, and can take it off at their choosing when the coast is clear. Males, not females. But even that seems to be cracking. How ya going ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Dubai?
Allan, this is the point that the islamofascists don’t “get.” Freedom isn’t about permissiveness. It’s about equality and self expression and looking forward, not back. And Merry Christmas to you!