FUBAR Al-Islam

Sometimes the shear bizarreness and perversity of cultures astounds me. Currently the “shock and awe” over gross stupidity and derailed logic trains that I’m experiencing stems from the incomprehensible behavior of Saudi Arabia, whose laws are modeled on the Wahhabists’ strict interpretation of Shari’a.

These supposedly civilized and cultured people will do the damnedest and hopefully most damnable things

They’ll gleefully sentence a 75 year-old woman to 40 lashes, 4 months imprisonment, and exile from Saudi Arabia for having two unrelated men – who were bringing her food – in her house for some short period of time.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.

According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, “Fahd” and “Hadian.”

Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.

And yet the Saudis require that women buy their lingerie from men, since by law all sales clerks in Saudi Arabia are men.

From Global Post:

RIYADH — Reem Asaad finds it annoying to buy her bras and panties from a man. But she doesn’t have much choice in the matter.

Although Saudi Arabia has the strictest gender segregation in the world, only men are hired as sales staff in most retail stores.

“We have men selling g-strings in stores to women which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world,” said Asaad.

But the 37-year-old professor of finance and banking is even more frustrated that a three-year-old regulation permitting female sales clerks has not been implemented.

For now, that regulation is languishing in the proverbial bureaucratic bottom drawer, a vivid example of the barriers to women in the workplace put in place by an ultraconservative religious establishment opposed to women working outside the home.

Whatever logic there is behind this sort of combination of behaviors is so unhinged as to be beyond understanding by civilized people possessed of even a modicum of intelligence and education. The “mingling” of the genders, if unrelated, is a serious crime and yet Saudi Arabia enforces laws that force women to buy “intimate apparel” from men.

One has to wonder if the initiation ritual or training regimen of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice involves a protracted bare-headed stay under the desert sun. Severe heat stroke and having one’s brains cooked is close to being the only organic pathology that could explain such asinine and contradictory behaviors and rulings.

Truly, Wahabism would be better named FUBAR Al-Islam. 😉

On the other – much more sarcastic and prurient – hand, I’m sure that the store clerks are happy with things the way they are now.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’d love to have the chance to know what these women chose to wear under their abayas. I’m sure the lingerie clerks feel the same way. 😉

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One Response to “FUBAR Al-Islam”

  1. Susanne Says:

    I had to look up FUBAR … I think Saudi’s brand of Islam can definitely be described that way. It’s sooooo stupid! It’s almost laughable that they would whip an elderly woman for this reason. As if the world needs further proof of how stupid these people are. Yes, I find it ironic that women cannot buy their clothes from women in this culture. But, hey, these are strange folks. Who said they would make sense?

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