Religious police in Saudi Arabia ban "red items" as part of Valentine's Day crackdown
The BBC reports that Saudi religious police are preventing shop owners from selling red-colored items, because they might be given as gifts on Valentine's Day, which is an "un-Islamic" holiday.
Saudi authorities consider Valentine's Day, along with a host of other annual celebrations, as un-Islamic.LinkIn addition to the prohibition on celebrating non-Islamic festivals, the authorities consider Valentine's Day as encouraging relations between men and women outside wedlock - punishable by law in the conservative kingdom.
The Saudi Gazette reported that some people placed orders with florists days or weeks before Valentine's Day in anticipation of the ban, which is a regular occurrence.
"Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion," one florist said.
the latest
latest episodes
but but...
"Red
The Khawarij were the first Islamic group to emerge after the assassination of Caliph Uthman III, forming the first republican party in the early days of Islam. Their symbol was the red flag. Arab tribes who participated in the conquest of North Africa and Andalusia carried the red flag, which became the symbol of the Islamic rulers of Andalusia (756-1355).
In modern times, red symbolizes the Ashrafs [ie. Sharifians] of the Hijaz and the Hashemites, descendants of the Prophet."
"'Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion,' one florist said. "
lol, "to avoid suspicion." I guess only in Saudi Arabia this would make sense.
it seems to me like the Saudi Government & the US Government are trying to outdo each other.
Maybe in the ultimate showing of international goodwill, we can borrow their secret police, and they can borrow our TSA.
repeating my mantra louder and more manically "don't judge other cultures, don't judge other cultures, don't judge other cultures" ...
gotta love our president's bestest buddies: the saudi govt. ! they make it all better.
Funniest thing about it: As in the 'free world' we don't stop saying things in the lines of 'It's just another holiday made up by the big companies and malls', these guys are risking their freedom just to cellebrate capitalist love!
I'm not looking forward for Valentine's day, really. I go out to a romantic dinner with my bf every week. And when I see something he could like, I buy it for him without waiting for a holiday. And I know he does the same for me, too.
Yes, all cultures are of equal merit. Who are we to judge?
I'm not sure this is much different than certain States with laws against the purchase/selling of sextoys.
Morality through legislation...works every time.
But Saudi Royalty can fly Penthouse chicks over from the USA, sit them in a nightclub for their own personal use and get laid to their hearts content.
GG
if they keep cutting off clitorises (clitori?) the women at least will have less incentive to feel amorous.
Oh wait that's small African tribes... my bad
Don't forget the drugs that go with the Penthouse girls:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/News/story?id=169246&page=1
#7: "Yes, all cultures are of equal merit. Who are we to judge?"
If you're going to mock liberal post-modernism, you may as well include the other half of that equation:
"No individual should be forced to conform to cultural standards against their will."
Imagine the FBI as an wholly-owned subsidiary of the Seventh-Day Adventists.
"The Islamist" is a book you absolutely must read. It's by Ed Husain, a British-born muslim of Indian extraction, and tells the story of his involvement in the radical Islamic movement in the UK. It reads like nothing so much as an account of the communist movement in Russia around 1900, with splinter groups trying to out-radical each other, foreign agents trying to manipulate the process for their own benefit, and host governments turning a blind eye (or providing a closed carriage) because they think it'll benefit them.
The last part of the book is about Husain's travels in Saudi Arabia, which he found a loathsome, oppressive place, particularly in contrast to Syria, where he had lived for the previous couple of years. Amongst other things, Saudi Arabia is unsurprisingly home to a huge number of sexual assaults, ranging from men muttering obscene suggestions when passing by lone women in stores, to full-on kidnapping and rape.
Takuan @1: Wahhabists are against most of the things you list as being associated with the colour red, particularly anything that seems to venerate the Prophet or his family.
Finally! Someone's gonna ban Valentines Day!
#6, I couldn't agree more :)
There goes my combo Valentines Day/Chinese New Year gift dear Farah Wong.
Westerners don't like Valentines day because it's a "Hallmark Holiday". Saudi Arabia doesn't like Valentines day because it's an excuse for people to show affections towards other people.
I'm not sure which side is crazier.
Reminds me of a sci-fi story I read a while back about some dystopian government banning a color, now it looks like it is an reality.
Being a florist in Saudia Arabia must be a pretty hardcore job. I mean they have to smuggle flowers, of all things!
I see a plan coming together: Following the logic of the ban on sales of "red" items because they represent UnIslamic holidays, then
Green = St. Patricks day - very UnIslamic.
Purple = Easter - very VERY UnIslamic.
Orange and Black = Halloween - UnIslamic.
Red, White and Blue = July 4th - UnIslamic.
Now if I could just think of UnIslamic Grey and Yellow Holidays, we could shut down their local economies and STOP TERRORISM.
It is OK to think some things are silly or crazy, and it is OK to ridicule them, or hold them up to critical inspection.
#7: NO! ALL CULTURES ARE NOT OF EQUAL MERIT. WIKI NAZISM, KKK, JONESBORO, CHARLES MANSON, CANNIBALISM (insert laundry list here).
If you cannot make judgments about right and wrong, sane and crazy, smart and stupid, well, God Bless You in All You Do, and come on over to my house Wednesday night - that's when we sacrifice our honored guests to the crocodile god.
In order to avoid the wrath of the FSM, I must also point out that Red is also His least-favorite color!
All hail his Noodliness!
#13: "Imagine the FBI as an wholly-owned subsidiary of the Seventh-Day Adventists."
Too mild here, EH, I think it's more like 'Imagine the SS as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Branch Davidians with their facts screwed up'
...............and you get something like Blackwater.
That mantra could come straight from GWB when it concerns Saudi Arabia. Not selling them 20 billions worth of weapons would be discriminating, too.
Unless you are a 100% spiritual being, it doesn't say goodwill, but laziness. Maybe you're mistaking an oppressive regime exercising unjust power against its own people with an alien tribe that our brains are incapable to comprehend?
It would be nice if the Saudi nut jobs didn't own us. All cultures are NOT equal. And yes we can judge them based on our standards. We do it all the time, day in and day out--it's called knowing right from wrong. We aren't perfect, here in the west, but we're a hell of lot better off than that group of throw-backs.
#6 and #15 - I second (or third?) that. Here in Germany you won't even know that Valentine's Day is coming up unless you go looking for it. Life feels so much peaceful - nobody is trying to shove a completely commercial event down your throat and make you believe that is what you need to do to fit in.
Though Saudis are going at it from a totally wrong perspective, and their decree is rather retarded, I will disagree that it is a sign of cultural clash between Islam and the West. West is, after all, not just USA.
I'm quite familiar with social constructionism, zuzu. Should that change my opinion? I'm familiar with a lot of things. Are you familiar with patriarchal autocracy combined with a plutocracy? How about human rights? Moral relativism is sooo PC.
Uh, honey, I know you like flowers and stuff for Valentine's Day, but all I could find was red, and I didn't want to be disrespectful of Islam. That's why I didn't get you anything. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Just what the world needs, a new "red menace".
Two words that should NEVER go together: religious+police.
@26 Jeff:
You can opine and judge as you like. My point was that there is no external/universal/absolute morality. Morals are just a collection of opinions and prejudices. Culture (or rather, sub-culture) emerges from the interaction of people with their individual judgements, as a kind of distributed cognition.However, categorical imperatives are practically the definition of politically correct. It's a form of monism; which I think is where would could agree that anyone claiming authority to impose a singular moral framework is acting in conflict to reality/biology.
I don't get it. If the Saudi religious police are so worried about "encouraging relations between men and women outside wedlock" then why not ban the sale of flowers altogether?
Any horny guy knows that you don't wait to send women flowers just once a year.
Obviously someone needs a hug in Saudi Arabia. Would it be wrong to send valentines to show we care?
Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037
King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
c/o The Equestrian Club of Riyadh
PO Box 26323,
Riyadh, 11486
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
--
Love, love will keep us together...
Zuzu, does this mean that you would happily live in Saudi? I'm not being flippant, I'm genuinely interested. I can see the argument that, ultimately, there is no such thing as "right and wrong" (even GWB would admit as much, though perhaps it would take a spot of waterboarding to get him there), but that doesn't mean one shouldn't occasionally be outraged.
Nu-uh, yo, dis is all bout da Bloods an Crips, na'mean!? Da Saudis is down wif da Crips, so no Blood colors allowed, na'msayin.
werd.
However, I'm largely in conflict but on diplomatic terms with most everyone outside of my personal sub-cultural intersection. It's not limited to the patriarchy/oligarchy of the Arabian peninsula, and frankly I reserve most of my finite outrage capacity for people within 3 degrees of separation of myself.
Maybe that means I should make more friends with people who are on personal terms with the House of Saud?
Now I know why GWB stuck all those Saudis on an airplane the day after...
By the way, the term "politically correct" keeps
getting bandied about here. Are the users aware that it was created by the Stalinists to describe those who avoided the Gulag experience?
Incidentally, to "discriminate" once meant that the individual doing so had a well developed sense of taste...
The beat goes on.
Good old fun-loving Saudis. Yes, maybe culture and morality is all relative, but I know which kind of place I'd rather live in. Who gains, exactly, from this kind of loony control-freakery?
Um... wasn't this kind of how "Father Valentine" became "Saint Valentine?" I mean, I can't think of a more appropriate and romantic way to let your sweetie know you dig 'em than to risk committing crimes against the Saudi government for them!
It's amazing to see weasely apologists make the disconnect between their "Bushitler" mantras and a simple report that Saudi Arabia (which nationalized the oil industry) has a death penalty for converting from religion M to religion C or J or H or B etc.
Common Law exists. Goes way way back. The US Declaration of Independence and preamble of the Constitution are one form of it. Something about universal human rights (which over time has come to include women, non-whites, and renters).
People latch onto one item of Bush policy: some weird treaty with Cuba to have a prison there. I will likely vote Obama. What did he say about the Irag war? It's a done deal. Lets go KILL bad buys the only place they still hang out besides Syria: the Pakistani/Afghani border.
This blog is full of Scientology protests? WHERE ARE THE PROTESTS IN FRONT OF MOSQUES? "Denounce Sharia Law NOW!!!" type of thing.
Now it *is* a fact the Jewish women were quite in support of having us men circumcised and not eating pork. Well, circumcised men have 50% the rate of herpes or HIV than others, and back the old days, pork, pigs being *so* similar to humans in their immune system, disease and plaque was thus avoided. Cows in India were worth more for their huge renewable supplies of milk than was the cow meat (also unfiltered of bacteria like mammalian milk tend to be), so cows were sacred. But male circumcision is a rather bloodless affair, usually using a sterilized metal clamp and a very sharp knife, then just a band-aide wrap for a day. But female circumcision uses, oddly enough, no sharp knives, then is followed by clamps or stitches that make the vagina close up very tightly, so that a husband must again use a knife (or can opener) to consume a marriage. A large % of girls die of infection when their female family members drag them off and throw their genitals into the sand.
Amnesty International?
Feminists?
The silence is deafening.