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Tag: Saudi Arabia

  • Is My Intolerance Of Your Intolerance, Intolerant?

    Is My Intolerance Of Your Intolerance, Intolerant?

    Imagine the scene: a small group of opinion writers from major newspapers in the United States sit in a meeting room in Riyadh with robed and keffiyeh-wearing officials from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education. The subject is intolerance. As a syndicated columnist and editorial writer, I am among those journalists. Our questions focus on textbooks used to educate millions of Saudi children in public schools.

    Why, we ask, are the books so full of intolerance toward people of other faiths? They reek of degrading and insulting descriptions of Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the Saudis’ strict brand of Islam. The textbooks condone—nay encourage—violence against people of other faiths, claiming it is necessary to protect the integrity of Wahhabism. We ask: Aren’t you planting seeds of hate and setting up the conditions for young people to be more easily recruited by terrorist organizations?

    Relevant questions. The year was 2002.

    We’d heard a lot of Orwellian thinking during that trip to the King­dom of the House of Saud. Veiling women is a form of freedom. Mossad was behind the events of September 11, 2001. Islam is a religion of peace. But what we heard at the education ministry was right up there on the delusion-meter.

    We were the intolerant ones, they said. Our impertinent questions were proof. How dare we question their cultural and religious traditions? Any suggestion that their textbooks smacked of bigotry was an affront to their sovereignty and a form of religious intolerance.

    We were being intolerant of their intolerance.

    You can see how this distorted view can happen in a theocratic monarchy such as Saudi Arabia’s. The Saudis have a lot riding on trying to convince the West to keep quiet about the ugly attitudes and backward rules that shape their country—a system built around religious pronouncements that women are less than men in law, commerce, and the domestic sphere and that anyone non-Muslim is worthy of persecution and, in many cases, death.

    You would think that the best Saudi Arabia could hope for would be to keep its head down while asking the West to ignore its peculiar institutions. But that’s not Saudi Arabia’s MO. With preachy sanctimony, the Saudis proclaim that any criticism of their system violates international norms of human rights.

    Last year, at an international summit in France, Saudi Arabia lashed out at the media and countries that value free speech for allowing religious criticism, according to the Saudi Gazette. “We have made it clear that freedom of expression without limits or restrictions would lead to violation and abuse of religious and ideological rights,” said Abdulmajeed Al-Omari, director for external relations at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. “This requires everyone to intensify efforts to criminalize insulting heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols, and places of worship.”

    This from a country that doesn’t allow Christmas trees, teaches the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and in 2005 sentenced a schoolteacher to 750 lashes and three and a half years in prison for praising Jews and discussing the Gospels. (The teacher was pardoned after protests.)

    In Saudi Arabia today, atheism is legally designated as terrorism. Earlier this year, a man who tweeted on atheism was sentenced to ten years in prison and two thousand lashes. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) has been advocating on behalf of Saudi poet Ashraf Fayadh, who was sentenced to death in 2015 for apostasy, then resentenced on appeal earlier this year to eight years in prison and eight hundred lashes. CFI sent a letter to President Barack Obama to urge him to push for Fayadh’s release during his visit to Saudi Arabia in April. And CFI has been drawing international attention to the case of imprisoned Saudi human rights activist Raif Badawi, sentenced to ten years and one thousand lashes for insulting Islam. The charges stemmed from articles Badawi wrote criticizing religious figures on his website devoted to free expression of ideas.

    When, in 2014, CFI representative Josephine Macintosh spoke before the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, drawing attention to the desert kingdom’s brutal and repressive treatment of religious dissenters in general and of Badawi in particular, the representative from Saudi Arabia interrupted Macintosh three times. This attempt to shut down Macintosh’s critique was unsuccessful after other member states, including the United States, Ireland, Canada, and France, expressed their support for the right of Macintosh, CFI, and other nongovernmental organizations to speak.

    And the Saudis claim we are the human rights violators.

    This pity party would be a party of one were it not for a borderline-pathological alliance some on the political Left have made with this way of thinking. Bizarrely, a subset of progressives has bought into the idea that any criticism of the tenets of Islam is an attack on Muslim people. The two are not the same, of course. Discriminatory ideas found in the Qur’an and practiced as part of Sharia law—such as that women’s testimony is worth only half that of men’s—should be open to criticism. And the critic is not a bigot for saying so.

    Perhaps the most famous example of this conflation was the attack on Sam Harris by actor Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s HBO show Real Time. Affleck’s apoplectic reaction to Harris’s criticisms of Islam as “gross and racist” reinforced the point of the conversation, which was that the Left cares about women’s equality and homo­sexual rights except when Islamists are the ones oppressing women and gays—then the oppression is excused out of hyper-cultural sensitivity.

    Consider what happened last De­cem­ber to the courageous feminist crusader and Islamic critic Maryam Namazie. During Namazie’s talk on blasphemy and apostasy at Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom, a group of young men from the school’s Islamic Society entered the room with the intention of making it impossible for her to continue. They laughed, heckled, and generally disrupted the talk, at one point turning off her projector when a slide depicting a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad was shown.

    Rather than defend Namazie, the Goldsmiths Feminist Society issued a statement standing “in solidarity” with the Islamic Society and condemning the student group of atheists, secularists, and humanists who invited Namazie to their campus. “Hosting known islamophobes [sic] at our university creates a climate of hatred,” the statement read.

    I’d like to take these Goldsmiths feminists on a tour of Saudi Arabia to see what they are fighting for. The gleaming office towers of that country don’t have ladies’ rooms. There’s no need, since women are not permitted to work alongside men.

    Blasphemy laws are the legal extension of this Goldsmiths no-one-should-ever-be-offended attitude. Used as tools of repression to keep the faithful in line, minority faiths small and quiet, and nonbelievers in the closet, blasphemy laws are a menace to enlightenment values. CFI is helping to lead the international effort to vanquish them.

    Defenders of Islam’s untenable dictates on women, gays, atheists, and members of other faiths have only one arrow in their quiver, which is to try and silence their critics because they have no valid responses to them. As much as they would like to convince us that our intolerance of their intolerance is a form of cultural hegemony, we’re not buying it.

     

    Robyn E. Blumner is the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the CEO and president of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. She was a nationally syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) for sixteen years.

     

    Source: www.secularhumanism.org

  • Significance And Consequences Of ISIS Attack In Madinah

    Significance And Consequences Of ISIS Attack In Madinah

    Just when you thought Daesh (so-called IS) militants couldn’t add anything more gruesome to their image, they proved us all wrong again on Tuesday when they targeted the Prophet Mohammad’s Mosque in Madinah. The Mosque (known in Arabic as Al-Masjid Al-Nabawi) is one of two holy shrines the Kingdom hosts, and was one of three locations in Saudi Arabia targeted by terrorists on the same day.

    Internal investigations are under way to reveal the identity of perpetrators and whether or not the attacks were coordinated. Until then, it is safe to say that all three cases carry Daesh-like fingerprints, both in terms of execution and motives.

    More importantly, and contrary to what some may think, Daesh does declare the Kingdom an enemy, and only a few weeks ago, a Daesh leader called upon his horrid clan worldwide to launch attacks against their foes throughout Ramadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting which concluded Tuesday).

    The first attack, which occurred near the American Consulate in the coastal city of Jeddah, may have not only been meant as a jab at the West; but had it not been prevented it would have definitely ‘poisoned the water’ between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

    The second attack targeted two Shiite mosques in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. The Shiite sect are a minority in the Kingdom and have previously had their own issues with the government. However, they (Shiites) are also a declared enemy of Daesh. As such, had this attack been successful it would have also managed to achieve two things: kill Shiites while also creating tension between this minority and the government by making it seem as if they weren’t properly protected by the Kingdom’s security forces.

    Yet, the most significant of all three attacks was definitely the attempt on the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. There are no words that could describe the horrific impact this attack — had it been successful — both in terms of symbolic significance and the potential number of casualties.

    So far, media reports have carried the following scenario: the bomber arrived to the mosque from the southern side during the sunset prayers (the time of breaking the Muslim fast). He was then stopped by Saudi security forces, who informed him that he was attempting to enter a restricted area which is only meant to be used as an exit passage for the people praying inside the mosque.

    Assuming that he (the bomber) was there to pray and break his fast, the officers offered him to join them for iftar. However, the bomber ran towards the mosque before he was stopped by the guards.

    Surrounded with nowhere to run, the terrorist detonated the bomb killing himself and the officers whose bravery and sacrifice prevented the attack from harming tens of thousands of innocent worshipers.

    As expected, the Madinah attack resulted in a wave of solidarity and condemnation across the globe. However, just because it was foiled, we shouldn’t simply move on or ignore its significance.

    Indeed, this is an attack that — literally — targeted the heart of Islam itself. As such, it must serve as an eye-opener to any remaining Daesh sympathizers among us who may still believe that their evil creed has anything to do with humanity, let alone Islam.

    And to those who are not Daesh sympathizers, but remain silent or indifferent… now is the time to speak up. Most definitely, if this horrid attack doesn’t stir unprecedented worldwide protests, then we — Muslims — deserve to be called nothing less than ‘hypocritical’.

    Why do protests only occur only when ‘the West’ is perceived to have humiliated Islam with, for example, a Danish cartoon or by something as trivial a British schoolteacher innocently agreeing that her Muslim students call their teddy bear Muhammad?

    Isn’t an attack on a holy mosque, which contains the prophet’s resting place, a far bigger insult to Islam? Or does an insult become acceptable if the perpetrator was “one of us?” (Obviously, the answer is ‘no’)

    However, it could also be argued that what is needed now is not anger nor protests. All we need is to apply and accept common sense; after all, it wouldn’t be logical to believe that someone would attack the prophet… in the name of this same prophet!

    Faisal J Abbas

     

    Source: http://saudigazette.com.sa

  • Saudi Arabia Identifies Bombers In Two Attacks This Week

    Saudi Arabia Identifies Bombers In Two Attacks This Week

    Saudi Arabia identified on Thursday suspects in two of the three attacks that struck the kingdom on the same day this week, including one outside the sprawling mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried in the western city of Medina that killed four Saudi security troops.

    In a statement released by the Interior Ministry late Thursday, authorities said the Medina bomber in Monday’s apparently coordinated attacks was 26-year-old Saudi national Na’ir al-Nujiaidi al-Balawi.

    Three suicide bombers behind a botched attack, also Monday, outside a Shiite mosque in the eastern region of Qatif in which no civilians or police were wounded, were identified as Abdulrahman Saleh Mohammed, Ibrahim Saleh Mohammed and Abdelkarim al-Hesni, all in their early 20s.

    It was not immediately clear what nationality or nationalities the three carried.

    The ministry said investigations following the attacks led to the arrests of 19 suspects, seven Saudi and 12 Pakistani nationals. No other details were immediately available.

    On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia identified the suicide bomber who struck outside the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah as a Pakistani resident of the kingdom who had arrived 12 years ago to work as a driver. It named him as 34-year-old Abdullah Qalzar Khan. It said he lived in the port city with “his wife and her parents.” The statement did not elaborate.

    In that attack, the bomber detonated his explosives after two security guards approached him, killing himself and lightly wounding the guards, the ministry said. No consular staff were hurt.

    No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but their nature and their apparently coordinated timing suggested the Islamic State group could be to blame.

    Pakistan has condemned Monday’s attacks in the kingdom. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million. Among all foreigners living in the kingdom, Pakistanis represent one of the largest groups.

    The Saudi ministry said the attacker in the Medina assault set off the bomb in a parking lot after security officers became suspicious about him. Several cars caught fire and thick plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the site of the explosion as thousands crowded the streets around the mosque.

    Worshippers expressed shock that such a prominent holy site could be targeted.

    The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque was packed on Monday evening, during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended on Tuesday. Local media say the attacker was intending to strike the mosque when it was crowded with thousands gathered for the sunset prayer.

    Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, and the militant group views its ruling monarchy as an enemy.

    The kingdom has been the target of multiple attacks by the group that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the last two years.

     

    Source: abcnews.go.com

  • UN Leader Says He Bowed To Threat From Saudis On Rights Violations

    UN Leader Says He Bowed To Threat From Saudis On Rights Violations

    The UN secretary-general is supposed to answer to every nation on Earth — and no nation at all.

    So the unusually frank admission by the secretary-general, Mr Ban Ki-moon, on Thursday (June 9) that he had essentially been coerced into removing a Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from an ignoble list of armies that kill and maim children was a rare window into the limits of his moral and political authority — and an object lesson for whoever succeeds Mr Ban next year.

    On Thursday, Mr Ban told reporters that he had been threatened with the loss of financing for humanitarian operations in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan and Syria if he did not temporarily delete the Saudi-led coalition, which has been battling Houthi rebels in Yemen for more than a year, from the list.

    The coalition has been accused of indiscriminately bombing civilian and non-military targets, which the coalition has consistently denied.

    Mr Ban’s office had issued a report last week on violations of children’s rights in war zones, and it cited deadly coalition attacks that had hit schools and hospitals. By Monday, however, the coalition was taken off the list, after lobbying by Saudi Arabia and some of its wealthiest allies who help finance UN humanitarian operations.

    “I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many UN programs,” Mr Ban said.

    By the standards of mild-mannered diplomat-speak, he went on to issue an uncustomarily direct rebuke.

    “It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure,” he said.

    The Saudi ambassador promptly asserted that there had been no undue pressure.

    Mr Ban’s comments came as he is wrapping up his 10-year tenure and as world powers begin to bargain over who his successor will be and just how independent she or he ought to be.

    Secretaries-general have frequently faced intense political pressure from countries large and small, and Mr Ban’s time in charge has been punctuated with a number of awkward compromises.

    Last summer, Mr Ban reversed course on his list of armies and guerrilla groups that violated child rights in war. In that instance, his special representative for children and armed conflict, Ms Leila Zerrougui, recommended that the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas be included on the list for their role in bombing schools and hospitals and otherwise breaking international law during the 50-day war in the Gaza Strip in 2014.

    Israel was consulted before the release of the report, Mr Ban’s aides said at the time, and both Israeli and US diplomats lobbied intensely against the listing. In the end, both Israel and Hamas were kept off the list. Mr Ban declined to address reporters’ questions on the matter at the time, leaving it to his envoy, Ms Zerrougui, to explain the redaction.

    The generally risk-averse Mr Ban has tried to step out a bit more during his last year, but he has also repeatedly had to step back.

    In March, on a rare visit to a camp that houses refugees from Western Sahara, Mr Ban used the term “occupation” to refer to Morocco’s 1975 annexation of territory that the Sahrawis claim as theirs. The Moroccan government responded by ejecting dozens of UN staff members, effectively kneecapping the peacekeeping mission there.

    Morocco has a powerful ally in France, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, which helps explain why the French said nothing to persuade Morocco to reverse its decision. That left Mr Ban on his own, and within days, his spokesman was compelled to swallow his words.

    “We regret the misunderstandings and consequences that this personal expression of solicitude provoked,” said the spokesman, Mr Stephane Dujarric.

    Perhaps Mr Ban’s most awkward moment came when he sought to act independently of the United States. In January 2014, he invited Iran to UN-brokered political negotiations over Syria, only to be advised by US officials to rescind the invitation, according to interviews with diplomats at the time.

    A day after he publicly announced the invitation, he appeared before reporters and said Iran could not attend. The State Department made its opposition clear and demanded that Iran first accept certain conditions that it knew Tehran would find unacceptable. One of Mr Ban’s aides said he felt betrayed.

    Asked at a news briefing Thursday about Mr Ban’s admission of Saudi pressure, a State Department spokesman, Mr Mark C Toner, said, “We agree with the secretary-general that the UN should be permitted to carry out its mandate, carry out its responsibilities, without fear of money being cut off.”

    Pressed about US threats to cut off funding, Mr Toner said, “I’m aware of our own track record.”

    Eleven candidates have so far declared their candidacy to succeed Mr Ban when his term expires at the end of this year. A few others are expected to throw their names into the race in the next few weeks.

    The president of the General Assembly, Mr Mogens Lykketoft, who has held the first-ever public hearings for the candidates, has used the terms “independent” and “courageous” to describe his ideal future secretary-general.

    That may be unrealistic. It is really up to the five permanent members of the Security Council to choose the next head of the organisation, and while many of them have said they want a strong secretary-general, they have also avoided calling for one who is independent.

    As for the Saudi-led coalition, Mr Ban said he would jointly review the claims made by his special representative who accused the coalition of indiscriminate attacks against children. Privately, diplomats say such a review could drag on until it vanishes from public memory.

    For its part, Saudi Arabia flatly denied that it had exerted any pressure.

    “No, of course not,” the ambassador, Mr Abdullah al-Mouallami, said in a telephone interview. “It is not our style. It is not our culture. It is not our spirit to use threats or intimidation.”

    He did say that he had met with Mr Ban’s deputy, Mr Jan Eliasson, a Swedish diplomat, on Monday and expressed his concerns about the listing. He said he told him that “it would have an adverse impact on relations between Saudi Arabia and the United Nations.” NEW YORK TIMES

     

    Source: TODAYOnline

  • Payung Terbesar Dunia Di Masjidil Haram Sedang Dipasang

    Payung Terbesar Dunia Di Masjidil Haram Sedang Dipasang

    MAKKAH: Kerja-kerja pemasangan payung lipat paling besar di dunia bermula pada hari Khamis lalu (10 Mac), di halaman bahagian utara Masjidil Haram.

    Ia merupakan yang pertama daripada lapan payung gergasi berteknologi tinggi dan 54 payung lebih kecil yang akan dipasang di Masjidil Haram dalam tempoh enam bulan akan datang.

    Laman Saudi Gazette yang melaporkan demikian menambah, payung itu dibuat di Jerman, dengan setiap payung dilengkapi jam yang besar, skrin yang memberi panduan kepada para jemaah, alat hawa dingin dan kamera pengawasan.

    Setiap payung setinggi 45 meter dan seberat 16 tan.

    Ia akan memayungi kawasan seluas 2,400 meter persegi apabila dibuka.

    Sekitar 25 jurutera, juruteknik khas dan para pakar keselamatan dari Jerman akan menyelia proses pemasangan dan mekanisme operasi elektronik.

    PAYUNGI 400,000 JEMAAH

    Lagi 54 payung yang bersaiz lebih kecil juga akan dipasang di halaman bahagian utara, memayungi kawasan seluas 19,200 meter persegi, lapor laman tersebut lagi.

    Sebagai sebahagian daripada projek itu, 122 bangku untuk para jemaah berehat serta bangunan khidmat akan dibina.

    Kerja-kerja prasarana bagi pemasangan payung-payung itu sudahpun bermula.

    Keseluruhan plaza di bahagian utara masjid bermula dari struktur Peluasan Raja Fahd hingga struktur Peluasan Raja Abdullah akan dilengkapi payung-payung tersebut apabila projek berkenaan siap.

    Kawasan-kawasan dengan tempat teduh itu akan dapat memuatkan sekitar 400,000 jemaah.

    Ketua Presiden bagi Ehwal Dua Masjid Suci menyelia projek itu, dengan kerjasama daripara pakar-pakar dari Kementerian Pendidikan dan syarikat kontrak, yang menjalankan projek peluasan terbesar tapak paling suci Islam.

    PAYUNG IDEA ALLAHYARHAM RAJA ABDULLAH

    Menurut Saudi Gazette, Raja Abdullah mengarahkan pemasangan payung-payung itu di halaman di sekeliling Masjidil Haram pada bulan Disember 2014, iaitu beberapa hari sebelum pemergiannya.

    Ketua Presiden Sheikh Abdulrahman Al-Sudais, mengumumkan bahawa arahan raja itu dikeluarkan bagi menyediakan tempat berteduh di plaza-plaza luaran, sebagai tambahan kepada kawasan-kawasan yang diluluskan dalam projek Peluasan Raja Abdullah, dengan kawasan tambahan sekitar 275,000 meter persegi.

    Lebih 300 payung akan menyediakan tempat berteduh dari matahari untuk para jemaah Masjidil Haram, menurut beliau.

    Sebelum ini hampir 250 payung yang serupa sudah dipasang di plaza-plaza di sekitar Masjid Nabawi yang terletak di Madinah.

    ‘BUNGA-BUNGA’ CANGGIH

    Seperti bunga yang mengembang, setiap payung itu direka untuk lipat dan buka mengikut minit-minit yang ditetapkan supaya mengelak daripada berlanggar antara satu dengan yang lain, menurut laporan Saudi Gazette.

    Operasinya juga mengikut perubahan suhu harian.

    Payung-payung berkenaan dibuka setiap pagi dan ditutup dalam masa kurang tiga minit pada sebelah petang.

    Pada musim panas, payung-payung itu menyediakan teduhan daripada panas matahari.

    Apabila ditutup pada sebelah malam, ia membolehkan baki haba diserap ke lantai dan tembok untuk disalurkan semula ke atmosfera.

    Proses itu berbeza pada musim sejuk, apabila suhu lebih rendah, payung-payung itu tidak dibuka pada sebelah pagi untuk membolehkan matahari memanaskan kawasan tersebut dan dibuka pada sebelah malam untuk mengekalkan haba di bahagian lantai.

    Source: http://berita.mediacorp.sg