Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

UN Human Rights Council's corruption is complete

One of the bedrocks of human rights is the right of free speech. The UN recognizes this and its old Commission on Human Rights as well as its newer Human Rights Council has appointed a "Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the promotion
and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression."

This job includes:

a) to gather all relevant information, wherever it might occur, of discrimination against, threats or use of violence and harassment, including persecution and intimidation, directed at persons seeking to exercise or to promote the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression as affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, where applicable, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, taking into account the work being conducted by other mechanisms of the Commission and Sub-Commission which touched on that right, with a view to avoiding duplication of work;

b) as a matter of high priority, to gather all relevant information, wherever it might occur, of discrimination against, threats or use of violence and harassment, including persecution and intimidation, against professionals in the field of information seeking to exercise or to promote the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression;

c) to seek and receive credible and reliable information from governments and non-governmental organizations and any other parties who have knowledge of these cases; and to submit annually to the Commission a report covering the activities relating to his or her mandate, containing recommendations to the Commission and providing suggestions on ways and means to better promote and protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression in all its manifestations.

This past Friday, however, the UN's Human Rights Commission added a new job responsibility to this Special Rapporteur:

To do the exact opposite.

The amendment passed by the UN Human Rights Council in its rush to adjourn Friday told its expert on freedom of expression to report on people who abuse their free speech rights to espouse racial and religious discrimination.

The measure, proposed by Egypt and Pakistan, passed 32-0 with the support of Islamic, Arab and African nations. European nations and some other countries abstained.

This Special Rapporteur is now expected not to defend free speech, but to defend those who try to stifle free speech. It is amazing that he hasn't yet suffered from whiplash.

Now, what does the UN Human Rights Council consider "abuse" of free speech?

The previous day, the same UNHRC passed (21-10) a resolution urging states to prohibit the "defamation of religions" in a resolution that referred specifically and repeatedly to Islam and no other religion.

We all knew that the UNHRC was a corrupt joke of an organization, but at least up until now it could at least pretend to be guided by principals, even as it applied them in a ridiculously biased manner. Now the perversion is so complete that it is demolishing its very own basis.

Hamas seizing Fatah members' land in Gaza

The Palestine Press Agency (Arabic) is reporting that Hamas has decided to start "taking inventory" of the land and other property that belonged to Fatah members who had to flee for their lives during the Hamas coup, as a first step to formally seizing them.

Hamas has already taken over many PA-run organizations and offices in Gaza, such as the court system and finance offices.

Apparently, taking land is not considered "ethnic cleansing" when Arabs do it to other Arabs.

AFP bias of the day

AFP "reports:"

The World Health Organization lashed out at Israel on Tuesday for denying or delaying travel permits for critically ill Gaza Strip residents, saying the right to health appeared to be optional for Palestinians.
Ambrogio Manenti, who heads the WHO's West Bank and Gaza office, said case studies of patients who died while waiting for permits to travel to Israel for treatment "show nonsense, inhumanity and, at the end, tragedy".
"The right to health appears to be optional for Palestinians," he added.
...Between October 1 and March 2, 32 patients died in Gaza after the permits they requested were delayed or refused, the WHO said.
The number of patients who were denied permits rose from just over three percent in January 2006 -- when the Islamist Hamas movement won Palestinian parliamentary elections -- to almost 36 percent in December 2007.
"From a health perspective this is something unacceptable. I think my organisation should stigmatise this behaviour," said Manenti.
But Captain Shadi Yasin of the Israeli military liaison office for Gaza insisted the WHO report was "completely wrong."
Israel "gives high priority for all urgently needed treatment in Israel and the West Bank for Gaza people and for the entry into Gaza of medicine and medical supplies," the spokesman said.

AFP includes details (not shown here) of two cases where Israeli actions supposedly led to the deaths of Gazans. But it does not go into details of Israel's side of the story, besides a general denial.

The German news agency DPA covers the same story and adds a few sentences you would never see in the AFP version. Something called "context:"

The denial of permits rose from 3 per cent in the beginning of last year, to nearly 36 per cent in December, Manenti pointed out.
In absolute terms, nearly 670 Gazans were nevertheless treated in Israel in December 2007, compared to an in fact smaller number, under 360, in December 2006.

...A 22-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber on her way for treatment in Israel killed three Israeli security guards and a civilian at the Erez border crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip in January 2004. The woman had told the guards she had a metal plate in her leg to circumvent the metal detector.

A similar suicide attack was thwarted at the Erez terminal in June 2005, when a 21-year-old Palestinian woman tried to cross into Israel using her medical travel documents, but soldiers found a bomb belt on her.

So, three facts that AFP couldn't bring themselves to mention but DPA did: in absolute terms, Israel is treating more Gazans than ever; and that on at least two occasions Gazans used their freedom to travel to Israel as a means to try to kill as many Israelis as possible.

Another fact that neither of them managed to mention is that Egypt also shares a border with Gaza and that Egypt has been far more reluctant to treat sick Gazans than Israel has. It is unclear whether WHO even mentions Egypt as having any responsibility for this problem.

Yesterday, Saudi Arabia was host to another exciting, high speed car chase, courtesy of our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, otherwise known as the Muttawa.

Apparently two young couples had the audacity to travel in a car. It is unclear why exactly this is "haram" under shari'a law, but Allah knows best, and so do the Muttawa.

So our heroes, naturally, went in full pursuit with their signature white Toyota SUV:

Eyewitnesses said that they saw a commission SUV with two agents and a security officer inside following a white Ford until it crashed into a small farm with the four people inside. As the Ford was still absorbing the force of impact, the Commission’s agents fled the scene, they added.

An eyewitness said after the car had crashed into the farm, he waved at the Commission’s agents to stop but they ignored him, prompting him to report the incident and the license plate number of the SUV to the police. Another eyewitness confirmed that he saw the commission SUV at the scene of the crash as it happened.

A police source said that the eyewitnesses reported seeing the white Toyota SUV at the scene right after the crash and provided its license plate number.

Chief of Madina Traffic Department Col. Siraj Kamal said that early information and eyewitnesses’ accounts suggest that the commission SUV was in hot pursuit of the victims’ car. If the information and reports are confirmed, the case will be referred to authorities concerned, he said.

Firefighters extracted three bodies from the wreckage of the vehicle, said Madina Civil Defense spokesman Col. Mansour Al-Juhani.

The driver, 30, died of internal bleeding one hour later in hospital, said director of King Fahd Hospital in Madina Mutwakil Hajaj.

The four were not identified.

To be fair, the Muttawa deny any involvement despite the eyewitnesses. They also denied any involvement last month when eyewitnesses saw them chase another couple to their deaths.

Our heroes' body count has really been piling up in the past year, as the Saudi Gazette helpfully enumerates:

The Commission’s agents have been recently accused of involvement in many death cases.

Last week, a 29-year-old man jumped from the third-floor window of an apartment to his death while allegedly trying to avoid arrest by the Commission in Adama District, Dammam.

Earlier in March, a young man and a woman allegedly fleeing from agents of the Commission were killed when their speeding car smashed head-on into a truck on the Madina-Tabuk Road. Investigations in the above two cases are still under way.

In May 2007, the Commission’s agents in Riyadh were involved in a murder case during a forced entry into a house and the beating to death of Salman Al-Huraisi, a citizen, who allegedly possessed and sold alcohol. In June 2007, in Tabuk, the Commission’s agents spotted a 50-year-old family driver, Ahmed Al-Bulawi, driving with a woman in his car. They stopped the car, arrested the two and took the man to one of the Commission’s interrogation centers, where he died. The court ruled that the Commission’s agents were innocent in both death cases filed against it.

So the Muttawa death count is now at 9 in the past 10 months. Not bad, because, to the Commission, extremism in the defense of Sharia is no vice.

Moses, Khidr and free will

Saudi Gazette includes an Koranic story in today's issue:

THE story of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) with Khidr, mentioned in Surah Al Kahf, the Cave (65:82), is one of the most important didactic stories in the Qur’an.
The story begins when Moses was delivering a sermon and one of his followers suddenly asked him “Who is the most knowledgeable person on earth” and Moses (peace be upon him), immediately answered him: ‘I (am the most learned).’ Allah admonished him for this answer and told him that there was a man who was more knowledgeable than he was and ordered him to search for that man to learn from him, “So they found one of Our servants, on whom We had bestowed Mercy from Ourselves and whom We had taught knowledge from Our own Presence.”
We will notice that Moses’ relationship with Khidr is that of a student and his teacher that should be based on politeness, obedience, respect and patience and this is clear from Moses’ first question, “Moses said to him: “May I follow you, so that you teach me something of the (Higher) Truth which you have been taught (by Allah)?” Khidr reminds him during his stay with him that he has to be patient indicating that he (Moses) would see things that require a lot of patience, “He (Khidr) said: “Verily you will not be able to have patience with me! And how can you have patience about things about which your understanding is not complete?”
Moses declares that he would stick to his promise, “Moses said: “You will find me, if Allah wills, (truly) patient: nor shall I disobey you in aught.”
But what Khidr did was beyond the toleration of Moses; he scuttled the boat of the poor people who helped them, killed a boy for no reason and then built the wall (which was about to fall down) in the village that refused to offer them some food.
Then Khidr explained these mysterious events to Moses “This is the parting between me and you: now will I tell you the interpretation of (those things) over which you were unable to hold patience.
As for the boat, it belonged to certain men in dire want: they plied on the water: I but wished to render it unserviceable, for there was after them a certain king who seized every boat by force.
As for the youth, his parents were people of Faith, and we feared that he would bring them to grief by obstinate rebellion and ingratitude (to Allah and man). So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange (a son) better in purity (of conduct) and closer in affection. As for the wall, it belonged to two orphan youths, in the town; there was, beneath it, a buried treasure, to which they were entitled: their father had been a righteous man: So your Lord desired that they should attain their age of full strength and get out their treasure - a mercy (and favor) from your Lord.
I did it not of my own accord. Such is the interpretation of (those things) over which you were unable to hold patience.”
The moral lessons that we can elicit from the story include the following:
• A student’s relationship with his teacher has to be based on obedience, respect and above all patience because gaining knowledge requires a lot of patience on the part of the learner.
• There is wisdom behind every event that takes place in this world, but we might not understand this wisdom immediately. Nothing happens haphazardly on earth.
• Knowledge has no limit and you always have to know that if you are very knowledgeable, there is someone who is more knowledgeable than you are.

I quoted the entire article so no one would think I took it out of context.

This story really is in the Koran (chapter 18, verses 62-85) although Khidr is not named.

Is no one in Islam bothered by these verses? Here is the actual translation of the episode of Khidr murdering a boy:

[18.74] So they went on until, when they met a boy, he slew him. (Musa) said: Have you slain an innocent person otherwise than for manslaughter? Certainly you have done an evil thing.
[and Khidr later answers...]
[18.80] And as for the boy, his parents were believers and we feared lest he should make disobedience and ingratitude to come upon them:
[18.81] So we desired that their Lord might give them in his place one better than him in purity and nearer to having compassion.

al-Khidr murdered a boy, not because of any sins he committed, but because he "knew" that the boy was going to be disobedient and his parents would be better off with a replacement child.

One can forgive the 8th century mentality of children being disposable, but the entire concept of free will - which is supposedly integral to Islam - is being thrown out the window here, as the boy is punished for sins he has yet to commit. Khidr knew prophetically that the child was predestined to be "disobedient" (this translation makes it sound more like he was guessing, though) and it was considered a kindness to kill him now. Meaning that this child had no free will.

Is it not strange that Moses is being scolded for his impatience and his being upset at the killing, but the cold-blooded murder of an innocent child is celebrated as a triumph of wisdom?

This story may illuminate more about Islam than the Saudi Gazette intended.

NYT notices that Hamas really hates Jews

A milestone in mainstream journalism, as the august New York Times recognizes that Hamas' rhetoric is not only the Western-acceptable, rabidly anti-Zionist type but it includes real Jew-hatred:

In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew.

“Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.”

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.

Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.

Intended to indoctrinate the young to its brand of radical Islam, which combines politics, social work and military resistance, including acts of terrorism, the programs of Al Aksa television and radio, including crucial Friday sermons, are an indication of how far from reconciliation Israelis and many Palestinians are.

While it is refreshing to see the NYT face some facts, even now it skittishly avoids the biggest fact of all - that more Palestinian Arabs support Hamas than Fatah and that Hamas handily defeated Fatah in the last elections.

(h/t EBoZ)

Today's madrasahs: "Young minds are not for thinking"

A nice article from Foreign Policy that highlights the differences between madrassahs in decades past and today. Excerpts:

As a 9-year-old boy, I knelt on the bare floor of the neighborhood madrasa (religious school) in Karachi, Pakistan, repeating the Koranic verse, “Of all the communities raised among men you are the best, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, and believing in God.”
Hafiz Gul-Mohamed, the Koran teacher, made each of the 13 boys in our class memorize the verse in its original Arabic. Some of us also memorized the translation in our own language, Urdu. “This is the word of God that defines the Muslim umma [community of believers],” he told us repeatedly. “It tells Muslims their mission in life.” He himself bore the title hafiz (the memorizer) because he could recite all 114 chapters and 6,346 verses of the Koran.
The madrasa I attended, and its headmaster, opposed the West but in an apolitical way. He knew the communists were evil because they denied the existence of God. The West, however, was also immoral. Westerners drank alcohol and engaged in sex outside of marriage. Western women did not cover themselves. Western culture encouraged a mad race for making money. Song and dance, rather than prayer and meditation, characterized life in the West. Gul-Mohamed’s solution was isolation. “The umma should keep away from the West and its ways.”
But these were the 1960s. Although religion was important in the lives of Pakistanis, pursuit of material success rather than the search for religious knowledge determined students’ career choices.

And so it was for much of the four decades before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001... A few weeks after September 11, I visited Darul Uloom Haqqania. Taliban leader Mullah Omar had been a student at Haqqania, and the madrasa, with 2,500 students aged 5 to 21 from all over the world, has been called “the University of Jihad.” The texture of life in the madrasa still has elements that represent a continuum not over decades but over centuries. But at Haqqania, I saw that the world of the madrasa had changed since I last bowed my head in front of Hafiz Gul-Mohamed.

In a basement room with plasterless walls adorned by a clock inscribed with “God is Great” in Arabic, 9-year-old Mohammed Tahir rocked back and forth and recited the same verse of the Koran that had been instilled into my memory at the same age: “Of all the communities raised among men you are the best, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, and believing in God.” But when I asked him to explain how he understands the passage, Tahir’s interpretation was quite different from the quietist version taught to me. “The Muslim community of believers is the best in the eyes of God, and we must make it the same in the eyes of men by force,” he said. “We must fight the unbelievers and that includes those who carry Muslim names but have adopted the ways of unbelievers. When I grow up I intend to carry out jihad in every possible way.” Tahir does not believe that al Qaeda is responsible for September 11 because his teachers have told him that the attacks were a conspiracy by Jews against the Taliban. He also considers Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden great Muslims, “for challenging the might of the unbelievers.”

Maulana Samiul Haq, headmaster of the Haqqania madrasa, is a firebrand orator who led anti-U.S. demonstrations soon after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. When I asked if he thought it appropriate to involve his 5- and 6-year-old charges in political demonstrations, Haq remarked, “No one is too young to do the right thing.” Later, he added, “Young minds are not for thinking. We catch them for the madrasas when they are young, and by the time they are old enough to think, they know what to think.” Students and teachers carried militant Islamic ideology from one madrasa to another. On one of the walls of the madrasa of my youth, someone had written the hadith “Seek knowledge even if it takes you as far as China.” Across the road from the madrasa at Haqqania, some of Tahir’s classmates have written a different hadith: “Paradise lies under the shade of swords.”

Tahir’s teacher carries a cane and can often be brutal. One madrasa in Pakistan has resorted to the practice of chaining students to pillars until they memorize the day’s lesson. But compared with life in a squalid refugee camp, the harshness of the madrasa probably is a blessing.

Muslim states are now calling upon Western governments to support madrasa reform through financial aid. The proposed recipe for reform is to add contemporary subjects alongside the traditional religious sciences in madrasa curriculum. But madrasas will probably survive these reform efforts, just as they survived the introduction of Western education during colonial rule. Can learning science and math, for example, change the worldview shaped by a theology of conformity? I asked Tahir if he is interested in learning math. He said, “In hadith there are many references to how many times Allah has multiplied the reward of jihad. If I knew how to multiply, I would be able to calculate the reward I will earn in the hereafter.”

What $2 billion a year buys you - today's peaceful Gaza news

PA prime minister Fayyad said that fully 60% of the PA budget has been going to Gaza (up from 58% last month) and that the PA has given Gaza $962 million in the past six months.

This money, of course, allows the Gaza infrastructure to go on so that Hamas can make sure that 100% of the money it smuggles into Gaza goes towards weapons and none of it to help real Palestinian Arabs.

Here's how some of the money was spent recently:

Al Azhar University created a policy banning Hamas rallies, and Hamas didn't take to it kindly. Many were injured as Hamas militias invaded the university. Both professors and students - including females - were hurt, and many abducted. One injured woman was refused treatment at Shifa Hospital at Hamas' instruction. Some of the women's veils were ripped off in the clashes. Apparently, Hamas poured some sort of caustic liquid on students.

Pictures from Firas Press:

Also, a Gazan was seriously injured after being shot in Gaza City. And 3 Fatah members were abducted by Hamas in Khan Younis, showing how much Hamas appreciates its billions it gets from Fatah - and our tax dollars.

Let's play the Peace Process Game

The Peace Process Game, which in no way should be confused with anything peaceful, is the game that Palestinian Arabs play with gullible Westerners to prove that their intent is something different than ultimately genocidal towards Jews in the Middle East.

One of the earlier incarnations of the game was when Arafat promised that he changed the PLO charter to not advocate the destruction of Israel, something that never occurred (unless anyone can point me to a copy of the revised charter, ten years after it was supposedly changed.) He even faked an entire "vote" in front of President Bill Clinton pretending to nullify parts of the charter. It was a classic move in the Peace Process Game.

More recently, this past September the PA announced that they had "dismantled" the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank. Nothing of the sort ever happened but they got brownie points in the West for this bold, imaginary move.

Dozens of similar examples come to mind - the "clean-up" of Nablus from terror and the "condemnation" of Abbas for the Mercaz HaRav massacre are two more recent ones.

Today, we find out about the latest wrinkle in the game, courtesy of Ha'aretz Hebrew (translated by Daily Alert:)

Israel recently authorized the deployment of 500 PA police in Nablus. According to a report that reached Defense Minister Barak, these forces are working in coordination with local terrorists.

The terrorists neutralize the bombs they have prepared when the PA police enter the Casbah, and hook them up again when they leave.

Another elaborate charade of the PA, meant to show the West that it is honoring commitments while it shows the terrorists whose side it is really on.

Let's give them more money for their peaceful moves!

Kuwait building synagogue?

A recent Al-Arabiya article on the race among Gulf states to build huge mega-skyscrapers - one planned to be a full mile high in Saudi Arabia - included this detail:

Kuwait has unveiled a plan to build a 1,001-meter (3,284 foot) tower. Its height is a reference to the classic work of Arabic literature, One Thousand and One Nights.

Three blades that will be built near the top of the tower will carry a mosque, a church and a synagogue to signify the unity of the three monotheistic religions.

They might have a hard time getting a minyan for Shabbos. Unless they install a Shabbos elevator, walking up some 6000 steps might be difficult for most worshippers.

Luckily, they probably won't have that problem - there are no known Jews in Kuwait, and there haven't been any for eighty years.

Then again, it is very easy to say you respect a religion when you can make sure that none of its adherents pollute your country.

Saudi murders daughter. Saudi news blames Facebook.

I don't know why I'm coming across so much Saudi news lately, but....

A woman was beaten up and shot dead by her father for talking online with a man she met on the website Facebook.

The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the "strife" the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation.
A leading Saudi preacher told Al-Arabiya.net that Facebook was a "door to lust" for women and called for it to be blocked.
Sheikh Ali al-Maliki said women were posting "revealing pictures" and "behaving badly" on the site, which has become popular with young Saudis.

See what happens when you allow kids to run loose on the Internet? Their virtuous fathers are forced to kill them!

Novel Saudi idea: Treat maids as if they're human

The Saudi-based Arab News, which goes out of its way to appear progressive to Western audiences, shows again its racist mentality with this unreal article:

JEDDAH, 31 March 2008 — Spoil your housemaid if you want to keep her. Give her a salary hike, a day off each week and above all be gentle with her. This is the advice people should heed if they want to ensure their maids do not begin looking for employment elsewhere.
An estimated 7,000 maids run away from their Saudi employers each year. “Spoiling maids is the best way to keep them. Employers don’t want to lose their maids and go through the hassle of spending SR7,000 and reams of red tape to get a new one,” said a Saudi who went through the bitter experience.
The Kingdom is home to around 3 million foreign maids. Many work here illegally after arriving on pilgrim visas. Most housemaids in the Kingdom are Indonesian, around 1 million according to sources at the Indonesian Embassy. Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Indians and Moroccans follow.
Labor experts say that the main reasons for maids running away include low pay and abuse. ...
Abdul Qader Hussein, a teacher, has seen several of his housemaids run away.
“I used all means, such as locking the maid in her room at night and securing windows with iron grills, but they were of no avail. I can’t do without a maid because my wife is also a teacher,” he said.
“Finally, a friend of mine told me the secret of keeping a maid for long term. Give her a pay hike and treat her well. From SR700 I raised her salary to SR1,200, the highest amount she is likely to earn if she runs away. It worked. She is with us now for over two years. None of the maids in the past stayed for more than a couple of months,” he said, adding that he also gives his maid occasional gifts in the form of cash or clothes.
Maj. Muhammad Al-Hussein, spokesman of the Passports Department in the Makkah region, said that in most cases maids run away with the help of middlemen of their own nationality.
“They promise them new jobs with better pay and work atmosphere, including a weekly holiday, which Saudi sponsors seldom give,” he said.
“It has also been reported that some ill-treated maids have resorted to acts of vengeance before running away,” Al-Hussein added. According to one such report, two Indonesian and Filipino maids made their employers consume food containing urine, stool and blood.
Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, who runs a recruitment firm in Jeddah, said maids could be stopped from running away only if Saudi families learn to treat them with kindness like family members. “They should never be viewed with suspicion and prejudice,” he added.

Saudis don't go to prostitutes. They "marry" them.

Everyone knows that it is a farce, but their "moral codes" are so strong that they all pretend anyway.

From Saudi Gazette:

Single men, and even married ones who are unhappy or just bored and don’t mind polygamy, can easily find a foreign matchmaker in the Holy City.

All a man has to do is contact one of them, and she will find him a bride from among the numerous overstayers in town. Most probably, she will be Indonesian, Mauritanian, Burmese or, if he’s the talkative type, Egyptian or Moroccan, which takes care of the language barrier.

“God the Almighty will bless me because I seek to unite two people in matrimony,” says one matchmaker who would only identify herself as Umm Ayman, “and to find women husbands who can shelter them, particularly of Saudi nationality.”

The matchmaker’s ostensible keenness to observe Shariah extends as far as letting the suitor eyeball his prospective wife. If an agreement is reached, the rigorous process of negotiating the dowry and the matchmaker’s fees begins in earnest. The more interest the groom shows, the more expensive it can get for him.

In this kind of deals, everything, no matter how personal, is bound to have a price tag. Depending on how pretty the would-be bride is, the dowry could range from SR10,000 to SR20,000 – and those are the bare minimums. If the groom shows too much interest, the figure could go well beyond that.

Standard fees for the matchmaker begins with SR500 just for starting the work, plus SR1,000 to SR1,500 once the marriage contract is made.

The service is hardly shoddy. The matchmaker takes on the easy task of producing the two witnesses who should attest to the marriage, and they probably are the same nationality as the bride’s. They get a paltry SR50 each, and the marriage “official” gets a princely fee of SR100.

And that’s it. There are no more expenses for the groom to pay and, of course, to keep things under a lid, no wedding ceremony is ever held, and the two are hitched happily ever after.

There are, however, two little conditions the brides usually set for the marriage to be consummated.

First off, having children is a definite no-no.

Then there is the small matter of the groom having to give a one-hour prior warning that he’s about to show up at the love nest.

According to Umm Ayman, the wife usually takes all necessary precautions not to get pregnant.
“The last thing she wants is to bear the responsibility of motherhood, what with being illegal and all,” she says. “Then there is the ever-present elephant in the room – the almost certain possibility that the marriage would not last for long anyway.”

The one-hour notice makes about as much sense as the marriage itself. While the pretext is always that the wife needs time “to get herself ready,” a number of these women are often married off to more than one man, and they don’t want to get caught.

On the night of consummation, it is considered “appropriate” for the groom to buy dinner for his new-found wife and in-laws. Of course, all of this is hush-hush – not even the neighbors find out.

Sheikh Abdulmohsen Al-Obaikan, Counsel at the Ministry of Justice and a member of the Shoura Council, says this kind of marriage is both illegal and un-Islamic.

“If the intention is to break up the marriage after a while, this marriage would be one of pleasure, which isn’t part of Shariah.”

He further added that being married to several men at the same time amounts to prostitution.

We have already seen many of the adventures of our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. But what happens to the perps after the crime was committed? How does the Commission ensure that these lowlife immoral scum - especially the women - are never allowed to corrupt upstanding Saudi citizens any more?

The brilliant mullahs who guide our heroes have a foolproof, fail-safe method of ensuring the purity of Saudi society. From the Saudi Gazette, referring to Saudi women's prisons:

[S]ome inmates who had been indiscriminately arrested by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on charges of illegal actions stay in custody indefinitely, simply because the commission never gets around to pressing charges...

Brilliant! If they never get charged, they can never go free!

And what about those that did manage to get sentenced? As the National Human Rights Society found:

In a surprise visit to the Berman Prison in Jeddah last week, the National Human Rights Society (NHRS) found that four female inmates have AIDS, and two others suffer from Tuberculosis.

She said the delegation was stunned to learn that King Saud Hospital in Jeddah had turned down repeated requests to conduct HIV tests for the female inmates, claiming that the test is too expensive.

The NHRS’s team, headed by Jawhara Al-Anqari, the Society’s Deputy Chairman for Family Affairs, also found that there were Saudi women who were still in prison after they had completed their jail terms, because their families refused to receive them....

Furthermore, the delegation found that all the prisoners were being kept in the same dormitories, regardless of age and crime records.

So the Commission wisely throws women in prison when they are suspected of horrific crimes like "khulwa" and while in prison they might be stuck there forever, exposed to other prisoners who are only murderers or the like, and exposed to diseases that can kill them.

Thus ensuring that they never, ever get back on the streets where they might entice young men into a meal at a public restaurant.

Our heroes have saved Saudi society's purity yet again!

Saudis block access to human rights websites

From Saudi Gazette:

RIYADH – The National Society for Human Rights is seeking to unblock some internet sites of some Arab and international human rights organizations, the Arabic daily Al-Watan reported on Saturday.

Dr. Saleh Al-Khathlan, head of the Observation and Followup Committee at the society and a professor of politics at the King Saud University, said the society had taken note of the bans applied to some websites like those of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Sans Frontiers and the Arabian Network for Human Rights Information.

Al-Watan quoted Khathlan as saying that the blockage goes against the Kingdom’s commitments as a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council. He added that those sites are committed to international standards regarding their online content.

He said blockage is in breach of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which states the rights of freedom of speech and obtaining information.

It is also in breach of article 23 of the Arabian Pact of Human Rights, adding that Saudi Arabia is the head of the Arab League’s permanent oversight committee on human rights, an image that the block might harm.

You'd almost think that they were trying to hide something....

I wonder if they are just as vigilant against porn websites?