For expressing atheism a man was sentenced to 10 yrs behind bars, 2K lashes and a fine just short of £4000. And this country sits on the UN’s Human Rights committee. I don’t want to mention other embarrassing facts about its relationship with the first world as they are known elsewhere
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The country fails to its obligations on human rights in so many ways, but in particular freedom of (and from) religion and women’s rights. I am embarrassed to say that our own government is too silent on the matter, especially when trade is on the table.
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I think the oil makes everyone kowtow to their demands
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In the case of NZ, It’s what we can sell to them rather than what we can buy from them. Besides, NZ imports very little crude oil. We mostly import petroleum products in their refined (final) form.
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Ah, so in this case it’s losing market for your products
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Yep. Seems trade trumps rights every time.
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The French had a solution for that —
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That wood is so polished
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Ah, yes. The poor victimized religious people.
Some people find it difficult to criticize someone else’s god when in their heart and mind they know he is the same imaginary heartless bastard as theirs! Oh and there’s oil of course.
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Don’t criticize any imaginary god, you could be jailed for it. Humans are a silly lot sometimes; they created gods, fear them and kill for them
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That’s our great friend! Ah, the U.S. and the Saudis, a match made in oil.
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Hahaha. They are also great friends with the UK government if what I hear is to be believed
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Yes, yes, yes, but it’s Putin who is the real problem.
Good grief.
Here’s the source of Wahabism and here’s the source of its global funding. Here’s where most of the 9/11 mass murders came from and here’s bin Laden’s home turf. Here’s where human rights come to die, to be chopped up, hung, stoned, and lashed, where the morality police push girls back into a burning building go better protect ‘modesty’ than any paltry concerns about female human life.
But let’s stay focused on vilifying Putin.
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Osama is dead, we can vilify Putin and forget about this atrocities committed by the Saudi government. In fact we don’t even mention their bombing of civilians in Yemen
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One reason why I like to watch Aljazeera news several times per week. It does give a different perspective on so many issues.
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Maybe I should start watching news
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Even here in NZ I notice quite a difference in the bias of competing channels. When you add in foreign ones such as the BBC, BBC, Aljazeera, and (shock horror) Fox, you sometimes wonder if reporters are covering the same story.
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Hahah Barry. You put it so well. Maybe they cover different stories but involving the same people 🙂
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The hypocrisy in this “relationship” with the Saudi’s is ghastly.
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It is ghastly and dangerous
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When we progress beyond the need for oil, some countries are going to be in for a big surprise.
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That will not be soon though and in that time, they will have done irreparable damage to many lives and families
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Surely “2K” lashes must have been a typo, Mak? As in 2000 lashes? If that’s so, the man has just been sentenced to death.
Where I live (in the same city as a world famous hospital), lots of Saudis and people from the UAE come here for medical treatment. They are treated like GODS because they’re rich…I shit you not, the entire city bows to their bank accounts. I cannot believe this happens when their countries have such abhorrent human rights problems…but then again they think we’re the ones who are abhorrent (and would have no problem beheading us in their country). As a nurse I was propositioned for sex every single time I worked with men from the middle east. They seemed to think american women were so loose that we’d just drop our pants the second they asked us to. Truly, our cultures seem completely incompatible.
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For what it’s worth, Vi, the 2000 lashes are not administered at one time, but over a period of time. Any fool would know that such punishment isn’t going to make the recipient believe, it will only teach him to keep his mouth shut.
As for getting hit on, it’s because you’re hot!
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A similar dynamic occurs in Baltimore on account of Johns Hopkins University. I haven’t heard about bad behavior, though. I’ve seen people walking around with severely disabled kids or family members. It’s sad really.
The thing that always struck me as uncomfortable about it is that Baltimore is a poor city where some of the residents don’t have adequate medical care themselves. They razed a predominately African American neighborhood to build medical research facility that never got built. They got permission to tear down the neighborhood because the research facility would supposedly mean jobs. Now, they’re building a hotel adjacent to the hospital, which will (I’m guessing) cater to people from out of town. Some people suspect that this was the plan all along, but everyone knows that tearing down the neighborhood to build a hotel for Johns Hopkins’ overseas patients would have never been allowed. I don’t see the richie-rich “radicals” on campus protesting that. (I did, ever so slightly, get involved with that.) That’s an example of a real problem that doesn’t have anything to do with people’s feelings. I don’t mean to sound like I have anything against foreigners seeking medical care. Generally, they’re in trouble a should be pitied. But we need to take care of our own first – and we don’t.
I’ve heard similar stories to yours from someone who worked, not at a hospital, but at a resort. We let people with money get away with things we wouldn’t let people without money get away with.
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By the way, he could have been sentenced to death:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/20/saudi-court-sentences-poet-to-death-for-renouncing-islam
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It must be hard living in Saudi as an atheist.
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You know, Mak, that ‘Hope’ from Think Atheist is married and living in Saudi Arabia, right?
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I know and everyday I hope she is ok
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As do I. I stay in touch with her on FaceBook, and sometimes send her articles about Arabic atheists that she may not have access to at home.
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I see her twit once in a while
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I don’t tweet – when was the last time you ever saw me say ANYthing in 140 characters or less?
(Shuddup, Ark!)
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I have no recollection. Is it possible you are unable to summarise?
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No typo in the 2K.
And money opens many doors
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Egypt Sentences Coptic Teenagers to Prison for Insulting Islam
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This religion is so delicate. The god they worship must be really petty or they, the worshippers, are very petty
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It’s the latter who are petty. We create (G/g)od in our own image.
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I agree Barry
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Apparently, we’re terrorists now…
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Just look how far Islam has come – backward —
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Hey! You stole my line! That’s one of my favorite videos and I’m usually the one posting it!
One thing people don’t seem to realize is that within the past few decades Islam is getting more conservative, not less. I think because most of us in the “West” tend to think that humans always progress and progress implies liberalization, that the Islamic world must be doing the same thing. It’s not. And I don’t think it’s a reaction against the West (I sort of hate that word, but I don’t have another one). It has to do with their own internal power struggles.
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Ya snooze, ya lose —
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Hahaha Arch
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I think they have their own class of idiot
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Oh yes, terrorists all of us. How dare we question religion
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Hey, Noel, I see you’re reading Smith. What do you think so far? (I just looked at your sidebar.)
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Haven’t gone so far, I stopped to read world as will and idea. I will let you know when I read it.
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And the US has a great relationship with their oil, I mean their country, despite their human rights violations.
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I didn’t want to say that, I could be accused of not seeing the bigger picture
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