The Prophet Muhammad directed his followers to expel all "polytheists" from the Arabian Peninsula. They did so, although the modern Saudi state allows in foreign workers to perform the menial tasks that none of the fantastically rich Saudis are willing to undertake. But these foreigners live in the Muslim holy land with daily reminders of the inferior status accorded them. From Reuters:
LONDON (Reuters) - Many of the millions of foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia suffer from extreme exploitation and work under conditions that resemble slavery, an international human rights watchdog said on Thursday.Saudi Arabia said the report exaggerated the experiences of a few of the more than six million foreigners working in the kingdom, and noted that millions of families around the world were dependent on remittances from such workers.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch, in its first comprehensive report on foreign laborers in the oil-rich kingdom, slammed Saudi authorities, the legal system and private employers for a range of abuses that sometimes led to death.
The hard-hitting report called on de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Abdullah to set up an independent commission to investigate the abuses and publicize its findings.
"Migrant workers in the purportedly modern society that the kingdom has become continue to suffer extreme forms of labor exploitation that sometimes rise to slavery-like conditions," it said.
"This report is an indictment of unscrupulous private employers and sponsors as well as Saudi authorities, including Interior Ministry interrogators and sharia court judges, who operate without respect for the rule of law and the inherent dignity of all men and women," it added.
Around six million foreigners, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, sweep the streets, build homes or run offices in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter.
From accounts in the Qu'ran, Mohammed was very into slaves in more ways than one...
They should leave Saudi and go home.
perhaps Al qaeda will sweep the streets for them if they cannot find any slaves to do the job for them.
it is time to let saudi be consumed by the monster it has created and find alternative energy supplies.
Every so often, a Thai, or Indian, or Filipino girl manages to escape from her Saudi or Kuwaiti or U.A.E. "employers" (slave-holders), while they are estivating in London. These girls, beaten, sometimes tortured, forced to work around the clock, tell the most extraordinary tales: being forced, as punishment, to clean toilets with their tongue, being thrown down stairs, being abused in all the ways that a vivid imagination, and limitless cruelty and a sense of immunity, can give rise to. Yet what happens to these girls in London, or in Paris, or in a Marbella villa, are as nothing compared to what happens behind the closed doors of Saudi villas.
Slavery was formally abolished in 1964; one old princess complained bitterly to the King that this would deprive her of her property rights. She needn't have worried. Slavery, in all but name only, exists in Saudi Arabia. There have been sermons by powerful imams describing how the Qur'an sanctions slavery, and so it can never be abolished, whatever the Infidels might claim. And in truth, Islamic societies have traditionally relied on slaves, even as their warriors. (See "Slaves on Horseback" by Patricia Crone). The Ottomans, of course, had their forced levies -- the devshirme -- in which they would seize Christian children from the Balkans and Bulgaria and other Christian lands, taking the children back to be trained up as soldiers for the army of the Padishah.
Some make much of the recognition of slavery in the U.S. Constitution, as a sign of American hypocrisy and prating about freedom. But the Civil War put paid to slavery, and the history of Constitutional adjudication has been relentlessly directed at putting paid to the inheritance of slavery, its attitudes, its atmospherics. Not so within Islam, for unlike the American Constitution, the Qur'an and hadith cannot be subject to change through re-interpretation. They are, to Muslims, the expression of an eternal and uncreated faith. They cannot be touched. The gates of Ijtihad closed a millennium ago.
Consequently, there are black slaves in Mali, and Mauritania, and most notably, in the southern Sudan --everywhere indeed, that Arabs meet black Africans. In Saudi Arabia, newspapers have carried ads offering to swap a used American car (and not a terribly good one, either) for an "Indian" or other Asian girl. How much of this does the State Department know? And if it does know, does it care? Or does it continue to labor under the dreamy belief that we share something, anything, with the monstrous regime in Saudi Arabia, its people, their beliefs, their take on the world? We share nothing.
Everyone will have his own anecdotal store of evidence. Mine consists of what I observed in London, where in a bank a woman in a crowd of a dozen or so who were there accompanying some Arab sheikh who had entered for some banking business, and who broke away, suddenly, and rushed up to my brother-in-law, some twenty-five years ago, and pulled aside her veil, showing blue eyes and blonde hair, and in a native speaker's English pleased "help me, help me, save me." She was suddently espied by the sheikh's guards, and the entire group exited within minutes, while my brother-in-law, to his eternal shame and chagrin, stood there, confused, not knowing what to do.
And then, of course, there are the stories I have heard, from a Filipino of my acquaintance, about her friends who had been nurses in Saudi Arabia, and what really goes on, with the Thai, and Filipino, and Indian, and all the other helpless girls, not all of whom return alive, and whose governments, eager for the continued repatriation of money earned in the Gulf, do not protest their treatment, nor protect them when abuse is undeniable.
More attention is given in the idiotized Western media to a heart-warming story of a pet dog rescued from a hole, to pandas mating or failing to mate, to why JayLo has so much trouble finding her soulmate, or in the European version, to why Princess Grace's girls are still making all kinds of trouble for Papa, and how to bend it like Beckham, and how Johnny is faring in France in the grim years without Sylvie.
How about a little attention to the mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of "guest-workers" in Saudi Arabia? Just a story or two? Is that just too much?
"More attention is given in the idiotized Western media to a heart-warming story of a pet dog rescued from a hole, to pandas mating or failing "
Perhaps the silence of the Media regarding Saudi Arabian outrageous treatment of their kaffir infidels is not unrelated to the Church's own reasons.
Are we all appeasing cowards?
Or is it more about money ?
There is, in Saudi Arabia, an institution called the "Saudi Labor Court". This is the government institution that is supposed to adjudiciate labor disputes.
Periodically - two or three times a year, we read about Saudi employers not paying their workers for as long as 17 months. A case will reach the Saudi Labor Court, and it will rule against the employer. Mostly, the rulings are unenforced. There are also two contributing factors. First, a worker is hired for a specific job with a specific employer, and you can not legally change jobs unless the present employer releases you. Second, the employer keeps your passport. I work for an American company here so they, not the Saudis, hold my passport.
Most of the foreign workers are laborers. They are poorly paid for working long hours. Most of the unskilled female workers are maids. Most of the rest are nurses. Being women, they have their own problems. The suicide and abuse of maids is turning into what the Saudis largely regard as a public relations problem.
Western "guest" workers aren't affected as badly. But we still can have problems. Last year, two doctors - husband and wife, English I think - working in a large hospital in Riyadh reached the end of their contracts. They had done everything they were supposed to do about giving proper notice. Their employer (sponsor in local terms)released the woman, would not release the man, "Your replacement has not arrived yet." No release, no passport. The court basically told the man to take the issue up with his sponsor.
On the other hand, last year Saudi employees had a labor dispute with British Aerospace. THAT was settled in less than a week.
jay
As long as Saudi society regards non-Muslims as inferiors, the abuse of foreign workers in the kingdom will continue.