Sharia alert from AFP, with thanks to Fjordman:
RIYADH -- Some 20 years after public screenings of films were banned, the first cinema will open next month in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, but showing only cartoons, a source from the firm handling the project said on Sunday.The cinema will open for women and children at a Riyadh hotel at the Eid Al Fitr feast at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on November 2 or 3, said the source who requested anonymity....
Cinema was once shown in private clubs in Saudi Arabia until all public screenings were banned because they were considered against Islamic law in the early 1980s.
Saudi Arabia is the only country to have banned cinema houses in the Muslim conservative Arab Gulf region.
No bloody wonder they get frustrated. All that money and nothing to spend it on - all the fun things, from jamon serrano to Beatle records, being apparently forbidden. If there is any gang of chronic drunkards who are justified in drinking to forget (their hideous environment, their oppressive laws, their hopeless predicament) it is our Saudi brothers.
Paolo:
But isn't it them who have most of the petrowealth the same folks who support those oppressive laws, for the plebes at least? (I gather that's part of what the Islamists are railing against, the hypocracy of the ruling elites who are known to engage in haram behaviours like consuming alcohol, the other grievance being the Saudi gov't's acceptance of infidels on Saudi soil.)
According to the most recent HDI, the average Saudi and the average Iranian don't have it so good, with both countries ranking in the 0.3 range, lower still than the Palestinians in the territories during Intifada II at 0.67.
What a horrible religion....a no fun zone.
http://www.wcities.com/en/guide/fun_facts/685/guide.html
It's no fun living in a no fun zone.
I hereby nominate--pardon my presumption--Fjordman to serve on the Jihad Watch Board of Directors.
It appears that he will soon be taking a break from blogging at his site. However, should he join Patrick, Hugh and Robert on the board, he might occassionally post here at JW during his hiatus, which will keep us in news and comment from Scandanavia.
Who will second the motion? Third?
Yes, yes! I second the motion!
Draft Fjordman!
The Saudi royalty indulge in worldly pleasures; they've been going to Vegas and the Playboy Mansion and the Riviera etc. for decades.
About three years ago, there was a PBS special on the Saudi royalty. A prince was interviewed inside his palace. His "secretary", a pretty young woman, was wearing a miniskirt and a nice low-cut blouse. The prince told the reporter that she can only wear the miniskirt inside the palace, but once she steps outside, she has to cover herself according to Islamic propriety.
I just put in a call to my stock broker to buy up all the Warner Bro.'s stock he can for my account. All those petro dollars returning to Burbank in royalties from showing all those Porky Pig cartoons to an entertainment starved public will send this stock to the crescent moon!
So will they be showing Porky Pig?
A joyless existence and a denial of diversion and fun, just provides more incentive to send the young men off to foreign countries for adventure and training as mujahideen and Jihad, where they finally get the sex they are denied in Paradise. I'm not sure that it is the 72 virgins they are interested in, after all word is that John Walker bin Lindh had a Pakistani lover, and I have a suspicion that a lot more goes on in the Jihad training camps, than learning to shoot RPG and running obstacle courses.
Does not the ahadith by Bukhari, or is it Muslim, that promises a reward in Jennah of young boys with skin like pearls.
Muslim males, more than anyone else, are raised with a Madonna whore complex, and Oedipus complex as well.
You should read Raphael Patai's, The Arab Mind. Arab boys aren't weaned until they are 5 or 6, girls are weaned by age 2, Arab mothers, sisters, and other harem females, fondle and excite the boys genitals, and the sisters get their value, by chasing after and doting on the boys, Then they are raised by Islamic (Arab tradition) heck they are one and the same, to consider the women who doted on them, breast fed them, aroused them by stroking their genitals, to be oversexed, mindless whores, that are just lusting after the male sexual organ, and would be lavicious whores if they weren't chastised, isolated and constrained.
I heard an interview with Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramidan, and the one thing both agreed on is that Muslims are sexually repressed.
And sexual repression finds it's outlet in violence, and other antisocial acts.
Bottom line, the Saudis are engaged in stealth recruitment of Jihadis.
Nariz:
Hitchens and Ramadan in the same forum? Must have been quite the show.
"Saudi allows cinema again, but only cartoons"
This is really good news... Are these going to be the cartoons of Muhammad recently published in the Danish Newspapers by any chance? Perhaps the Saudis are reforming their perfidious sewage spewing hatred filled religious system after all... Later on I'll tell you what I really think...