Strict enforcement of Sharia isn't even popular in the Magic Kingdom.
By Donna Abu-Nasr for AP (thanks to Ruth King):
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — After the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from behind the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street.The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. But the two men said instead that they were religious police.
It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the oldest of the three women, did something that is thought to be unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court.
Today, four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles damages suits for abuses by government and public figures.
The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes after two Saudi men died while in religious police custody — one arrested for reportedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family.
Last week, a trial opened against three religious police officers and a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death penalty against the defendants.
Taken together, the cases could undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Read it all.
I've been wondering where the voices of all the ticked off middle aged Muslim women were. It just isn't like middle aged women, Muslim or not, who've been through the rigours of raising teenagers and lived to tell about it to take stuff like this lying down. And the thought police made a big mistake messing with this woman because it sounds like she was doing everything from a correct Islamic point of view:
1) she and her daughter were veiled,
2) a guy was the chaperone and he was driving,
3) she was on her way to pick up her two sons at an amusement park. The daughter stayed home.
If I put up with all the garbage of being a proper Muslima matron and still had my car hijacked and was called nasty names to boot, you better believe I'd be pitching a fit, bigtime! Good for Umm Faisal. I hope she makes their lives a living hell.
What a wonderful place, Saudi Arabia, our "good friend and ally."
Since Jimmy Carter is an expert on "apartheid", let him go there as a special envoy to help his Sauid friends dismantle their system of gender aparatheid.
We can stir the pot in many places if we have the foresight. Dar al-Islam is far more fragile than dar al-Islam.
sorry - Dar al Islam is more unstable and fragile than Dar al Harb.
Plague,
No worries. We knew what you meant. ;)
Maybe we aren't hearing about most of this stuff but it stands to reason that there must be a lot of people who get tired of being told what to do over in Islamland. How can you keep that many people down at one time? There would have to be pingpong balls under water shooting up all over the place. Agitation may be our best friend.
Umm, you go girl!
what do you want to bet that Naseem would shed all the Allah da'wa if she knew she no longer had to worry that a) Allah would burn her forever in hellfire b) no one could force her stay 'muslim' c) no one could abuse her because she is a women and worth that of 1/2 a muslim or less.
If you take away coercion from allah in the afterlife and coercion from man in this life, what could keep most women from leaving Islam?
not a goddamned thing.
Time for Muslim women, en masse, to wake their men up in the middle of the night with a straight razor pressed up to their little mohammads and tell them:
the crap stops tonight, or the prophet's favorite 'palm tree' gets trimmed of its 'dates'.
Its the Stockholm Syndrome on a planetary scale.
Someone has got to start the deprogramming ball rolling.
Maybe this pissed little lady is it.
What is interesting is that an incident like this probably would NOT have been reported ten years ago.
More information on this:
the man apprehended was a retired government employee working as a taxi driver to support an extended family. He died of a heart attack while in custody. Initially, the investigators (other mutawwa - spelling?) ruled that the commission members were not to blame since they didn't do anything to cause his death.
Apparently, the fatal heart attack caused by the stress of being arrested is just on of those insh'Allah things.
Incidently, "umm" is not a name. It means "mother of". She is refering to herself to avoid naming herself publically. This is pretty common here.
Jay,
Good point on the stress issue. Isn't it interesting that this guy's stress from jihadis would not have caused his death, but when Muslims are caught trying to blow up airport terminals they complain incessantly that non-Muslims will be mad at them and that will make them less than comfy and cause them a lot of...you guessed it...stress!!!
One of my favorite quotes is from Washington Irving:
"There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity."
Let the kindle-ing begin!
Google the Aisha Prophecy whether you believe in such things or not. Great stuff. It predicts the return of a female Mahdi who will "raise up the women of Islam and show men how they have fallen into error." Muslim women all over are saying that if it isn't true, it ought to be true. If enough of them (us) start thinking that way, it could turn the whole Muslim world upside down and help bring a quicker end to all the cruelty and stupidity.
...Muslim backash is a growing phenonenom...it is overdue....Islam is for losers...