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A report from a Muslim, Naeem Mohaiemen, in the Daily Star (thanks to Nicolei):
On July 15, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the condition of Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. The revelation that "Guest Workers" are systematically abused in Saudi Arabia should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with that region's history. What a shame that it took Sarah Whitson, executive director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division, to finally speak the unpalatable truth. "We found men and women in conditions resembling slavery," said Whitson in the press conference announcing their findings. The report described "the pervasive abuses foreign workers endure...the abysmal and exploitative labor conditions many workers face, and the utter failure of the justice system to provide redress." The real question is this -- why did the Islamic world not uncover these human rights abuses, so close to the holy city of Mecca?Based on interviews taken in Bangladesh, India and the Philippines, HRW found abysmal and exploitative labor practices, wanton rape of women workers, and beheading of guest workers accused of crimes without proper legal process. Anyone who has visited Saudi Arabia knows the racism with which ordinary Saudis treats the brown and black-skinned masses that come for Hajj. Like hundreds of Bangladeshis every year, my parents endured these indignities during their recent pilgrimage. When he returned from Mecca, my father told me, "To them, we will always be miskeen (beggar). Doesn't matter what we do, or where we come from. They see our skin and don't need to see more." If this is how pilgrims are treated, imagine how much worse is the plight of the "Guest Worker." Yet, we Muslims remain silent on these abuses -- after all the Saudis are the keepers of Islam's holiest site, so they cannot possibly be racist!
How appropriate as well that HRW used the phrase "slavery" to describe conditions inside the desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia was in fact one of the last nation-states to abolish slavery. Along with Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962. Prior to that, the Islamic world's experience with slavery was extremely problematic. Muslims once led the rest of the world in science, culture and human emancipation. The positive examples are numerous and often-repeated. However, the advances brought about in the early days of the Islamic Caliphate ossified, with very little innovation or re-interpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries....
The Muslim world is sliding backwards into medievalism, and it is time for reformers to speak openly and bravely. There is a cancer that is eating away at our soul -- a disease marked by paranoia, double standards and virulent racism. While we are in full-throated cry against abuses in Iraq and Palestine, we stay completely silent when it is Muslims who are the abusers (of both non-Muslims and Muslims).
How else to explain our outpouring of sympathy for the Bosnian genocide, but our complete silence on the ongoing genocide in Sudan? In that country's civil war between the Arab Muslim North, and the black Christian and Animist South, 2 million people have been killed to date. In a BBC profile of the hundreds of black Africans who have been raped by pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia, one victim described the attackers: "They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic)."
Shame on the Muslim world for staying silent!
Posted by Robert at July 27, 2004 7:10 AM
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at July 27, 2004 7:34 AM
1962,eh! H'mn, Saudi Arabia and Yemen could hardly be called progressive.According to reports
from Iran , young women and girls,also boys, are forcibly abducted and taken to be 'sold' in Saudi Arabia. Families of Dissidents are a rich source of this vile trade.
at July 27, 2004 8:30 AM
Yes, our "Saudi Friends" at their finest. Backward ass, century impaired cut-throats.....
Posted by: DCWatson at July 27, 2004 8:35 AM
Where are the Lib groups in complaiant I hear nothing!
July 27, 2004
Thought of the Day! Word association Jimmy Carter [ N.Korea ], Bill Clinton [ Sandy Berger ] , Al Gore [ Sore Loser ]
UBL is YELLOW HAVE NOT SEEN HIM SEEN HIM SINCE TORA-BORA???
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory [FREEDOM] Amen
at July 27, 2004 9:46 AM
The yellow press of yesteryear used to send chills down readers' spines with tales of the White Slave Trade. But there really is such a trade, except that it is not limited to the "white slave trade" (i.e. prostitution). In the he capitals of the Western world, signs of Arab and other Muslim (remember the spendthrift brother of the Sultain of Brunei) clients for such services are everywhere. One group of Saudis required a group of girls New York to wear a cross or a Star of David while performing her ministrations; it made it all so much more exciting -- you know, the element of subduing and humiliating the "women" of the other, inferior, Infidel civilization was just too much to pass up.
A friend of mine used to see, with some frequency, whole carloads of such girls pull up at the Iraqi Mission to the U.N. on 79th street, not far from his apartment. Visitors to Marbella can watch the Bentleys and Rolls-Royces discharge their heavily-made up human cargo, delivered -- lipsticked and lingeried, to the waiting Arabs in their anchored yachts.
The sexual exploitation of girls, the rapes, the suicides, and all the abuse and rapes and suicides that go unreproted, and the girls simply disappear, and their own countries never protest because they want those remittances to keep coming from the Arabs of Saudi, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and elsewhere among the rich Arab countries, is surely one of the most important stories given the least attention, of any in modern times. Filipinos, Thais, Indians, Indonesians, and girls from everywhere --what has happened to them, what does happen to them, is almost never reported. Occasionally, perhaps once a year, a girl who has gone with a family to London, for example, manages to escape, is rescued by the British police, and has the full tale of her bestial treatment that is certainly akin to the worst slavery -- appears in the British press, and then is promptly archiviato, forgotten.
That slavery exists, even if it is not called "slavery" -- the British had suppressed the slave trade in the Persian Gulf (see J. B. Kelly, "Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795-1880), even if in 1964 the Saudis officially ended it, is clear from the testimony of people who have endured domestic service in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, even those who come from America and Europe, doctors and others, are treated with an astounding contempt, and some of them, including the Canadian doctor seized and tortured into making a false confession to murder, are just now beginning to write about it. How many others have been afraid to write, or how many have been bought off with the vast walking-around money that, for example, Prince Bandar routinely withdraws from the compliant Riggs Bank (and Washington is nothing compared to the small army of public relations men, fixers, dealers, agents, corrupt officials, and upper-class pimps, who attend upon the rich Arabs of London and the Home Counties).
Of course slavery exists, even if it is not called that -- for slavery is sanctioned by the Qur'an, and as a Saudi imam recently suggested, it is an institution that must always exist. Just imagine if an American political figure were to insist that because slavery is recognized in the American Constitution, it was wrong for Lincoln to end it, and that it accords with the immutable nature of things -- how long would he last? But those views are, of course, those of every Believer -- there is simply no other way for them to deal with what is written in the Qur'an, and slavery of course is so constantly reflected in the hadith, and in Muhammad's own views and life, that it cannot really be said to be un-Islamic -- it is part and parcel of Islam. Pressure only from the West has caused first the slave trade (now revived, with captured slaves coming from the Sudan) and and then slavery itself, to be formally -- but not really -- abolished. Indeed, just as Saudi imams have in recent months thundered about the rightness of slavery in Islam, Saudi newspapers have carried telling advertisements offering to swap "an Indian girl" for a "used American car."
A "clash of civilizations"? No. Islam against the West? No. The tenets of Islam, and Beleivers, insisting upon eternal war against all Infidels, in order to subjugate them so that the conditions for the spread of Islam throughout the world are achieved, and that includes the Sharia, and the Sharia includes slavery? Yes.
Posted by: Hugh at July 27, 2004 10:38 AM
Islam is far too primitive and stupid to win, unless we hand it to them.
Posted by: DCWatson at July 27, 2004 11:29 AM
When he returned from Mecca, my father told me, "To them, we will always be miskeen (beggar). Doesn't matter what we do, or where we come from. They see our skin and don't need to see more."
So why not leave Islam? Oh yeah... they'll kill you if you leave.
How appropriate as well that HRW used the phrase "slavery" to describe conditions inside the desert kingdom.
Check the quote again: "We found men and women in conditions resembling slavery,"
RESEMBLING slavery... you see, it couldn't just BE slavery. Because if it was, some Saudis might be offended.
Saudi Arabia was in fact one of the last nation-states to abolish slavery. Along with Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962.
Maybe they were interested in "States' Rights" like the revisionist Corn-federates of South Carolina, Georgia, and Allah-bama. LOL.
Muslims once led the rest of the world in science, culture and human emancipation.
Science and culture, yes. Right after they invaded and sacked India, which prior to that had great advances in science and culture, but didn't "lead the world" becaue THEY weren't trading slaves with Europe.
The positive examples are numerous and often-repeated.
... by Muslim apologists, historical revisionists, the phony hippies in the "Peace and Justice" movement, Ralph Nader tagalongs, and George W. Bush.
However, the advances brought about in the early days of the Islamic Caliphate ossified, with very little innovation or re-interpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries....
Sure, as soon as the expanding Jihad ran into a roadblock (the British in India) the whole sh*thouse went up in flames. Islam can only work while it is expanding, and without the trillions of petro dollars, would have already ceased to exist.
The Muslim world is sliding backwards into medievalism,
from which it came
and it is time for reformers to speak openly and bravely.
Ain't gonna happen. People can either speak openly or bravely, but not both. Otherwise they wind up like Salman Rushdie.
There is a cancer that is eating away at our soul -- a disease marked by paranoia, double standards and virulent racism.
That sounds exactly like Muhamed. Obviously he was crazy, crazier than David Koresh. Read up on David Koresh, and imagine he didn't have to answer to anyone. It should strike you as sounding familiar.
While we are in full-throated cry against abuses in Iraq and Palestine, we stay completely silent when it is Muslims who are the abusers (of both non-Muslims and Muslims).
How else to explain our outpouring of sympathy for the Bosnian genocide, but our complete silence on the ongoing genocide in Sudan?
What outpouring of sympathy? The whole world fought Clinton. The nazis and democrats here in America accused him of "wagging the dog," the dems stabbed him in the back again and again, and even Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! is still bragging about it. When Gen. Clark was in the running for Pres., some DN sh*theel had the gall to question him about stopping Milosevic and depleted Uranium.
In that country's civil war between the Arab Muslim North, and the black Christian and Animist South, 2 million people have been killed to date.
In this case "to date" means "since 1990." In the same time, including both of Arafat's terrorism "intifadas" less than 10,000 people have been killed on both sides in Israel/"palestine."
But just see the snarling Arab-leaguers and their whining pet hippies claim that "palestine" is the most important issue facing the world. Pure sputum.
In a BBC profile of the hundreds of black Africans who have been raped by pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia, one victim described the attackers: "They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic)."
Someone back me up here. Isn't the Arabic word for "black" the same as the Arabic word for "slave"? Kind of like our "collared" and "colored"?
Shame on the Muslim world for staying silent!
Shame indeed.
Posted by: kj at July 27, 2004 1:56 PM
I am not so sure that islam is not to win. All the cases that Hugh has related and our silence and I would say our collaboration points at a western political alliance with islam. Tge reason is obvious: our greed. We need their oil and they buy our silence. What a shame that the western world is supporting the slavery, torture, rapes, deaths of their citizen!
What a corrupt western world!
You americans critize europeans as a dhimmi region and I agree, but you also in a sense are living the same dhimmitude. How many USA girls have been kidnapped and are been raped nowadays in the arab world? Why are your politics tolerating it? Greed!
at July 27, 2004 1:59 PM
And there's Catharine, right on topic as always: "libs" this and "sore loserman" that. She'd make an excellent Muslim.
Hugh says:
....and Washington is nothing compared to the small army of public relations men, fixers, dealers, agents, corrupt officials, and upper-class pimps, who attend upon the rich Arabs
You are saying that there ARE some in Washington... may I presume that you mean men like James Baker and Henry Kissinger? More "libs" helping the Saudis, eh Cath?
Posted by: kj at July 27, 2004 2:01 PM
Hugh: The sexual exploitation of girls, the rapes, the suicides, and all the abuse and rapes and suicides that go unreproted, and the girls [that] simply disappear, and their own countries never protest because they want those remittances to keep coming from the Arabs of Saudi, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and elsewhere among the rich Arab countries, is surely one of the most important stories given the least attention, of any in modern times. Filipinos, Thais, Indians, Indonesians, and girls from everywhere --what has happened to them, what does happen to them, is almost never reported.
No, not "girls from everywhere".... mostly just the nations you named. Even though Pakistan has a high unemployment rate, their well-heeled elite hire maids and other domestics from the Philippines. And do you think that the Saudis would hire any of those "poor, oppressed" "palestinians" to come clean their gold-plated commodes and wash their bullet-proof limosines? Hell no. They want a status-symbol servant, and someone they can rape to boot (who as a women and a foreigner has no recourse to the law.) The Saudis lust over sexy, exotic women just like the rest of us.
Meanwhile the "Peace and Justice" crowd oinks on and on about the "Apartheid Wall" in the "Apartheid Nation" of Israel.
at July 27, 2004 2:12 PM
Word association time!
Ron Reagan (Beirut/Bitburg)
Bush Sr. (Gulf War Syndrome)
Ron Reagan, Jr. (liberal)
Patty Davis (Liberal)
Bush Jr. (DUI/AWOL/911)
Cheney (G.F.Y./911)
Catharine (Goebbels)
Posted by: kj at July 27, 2004 2:17 PM
Hey Cath... didn't W mumble something about the sex slave trade recently? It seems to me that he mentioned Florida... I wonder why he "forgot" to mention Saudi Arabia? LOL.
Posted by: kj at July 27, 2004 2:18 PM
How appropriate as well that HRW used the phrase "slavery" to describe conditions inside the desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia was in fact one of the last nation-states to abolish slavery.
Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia in nominal terms only. If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, ... Anyone who has spent any amount of time there like I have (5 years), knows that untold numbers of people, especially in domestic service, are de facto slaves, even to the point of being subject to rape and murder with impunity by their owners.
The Muslim world is sliding backwards into medievalism, and it is time for reformers to speak openly and bravely.
Sliding backwards? It never left! As for reformers, forget it. Islam cannot by definition, be reformed. Any reform would necessarily require the repudiation of words and deeds of Muhammad. Reform of all other religions however, has never required repudiation of the words and deeds of their founders. Islam can only be abrogated. If that is not possible, then the present generation of non-muslims must do as their non-muslim ancestors have always done before them, meet the scourge of jihad at its source with force and exterminate its proponents.
For 14 centuries the non-muslim world has always acted in defense. Since September 12, 1683 when the winged Polish Hussars descended upon the Saracens at the gates of Vienna and slaughtered them without quarter, the non-muslim world has achieved victory upon victory until at last, in 1924, the Caliphate itself was extinguished and tossed into the dustbin of failed ideologies.
Those who today would hope to revive it will just as surely perish with their demented vision. But if they believe that they can achieve their goals, then they need to accept the invitation of the President of the United States to heed the call to jihad and travel to Baghdad. There they can meet head-on the descendents of the Hussars who have slayed their misguided brethren since that fateful day in Vienna. If their faith is true, they will surely be immune to the Great Satan's M1A1s, AC-130 Spectres, Apache gunships, Bradley mounts, Marine snipers, and Air Force JDAMs and MOABs. So if you are a true jihadist, off to Baghdad with you, and there you can meet a United States Marine who will joyfully introduce you to your God.
at July 27, 2004 3:06 PM
KeithJoy
Please visit The Human Rights Party
The URL is http://forums.delphiforums.com/western1
Posted by: Voltaire at July 27, 2004 7:39 PM
Thanks, Professor, for the excellence of your pen.
Considerably off topic I hoped you could help me with understanding a Mohammedean/Arabic word as offered in the following: The history of da'wah (the only valid excuse for living in this country) has been very poor. The word in question is da'wah and this quote is from website I stumbled into at Squaw Valley Islamic Settlement, Dunlap, CA.
Thanks again, Frank
at July 27, 2004 11:52 PM
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