Working Women Should Be Molested: Saudi Writer

[cashinmattress]

link

Writer campaigning against moves to bring women into mixed-gender work environments

Working women should be molested: Saudi writer

Writer campaigning against moves to bring women into mixed-gender work environments

Abu Dhabi: A Saudi writer has urged his Twitter followers to sexually molest women hired to work as cashiers in big grocery stores, the latest backlash from conservatives who want to roll back limited social and economic reforms launched in Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood, who writes self-help books including one called The Joy of Talking, has stirred fierce debate this week via the internet microblogging service with the use of the hashtag harass_female_cashiers, to press for Saudi women to be forced to stay at home to protect their chastity.

His campaign against official moves to encourage women to work in mixed gender environments has led some Twitter users to denounce him. Others however applauded him as a fighter against government efforts to westernise and corrupt the country.

More than half a million Saudi Arabian nationals, including unprecedented if still modest numbers of women, have surged into the country’s private sector since late 2011 under a government-driven programme aimed at turning the Gulf giant’s sclerotic non-oil economy into a regional powerhouse.

Khalid Ebrahim Al Saqabi, a conservative cleric, endorsed Al Dawood’s calls and said a law proposed by the government against sexual harassment in newly mixed workplaces was “only meant to encourage consensual debauchery”.

He added: “Why is the labour minister concerned with finding jobs for women instead of men?”

Al Dawood, who has more than 97,000 followers on Twitter, justified his call to harass female workers by using an obscure story from the early days of Islam about a famous warrior, Al Zubair, who did not want his wife to leave home to pray in the mosque. Al Dawood claimed that Al Zubair hid in the dark one night and molested his wife in the street. The wife rushed home and decided against ever going out of her house again, saying that the “there is no safer place than home and the world out there is corrupt”.

Scores of Al Dawood’s followers supported his campaign and condemned the planned anti-harassment law, which comes as employers respond to government financial incentives to hire more Saudi workers, and in particular more women. One user wrote: “It is a man-made law and it can’t be accepted in a kingdom ruled by God’s law. They had better ban mingling of the sexes, not protect it.”

But Al Dawood’s hashtag drew condemnation from others, who said the writer was a disgrace to Islam. One, Waleed Al Khawaji, asked: “What kind of person urges the youth to commit debauchery?”

Another urged Al Dawood to follow his own example and harass his own wife and sisters.

That some quality Islam for you, right there. Tony Blair, George Bush, and the current western leadership pander to these medieval scumbags....

Wonder what's going to happen in oil rich Saudi, as their king is on a slab now.

Next on the Arab spring list of heads to lop off perhaps?

[ccc]

Sounds like he worked for the Bbc in the 60's.

[The Knimbies who say No]

It would be good if petrol pumps denoted the source of the fuel so that consumers could avoid funding these clowns if they so wished.

[Executive Sadman]

Nope. No. These people dont exist. The left told me so. All part of the EDLs campaign of misinformation. Move along, distraction and salvation can be found in the property pages of your local paper.

[MrPin]

He is the reincarnation of Jimmy Saville?

[chronyx]

'See how she is honoured'

I don't know why but watching this gave my flashbacks to Chatterbox FM on GTA3 where a Latino guy explains his 'miraculous' marriage recovery service (He is a pimp)

[newbonic]

link

That some quality Islam for you, right there. Tony Blair, George Bush, and the current western leadership pander to these medieval scumbags....

Wonder what's going to happen in oil rich Saudi, as their king is on a slab now.

Next on the Arab spring list of heads to lop off perhaps?

The house of saud have probably got enough revenue to keep the bribes rolling that keep their underemployed youth quiet. Free stuff and dirt cheap all terrain vehicles for the young saudis etc. With enough left over to keep the religious fanatics quiet.

[happy_renting]

Whilst Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile, I don't think one can sensibly claim all (or even, most) foillowers of Islam share his views.

Vilifying all moslems as extremists is just as unreasonable as pretending they are all moderate. Same goes for any religion.

[Mark Uttley]

Whilst Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile, I don't think one can sensibly claim all (or even, most) foillowers of Islam share his views.

Vilifying all moslems as extremists is just as unreasonable as pretending they are all moderate. Same goes for any religion.

No rioting on the streets of Benghazi though.

[frozen_out]

Whilst Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile, I don't think one can sensibly claim all (or even, most) foillowers of Islam share his views.

Vilifying all moslems as extremists is just as unreasonable as pretending they are all moderate. Same goes for any religion.

This is pretty mainstream stuff in Saudi. Pretending that it's not is like denyimg the Earth is round.

[cashinmattress]

Whilst Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile, I don't think one can sensibly claim all (or even, most) foillowers of Islam share his views.

Vilifying all moslems as extremists is just as unreasonable as pretending they are all moderate. Same goes for any religion.

Hmm.

From the Qur'an; it gives men dominance over women, and sees woman as inferior sex objects. Some countries carry this mantra more literally than others.

That being said, this is one of the main stream religions that can never integrate with the mainly Christian western geopolitical hemisphere due to do such polar ideological differences.

Particularly the bit about fighting all non-Muslims...

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah..."

[Guest eight]

Whilst Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile, I don't think one can sensibly claim all (or even, most) foillowers of Islam share his views.

Vilifying all moslems as extremists is just as unreasonable as pretending they are all moderate. Same goes for any religion.

I'll add you to my list of people keen to let it be known they is down with the muslims.

What's with people, frightened that "they" are taking notes, or something?

[Kurt Barlow]

I'll add you to my list of people keen to let it be known they is down with the muslims.

What's with people, frightened that "they" are taking notes, or something?

I worked in Saudi for 18 months and the Saudis I worked with (admitedly reasonably well educated ones by Saudi standards) found these conservative clerics a national embrassment. Its just difficult to speak out against them due to the risk of denouncement. That said there is plenty of criticism of them in the english speaking arab press about daft fatwas.

On the same subject of women in the workplace, back in 2010 a minor Saudi Cleric issued a fatwa to help facilitate men and women working together. His solution was that a mother-son relationship needs to be developed between work colleagues and therefore the women should breastfeed the men in this scenario

After that the PTB put a ban on minor clerics issuing fatwas.

[bendy]

On the one hand you have to commend him not wanting the Western corruption that is jobs for women, half pay for the man, everyone in debt to the politico mafia.

I kind of get lost at someone finding the world corrupt though because they were molested by their (corrupt) husband who hid in the dark and then using this as an example as to why a nation would need to stop the oncoming Western corruption!

[AvoidDebt]

On the same subject of women in the workplace, back in 2010 a minor Saudi Cleric issued a fatwa to help facilitate men and women working together. His solution was that a mother-son relationship needs to be developed between work colleagues and therefore the women should breastfeed the men in this scenario

After that the PTB put a ban on minor clerics issuing fatwas.

The reasoning here was that according to shariah a woman dosent need to be in purdah in front of a male she has breast fed. Theres a strong tradition of being breast fed by someone else apart from your mother in Arab culture albeit in infancy and not adulthood. Popular here also up until around a century ago, google 'wet nurse'.

[happy_renting]

I'll add you to my list of people keen to let it be known they is down with the muslims.

What's with people, frightened that "they" are taking notes, or something?

Oh dear, you keep a 'list'. in your head, at least, I suppose.

I am not frightened, nor am I 'down' with any religion.

For the record, i am an agnostic, and I regard all organised religion as absurd.

That said, i defend anyone's right to hold their own religious beliefs, as long as they do not harm others by doing so.

i am more concerned that the UK, a supposedly democratic, secular society, is in fact ruled as an undemocratic theocracy that interferes with and subverts the freedoms of the people in the UK.

I have encountered reasonable, and psychotically unreasonable, people from many religions, including islam and Christianity, both of which are religions that have been responsible for atrocities and inhumanity across the ages. Passeges of hate and intolerance can be found in, say, the Holy Bible too.

Much of that inhumanity arises from particular interpretations of ambiguous religious texts, often for ulterior motives, slavishly followed by people who prefer to be dictated to rather than think for themselves.

I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Although I worship no deity, I recognise that many religions do embody important philosophical principles, that stand on their own with or without the existence of any God.

I have worked for, and with, muslims. I have recruited muslims to work for me. As with any religion, as long as it is kept out of the workplace, I do not find it to be a problem. In my experience they wre decent, likeable people. It is the religious fundamentalists, of all faiths, that are the problem.

I do not want to live in any society governed by religious hatred. That also extends to not wanting UK society to be run by shallow, unthinking, hatefilled idiots who think that the measure of any person is summed up by his dress, nationality, or faith without understanding them more deeply..

Tell me what 'list' you want to put me on now.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Oh dear, you keep a 'list'. in your head, at least, I suppose.

I am not frightened, nor am I 'down' with any religion.

For the record, i am an agnostic, and I regard all organised religion as absurd.

That said, i defend anyone's right to hold their own religious beliefs, as long as they do not harm others by doing so.

i am more concerned that the UK, a supposedly democratic, secular society, is in fact ruled as an undemocratic theocracy that interferes with and subverts the freedoms of the people in the UK.

I have encountered reasonable, and psychotically unreasonable, people from many religions, including islam and Christianity, both of which are religions that have been responsible for atrocities and inhumanity across the ages. Passeges of hate and intolerance can be found in, say, the Holy Bible too.

Much of that inhumanity arises from particular interpretations of ambiguous religious texts, often for ulterior motives, slavishly followed by people who prefer to be dictated to rather than think for themselves.

I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Although I worship no deity, I recognise that many religions do embody important philosophical principles, that stand on their own with or without the existence of any God.

I have worked for, and with, muslims. I have recruited muslims to work for me. As with any religion, as long as it is kept out of the workplace, I do not find it to be a problem. In my experience they wre decent, likeable people. It is the religious fundamentalists, of all faiths, that are the problem.

I do not want to live in any society governed by religious hatred. That also extends to not wanting UK society to be run by shallow, unthinking, hatefilled idiots who think that the measure of any person is summed up by his dress, nationality, or faith without understanding them more deeply..

Tell me what 'list' you want to put me on now.

Nicely put. I'd volunteer to be put on whatever list that might be also.

I'd also add that absence of faith in a deity is not the guarantee of psychosis-free rationality that it is sometimes packaged as.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Alternatively

You've got to love those false choices

[happy_renting]

I'd also add that absence of faith in a deity is not the guarantee of psychosis-free rationality that it is sometimes packaged as.

I agree, and am sometimes wary of people who 'know' there is no God.

For clarity, when i say I am agnostic, I literally mean that I do not know if there is a God or not, see no reason to believe that there is, and the truth in that respect is probably unknowable.

Even if there is a God, or if I decide I should hedge my bets anyway and join a religion 'just in case' there is an afterlife, I would have to present myself at some church/ mosque/ temple every seventh rotation of this lump of rock we call earth (incidentally, counting arbitrarily from some imaginary first day lost in the mists of time) in my best whistle & flute to sing, dance, chant or whatever.

And If I did then make it to the Pearly Gates, sod's law says that I would be refused entry because I chose to support the wrong Son of Abraham, and should have been performing the bizarre rituals on a Saturday instead of a Sunday. FML.

[Mark Uttley]

That said, i defend anyone's right to hold their own religious beliefs, as long as they do not harm others by doing so.

Me too, but this guy is calling or men to physically molest women at work. It's a cop out to say that most muslims don't agree with him. Where are they? Imagine if an Anglican cleric had said this. He'd be out of his job by morning.

[happy_renting]

Me too, but this guy is calling or men to physically molest women at work. It's a cop out to say that most muslims don't agree with him. Where are they? Imagine if an Anglican cleric had said this. He'd be out of his job by morning.

I said in my first sentence in my first post on this thread that "Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood is clearly vile."

Some posters on HPC (who I suspect are EDL members, EDL shills, or similar), clearly want action or retaliation against all muslims for various flaws they percieve in Islam. Pointing out that Al Dawood does not represent most muslims is not a cop-out, it is commmon sense and a counter thick-headed hatred.

If you read the article in the OP, you will. see that some muslims in Saudi Arabia do oppose what Al Dawood says, and application of a little deductive logic would show that the muslim women he proposes assaulting would necessarily be amongst his opponents.

[Mark Uttley]

If you read the article in the OP, you will. see that some muslims in Saudi Arabia do oppose what Al Dawood says

It says

has led some Twitter users to denounce him.

then

But Al Dawood’s hashtag drew condemnation from others, who said the writer was a disgrace to Islam. One, Waleed Al Khawaji, asked: “What kind of person urges the youth to commit debauchery?”

Not exactly wholesale condemnation, is it? So, in answer to Mr Al Khawaji's question.......a senior muslim cleric, apparently.

[cashinmattress]

How many gays and lesbians are welcome into the Arab or Persian Islamic community?

Yes, they (mullah's) are full of hypocrits, but you sure as hell don't raise your homosexual head above the parapit anywhere in the Middle east unless you are a rockstar, prince, or bazillionaire.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

It says

then

Not exactly wholesale condemnation, is it? So, in answer to Mr Al Khawaji's question.......a senior muslim cleric, apparently.

It'd be easy enough to start pumping OT full of threads about ultra-barking Zionist settlers saying unpleasant things about Palestinians (and their own women folk come to think of it), fruit loops like the Westboro Baptist Church and their stance on homosexuality, or the more radical end of the secular environmental movement talking (often in a round about way) about how humanity needs to be culled.

But it wouldn't prove very much, except the already well-established human capacity to be a d1ck. The questions I ask when I'm being bombarded with what is, essentially, a series of anecdotals is why is this being done and are those anecdotals genuinely representative of the general case the people doing the bombarding are trying to make?

I also can't help thinking that not much progress is likely to be made in the direction people who are opposed to Islam would like to see if our governments persist in arming extremists and obliterating any secular governments that emerge in the Middle East and North Africa.

[Turned Out Nice Again]

MEMRI, hmmm... where have i heard of them before?

http://rense.com/general77/norm.htm