Job Discussion Forums

[It's Scary!]

It's serves ya right for just being able to conjure up such a disgusting image!

[johnslat]

Dear It's Scary,

So speaks (or rather, writes) the original conjurer.

Regards,
John

[zooey]

[gelynch52ph]

[Roadthatimusttravel]

Good thread. Interesting to read.

[gelynch52ph]

If you watch the movie you will see that not much has changed in the Magic Kingdom since 1980 when that documentary was released.

[battleshipb_b]

They used to have cinemas until Juhayman or whatever his name was started the salafist movement. He and his gang up in Buraydah started crticising the royals and forced the Min of Education to add more religion to the curriculum. The result was undereducated disillusioned youth who went off to Afghanistan and came back as terrorists to cause havoc in Riyad and Al Khobar. The salafists blame the west for the ills instead of understanding the fact that their restrictive codes and teachings deny young people their right to make educated and informed choices.

[gelynch52ph]

One of the primary reasons for the discontent in KSA is the tribal "culture" that is passed off to the people as religion. It is not Islam to have women cover their faces and in the southeast at least, often even wear gloves so that no man can actually see their skin. That is tribal custom now being used as a religious club by ultra-conservative nut cases who foment hatred of things they don't understand.

You can go to any shop or mall and see bright, flashy fashions that would look even outdated in a 17th century European court. Apparently women buy those hideous things to wear in the house since they have been wearing black bags all day in the searing heat while the men wear white dresses and don't even have the courtesy to remove their hats when indoors.

The place where I last worked was in the Asir region and was the home of most of the Saudi hijackers for the 9/11 attacks.

http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=12&sid=6

The guys in my school were quite pleasant for the most part but would sneak around and tell management they were offended by some innocuous post in Facebook or some such forum. In many cases these people acting in such an indignant manner were the very ones who would relate they had gone to Bahrain to drink, go to a cinema or to play with girls.

They would get all up in arms over childish things that one finds as common practices in most of the world, such as holding fingers behind the head of someone when taking pictures. While that may be a bit childish and something one would expect of Korean, Japanese or Filipino girls, it most certainly is not "haram" or whatever they say it is.

The religious "leaders" have misinterpreted much of what Mohammed said and now use their faulty "knowledge" to pass on things that are simply untrue as the teachings of that man. The reason you never see a dog as a pet in KSA is because they think dogs are "haram" because Mohammed ordered all the dogs killed in his village once. The historical fact is that there was an outbreak of rabies and Mohammed was apparently smart enough to know the local dogs were carriers and he ordered the local dog population killed off. He never intended that one time event to be passed down as religious doctrine but it has been anyway.

One important thing for teachers to remember is that although your students are full grown and may appear to be adults, they are actually children in grown up bodies and not to be trusted or treated as adults.
This is compounded when you have poorly educated people mixing metaphors if you will and mixing religion and tribal customs along with a repressed, ignorant society. For the most part, Saudis do not even know the very first word of their holy book, which is "read" and it does not mean "read only the Koran" as apparently most of them believe.