Wahhabi wisdom
What the Saudi king said.
This message declares that Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance, a message that calls for constructive dialogue among followers of religions, a message that promises to open a new page for humanity in which, God willing, concord will replace conflict.
And God not willing? What then?
More to the point, of course, the idea that Islam and especially Wahhabi Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance is a bad joke. Saudi Arabia tolerates almost nothing, especially if women want to do or drive or walk into or sit down in or refuse or accept or look at or listen to or read it.
Mankind is suffering today from a loss of values and conceptual confusion, and is passing through a critical phase which, in spite of all the scientific progress, is witnessing a proliferation of crime, an increase in terrorism, the disintegration of the family, subversion of the minds of the young by drug-abuse, exploitation of the poor by the strong, and odious racist tendencies. This is all a consequence of the spiritual void from which people suffer when they forget God…There is no solution for us other than to agree on a united approach, through dialogue among religions and civilizations.
Okay – one at a time. Don’t push. Notice anything missing? No mention of oppression of women. No mention of women, for that matter; it’s mankind that is suffering. (Don’t tell me he means women too; he doesn’t.) No mention of women, instead mention of ‘the disintegration of the family,’ which of course is code for women not being submissive enough. And then there’s the bit about exploitation of the poor by the strong, and odious racist tendencies. The Saudi king has a fucking nerve lecturing anyone about that, given the way Saudis treat domestic servants from other countries. Just ask Nour Miyati.
[The third time in Riyadh], the wife of the employer beat me, she did not work. Everyday she beat me. She beat my head, so I would cover it with my hands. She hit my foot with her sharp high heels. Everyday she did this until my foot was injured. When I told the husband about his wife’s behavior, he also beat me. After she beat my hands and they became swollen, [they made me] wash my hands with … one whole cup of bleach. I felt very hurt and had a lot of pain. I never got enough food. After one year, they still had not paid my salary.
If there is no solution for this loss of values because of forgetting God, other than dialogue among religions, then why is Saudi Arabia such a shitty cruel oppressive nightmare place? Saudi Arabia hasn’t forgotten God, S.A. never shuts up about the bastard, so why are we supposed to think that remembering God makes people nicer to the poor and to other races? Because the Wahhabi king says so, that’s all.
Makes you wonder why we have any dealings with the bigoted, mysogenystic bastards really. It is almost beyond belief that anyone in Saudi could give advice on how to treat people. Oh well as long as god tells them it is all right I guess they are going to heaven. With morons like that on the guest list I am rather glad I won’t be invited to that particular shindig
Keep on saying it O.B good job.
“Mankind is suffering today from a loss of values and conceptual confusion, and is passing through a critical phase which, in spite of all the scientific progress, is witnessing a proliferation of crime, an increase in terrorism…”
And with that last clause, another irony meter goes critical and ‘splodes. That’s why I don’t use the hand-held units anymore.
How can you take a religion seriously in which somebody called King Fat has something to say?
Actually rereading that last line of his quote the king does say something meaningful, quote ‘through dialogue among religions and civilizations’, does this mean he recognises that religions are not civilsed?
Ah, big lie No. 6 – the world is going to hell in a hand basket and only good can save us.
Crime is at a 25 year low in the UK. Church attendance is at a historic low. So possibly it’s not a global problem and the solution isn’t the one being proffered.
Loss of values? Actually, some values we didn’t lose – we spent a lot of time and effort dismantling the damn things.
“Makes you wonder why we have any dealings with the bigoted,mysogenystic bastards really. “
Betcha I know.
I take you cycle to work then Brian?
Richard –
I thought you’d been doing better recently.
Ho hum.
Oh, and I don’t own a car, but I’ll betcha I know why we kiss Saudi backsides, too…
Richard,
Many people, including Ophelia, have asked you repeatedly to take your finger off the sarcasm button. I have no power here; I’m just a reader. But I really, really don’t appreciate how snide you are, almost automatically, to other commenters. Your first impulse is to criticize other peoples’ points of view in a really sarcastic way. It’s particularly maddening because you so often miss the point of what a commenter said, and you insult them for something they never said.
It’s obvious that we regular BW readers relish debate – rigorous debate. A lot of us like to ridicule nonsense, too. But it’s just sporting to treat other commenters here as if they’re coming to the conversation in good faith. Why are you so keen to treat the good folks here like they don’t deserve a courteous benefit of the doubt?
And please – I’m begging you – proofread before you post. Dropped words, lack of punctuation, and no spaces between words make for very frustrating reading.
Josh I wasnt being sarcastic just realistic, we all know why a blind eye is turned to revolting despotic regemes like the Saudis, the trouble is that none of us are prepared to make the sacrifice that would be needed to cut of the money tap that feeds them. As for the spelling ect I am to a large extent word blind, I can read without problem but writing is a huge problem for me, I only spot mistakes long after I have writen( if I catch them at all)and for some reason I cant remember spellings at all espesialy when there are double letters in the word ditto for punctuation and spacing.
Actually Josh, that was one of Richard’s least annoying comments. Short and actually making and illustrating a defensible point! A first!
Gosh, I am defending Richard, now. What has the world come to?
Which reminds me: I also, like Francis, noted this tendency of the religious to always affirm that everything is going from bad to worse. It must be a very slow hand-basket, ’cause we have been traveling in it for thousands of years now.
“As for the spelling ect I am to a large extent word blind, I can read without problem but writing is a huge problem for me, I only spot mistakes long after I have writen( if I catch them at all)and for some reason I cant remember spellings at all espesialy when there are double letters in the word ditto for punctuation and spacing.”
You can use Word with the grammar and spell check turned on, which will catch the most glaring errors.
As for the tone, read what you’ve written out loud and hear how it sounds.
Arnaud, things are deteriorating quite prosperously indeed. As much as I like to stick it to the religious, the sour grapes of ‘things used to be better, a lot better’ are not theirs exclusively as, oddly enough, a lot of utopianists share that world view.
For instance, they promote feminism to the extent that the so liberated women conform to an ideal of flawless desire for art & intellectual improvement, as would mirror the Great Thinkers of old times.
I felt weak at the knees on reading Nour Miyati’s horrific abuse at the hands of her employers.
She is in my opinion very lucky not to have had her legs amputated with all the digging she got in her feet from the employers’ high stiletto heels.
I once encountered a woman in a hospital who had lost a leg due to gangrene having set in after she had being by a woman accidentally stamped upon.
Continuation: with her stiletto heel.
“Dear friends, we all believe in one God,”
Should he not have said:
“We all believe in our own (different)Gods”.
“who sent messengers for the good of humanity in this world and the hereafter”
Jesus is part of the triune God, come in the flesh (Emmanuel means God with us) to earth for this purpose through His crucifixion and resurrection. (No other deity can claim this.)
The Quran’s Surah 17 111 says:
“Praise be to Allah, who begets no son, and has no partner in (His) domain. . .”
Surah 4 171 says:
“O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor, say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah and His Word. . .”
“If the Almighty had so desired, all mankind would have shared the same religion”
Does he mean here Almighty Allah?
Throughout the Quran, the teachings are to destroy all others outside of Islam in the name of Allah.
These are fundamental distinctions!
The Muslim God and the Christian God are not the same.
“The Muslim God and the Christian God are not the same.”
Although both are equally imaginary!
That would be fun, if these ecumenical types started saying that. ‘Dearly beloved, we all believe in the same God: the one that’s entirely made up. Amen.’
‘Dearly beloved, butterfly, Blairite, ‘bright’ brethren we all believe in the same God: the new one that’s entirely made up by the Abrahamic faith foundation Amen.’
“Islam and Judaism worship a Supreme Deity which they conceive strictly monotheistically as One Being;
Christianity agrees, but the Christian God is at the same time (according to most of mainstream Christianity) an indivisible Trinity, a view not shared by the other religions” (Wiki)
The 99 Most Beautiful Names of God are…?
“Also present was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently launched his own inter-faith foundation”
In a BBC interview, Mr Blair said that the conference was of “tremendous significance” given that it was initiated by the Saudi king.
I just knew it – that his ‘Abrahamic lordship’ would be lurking somewhere around the Saudi scene. He must be inwardly feeling very bad about the fact that it was not “himself” that had made the first ‘faith’ move.
Just in case we forget:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7515844.stm
‘Arab foreign ministers say they have agreed a plan of action to defuse the crisis between Sudan and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
…
“The council decides solidarity with the Republic of Sudan in confronting schemes that undermine its sovereignty, unity and stability and their non-acceptance of the unbalanced, not objective position of the prosecutor general of the Internal Criminal Court,” the resolution said. ‘
Oh godalmighty – ‘solidarity.’ No low is low enough.
‘We have [to take] … a strong stance in solidarity with our brothers in Sudan’
The brothers in power, that is, not the brothers and sisters being raped and slaughtered and forced into refugee camps. No solidarity with them. Solidarity with the powerful, united against the powerless – way to go Arab League! A new milestone in multiculturalism!