Saudi Arabia travel guide
wikitravel.org
wikitravel.org
* "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"
* "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be denied visas"
* "Drug possession is punishable by death"
* "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."
* "most visitors will be primarily concerned with the code of morality, involving things like women not covering up properly, and not accompanied by a male guardian, not observing prayer or (during Ramadan) fasting times, etc. These rules are enforced by the infamous muttaween - the zealous volunteers of the religious police known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. ... Reports of human rights abuses and even deaths in muttaween custody are still common"
* "against the law to be accompanied anywhere by a man who is not your registered male guardian"
* "A woman may not travel alone. They may not stay alone in hotels, hotels will require the presence of a male guardian"
* "Do NOT take pictures of any government-related building (ministries, airports, military facilities etc) or any building that could possibly be one, or you risk being hauled off to jail for espionage, or accused of terrorist plotting"
* "Playing music in public is also prohibited"
* "Converting or attempting to convert Muslims from Islam to other religions is a felony that can be punished with up to death"
* "Any criticism of the King, the royal family or Saudi Arabia's government in general is not tolerated and risks indefinite imprisonment or execution"
Wow. Sounds fucking awful there.
How the UN could possibly name this place the head of the Human Rights Council is unfathomable. They have lost any moral authority they had left through that action.
It is still a very bad idea, of course, but it is important to be correct.
The same is true in the US by law, but it isn't used in practice.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/04/ec...
It really seems like you can be executed for literally anything, and if the government doesn't want to get you, some vigilante could do it with impunity.
"In addition, the power of the mutawwa'in is limited by the Koran, which frowns upon those who intrude on the privacy of others in order to catch them in sinful acts. The mandate of the Committee on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is specifically to regulate behavior in the public realm. What occurs behind closed doors is between a believer and God."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-king...
So foreign workers need their employers consent to allow them to to go home. Easy recipe for slavery.
Not unusual for employers to owe labor several months worth of salary, and then deny knowing them, so workers get deported. A process known as tarheel in Arabic. When a worker decides to quit his or her job, out of desperation, the employer reports them and their visa status is flagged as huroob, it literally means "escapee", or runaway.
> * "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"
Saudi Arabia has managed to be secure for certain conservative reasons. Unaccompanied women create too many opportunities for insecurity and the country's security forces cannot handle this.
> * "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be denied visas"
Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.
> "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."
So was America for a number of years. So was China. And they will continue to be the same way for a very long time. America and China have different reasons for not being this way, and it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or social freedom.
Think of a country's laws as a reaction to the nature of the people. In the western world, there are a different set of laws for crowd control. In Saudi Arabia where illiteracy is high and schooling is decentralized, crowd control takes on a different soul. Consider Iraq and Egypt and Syria, countries that have gone through their own transformations. Dictatorship seems to have returned or is being demanded for the purpose of safety and stability.
I find this hard to believe. Do you happen to have a source?
Israel does indeed frequently deny entry based on bigoted reasons[0][1][2], but I've never heard of people being denied because of Muslim country passport stamps.
[0] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/191899.htm
[1] https://electronicintifada.net/content/us-states-should-act-...
BS. It's misogynistic crap.
> Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.
Fine, don't really have a problem with that.
> So was America for a number of years.
It was and is wrong. America has a long way to go. They are still well ahead of Saudi Arabia.
> it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or social freedom.
It exactly does.
Sorry, not going to treat Saudi Arabia as anything other than a backwards theocracy that hates women and violates human rights whenever. Quite frankly, it disgusts me that they are an "ally".
I suppose someone wanted to make the oft-stated point of how archaic and backwards Saudi Arabia appears from our cultural perspective. Perhaps capitalizing on this latest bout of online xenophobia towards "Islamic-looking" minorities.
Either way, a waste of space on the Hacker News homepage.
Is there a simple explanation for why the Christian West moved to relative secularism a couple centuries ago while Saudi Arabia has remained so medieval, despite oil-powered industrialisation?
Why won't they?
At least in many parts of the Middle East, family and religious values are held in high esteem (they're part of the religion and culture).
And for non-citizens, it's their choice.
You should better strive to fix USA, UK and Japan, because they actually serve as beacons for the rest of the world.
That's a good question, to which I don't know the answer, but I would guess that it is @ least partially due to do w/ an authoritarian monarchy that came to power by aligning itself w/ religious fundamentalism:
> The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began in Nejd in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. This alliance formed in the 18th century provided the ideological impetus to Saudi expansion and remains the basis of Saudi Arabian dynastic rule today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia#Before_the_founda...
Not a good idea. The Middle East has had a succession of "enlightened" despots who attempted to rid their countries of Islam. Islam is not just a faith for these people, it's a way of life, so well entrenched in the social fabric that all these rulers managed to do was to inflict even worse human rights violations and galvanize the population against the demon West.
You have to let them find their own way. It may take them a few hundred years, but eventually their society will slowly pry open. The external threats to their way of life will have to cease, as long as they feel like they're under attack by the West, they'll just cocoon off and just not allow any influences in.
Probably the best thing that could happen in this regard is a permanent collapse in oil prices, though that would likely cause a lot of people to starve. Things would get a lot worse for them before they get better. I read an article recently about how the Saud family is trying their hardest to prepare for a post-oil world.
> Is there a simple explanation for why the Christian West moved to relative secularism a couple centuries ago while Saudi Arabia has remained so medieval, despite oil-powered industrialisation?
Because colonialism. Europe brought industry to the rest of the world at the point of a gun. An excellent book to read on this topic is Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong.
http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-Violence...
[1] https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country/Was-Mustafa-Kemal-Atatu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
the Middle East is the way it is because we (NATO et al) dicked about repeatedly.
Iran is like it is, because we overthrew a democratically elected government to install the Shah. (operation AJAX)
Iraq is bollocksed because we gave arms to them to fight Iran in a war that turned religious.
Saudi Arabia is the way it is because there is an alliance between the US promising full military protection in return for oil.
Libia is fucked because we helped overthrow a dictator, pumped in arms and then left a power vacuum.
Syria is in shit because its a proxy war with russia, iran, SA, Qatar and "the west". We've all been pumping arms into there and wonder why its turned into a shitshow (yes, ISIS are driving around in armoured cars that we, the UK bought for them, they were the rebels yearning for democracy)
There are more, but its too depressing to right.
The main take away is that our interventionism is nothing to do with freedom, religious or otherwise. its to do with influence. We want a government that we can control.
The ruling class is held afloat by oil. The people that would otherwise be itching for "freedom" are either held in check by state oppression or the direct proceeds of oil. All the machinery of oppression, and the silly exporting of de-stability (the arms to ISIS) are a direct result of both oil, and the alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, promising that the US won't invade, and SA will continue to pump oil.
The Saudis ruling are literally the family that give everyone else a bad name. (although Qatar and Kuwait are very close)
Turkey is a democracy and is liberal, However they are not Christian, so they have different values. They also have three active wars on 40% of its borders.
The solution is stopping giving them money, arms and other interventions.
Ah. People (particularly NY Times readers) see the words "muslim" and "extermist" and they automatically assume it must be Saudi funded, even if the conclusion makes no sense in the given context.
ISIS is the biggest challenge to the Saudi's rule of the peninsula in years. If anyone is going to support them it would be anti-saudi religious extremists looking to overthrow them. There are many groups operating in Syria which could be clients of the Saudis. ISIS is not one of them. It makes no sense for them to do so.
edit: rephrasing
Saudi Arabia spent a long time getting the US to attack syria. Also Al-quaeda is/was a bigger threat, because it came from within, it started out as a jolly adventure for a low ranking Saudi Noble.
ISIS only works in a vacuum, Plus if we are going to be brutally honest, on the scale of 0 - 10 (full ISIS) Suadi Arabia is about a 6-6.9
The main difference is that ISIS show a flair for video editing of their medieval punishments. Something the Saudi state does behind closed doors.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cia-overseeing-su...
They, like us were arming the rebels. ISIS "formally" split from the Free Syrian Army in late 2013:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/p...
When they gave up on getting us to attack them they tried a different tact:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-regime-working-to-lure-th...
In the same way that Bin Laden is a direct consequence of our actions in 80s Afghanistan. ISIS is a direct consequence of our half-arsed dicking about in Syria.
That is not ISIS but Al Nusra - ISIS was not in Syria at the time (at least not openly in such large numbers). Both organisations are quite different in composition, tactics and ambition (ISIS in Syria depends a lot on foreign fighters whereas Al Nusra is more grassroots)
>>In the same way that Bin Laden is a direct consequence of our actions in 80s Afghanistan. ISIS is a direct consequence of our half-arsed dicking about in Syria.
Basically my original point. ISIS is an UNINTENDED consequence of western dicking in Iraq and mostly middle-eastern (with strong western support) dicking in Syria. (When will they learn?) I don't think any country actually intentionally supported them.
>ISIS only works in a vacuum, Plus if we are going to be brutally honest, on the scale of 0 - 10 (full ISIS) Suadi Arabia is about a 6-6.9
For the longest time i thought they were a bunch of religious nutjobs too. But lot of their actions didn't make much sense from that perspective (For example from 2013 -2015 why were they more focussed on attacking other anti-assad rebels than assad himself?). After reading this, it started making more sense:-
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file...
The above article has some holes as well, but it still seems to be the theory that makes the most sense.
The whole religious nutjob thing was largely a show put on for the benefit of their followers and enemies. The core of the organisation seems to be made up of Baathists, and their tactics and modus operandi reflect that background. Of course noone would actually support a Baathist resurgence so they adopted a religious cloak to hide their true nature.
Electric cars and alternative fuels?
Time, mostly. Rolling in with tanks in the hope that locals will take up freedom and Coca-Cola hasn't met with resounding success in the area.
But there are some tentative moves by the ruling despots to grant a little bit more autonomy to women. And I expect that many in the younger urban generation start chafing under the current system. Eventually, the liberals may manage to get some influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sabilla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikhwan_Revolt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power
This period of history is interesting in light of the rise of groups like ISIS and makes me question that the same technique is not being attempted again.
Does not make sense to encourage this kind of behaviour.