Notes on Saudi Arabia
mattlakeman.org
mattlakeman.org
First there are 5 prayers a day not 6.
Also the official doctrine of SA’s head imams is not that the earth is flat and doesn't rotate.
On the earth is flat this has been widely mis-reported and debunked, see (https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/2hc96u/shaykh_abd_al...)
On the earth not rotating he links to a random cleric not an official position. This is no different from citing any of the random nutty clerics in the US who every once in a while make absurd scientific claims (including Ben Carson) and then projecting it as an official position of the entire evangelical movement.
An easier way to debunk the above is to note that newtonian mechanic and astronomy are taught in the Saudi curriculum in a way that is virtually identical to any western curriculum.
I think it is true that Wahhabism is one of the least progressive and anti-science mainstream modern islamic movements, but not to the extent that the author presents.
A better illustration of Wahhabism's anti-science stance is its semi-hostile position on darwinism, but this is true to many mainstream movements in abrahamic religions (including christian and jewish movements).
It is also amusing to note that Wahhabism has a more progressive stance on abortion than most mainstream American christians.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia
It's almost as if those Americans were far more interested in cheaply staking out their "I'm ideologically superior" status, in their own little social contexts, than they were in the lives and futures of hundreds of millions of people in far-away places, who the Americans know ~nothing about...
Care to enlighten them here? Or must a person have lived somewhere before being critical of anything about the place or its laws?
really?
This one thing might compensate all others.
How long are we going to pretend that native citizens are the only people that count in countries where half the population is foreign slave-labor?
So, no.
Personally I would never take the risk of taking employment in an autocratic country that requires an exit visa. They could pay me annual seven figures, but it makes no difference because they'd be able to extract whatever they want from me as a condition of departure. Imagine being held in a cell at the Riyadh airport until you wire them all the money in your foreign bank accounts. Nothing at all stops them from doing that.
If you don't believe this could happen to Western expats, read this story about KPMG employees in Saudi Arabia:
https://www.ft.com/content/45f2eda8-9219-4aa5-9434-277d74ea1...
'Several former employees suspected they were under some form of surveillance by KPMG Saudi Arabia while working in the kingdom. One says he was followed by a car whenever he left his compound while exit negotiations were ongoing. He says he had safety concerns “every day” during this period “and any time I stepped out of the security of the compound”.
'Another former employee only agreed to speak to the FT from a hotel landline while travelling in Europe in case their mobile phone was being monitored. “As you know we are being watched in Saudi,” the person said.
'A third former employee says that when he finally left Saudi Arabia for good, he deliberately took a circuitous route via Bahrain so as to avoid being tracked or blocked from leaving by the firm or its government contacts. He compared the behaviour of KPMG Saudi Arabia’s leadership and the fear it instils in employees to the John Grisham novel The Firm, a thriller in which a lawyer becomes entangled in a corporate plot. “I was in fear for my own safety,” he says. “I would not have taken my young family to the Middle East had I known. [That fear] just should not exist today.”
So it seems a bit better than slavery, more like wage slavery many immigrants to North America faced during the 19th century. Of course the migrants workers in Saudi Arabia and gulf states are certainly aware that they will never will be integrated into the local society unlike the European immigrants.
For example one of those rules is a full year of employment, but non-skilled workers rarely stay that long to begin with.
Perfect example of doing something that counts as "progress" while not actually changing anything.
Just look at China now and 30-40 years ago. Especially when you compare it to countries which didn't become manufacturing hubs like India and some other others in the region (and especially Africa).
I can’t take any opinion about Western saviours seriously.
Western currencies are over valued and propped up by colonial structures and theft.
Western societies exist off the back of outsourced labor - nearly equivalent to slavery, but sure let’s act like it’s /way/ better, since they’re not “owned” anymore.
conflating this two is absurd (my current freelancing contract is also outsourced labor, allowing me to earn about 5 times average wage or 15 times minimum wage and is not slavery in any way)
some of outsourced labor is bad, but not because it is outsourced labor
Please don’t be disingenuous - I’m not talking about IT desk jobs and you know that.
Also, you can have IT desk jobs with horrific condition for workers.
> You think Westerners don't live off the labours of Asians and Africans on dirt poor wages?
That is far less bad than outright slavery.
> Where do you think your Nike shoes and Apple iPhones and Starbucks coffee are produced?
I do not own or owned or used any of this products and in general try to avoid such products.
> Ever heard of colonialism?
Yeah, my country was victim of it. (hilariously, there were attempt to engage in it - interrupted by getting colonised)
> All civilizations from Ancient Egypt to Western Europe were built on slave labour.
Not all of them (OK, serfdom and feudalism was really really bad but has not reached full-blown slavery).
The internet is a big place and most people lurking around aren't "westerners". Most people aren't arabs nor Westeners. We are also interested in Saudia Arabia and also find their extreme gender segregation shocking. I also see this when they talk about, say, democracy in China. "We Westeners have democracy so that's why we oppose China".
Am I being too sensitive? Maybe, but it makes me feel excluded and makes me think that a bit percentage of Westeners think it's them vs the topic at hand (whether it be Saudi Arabia, China, etc).
Maybe more importantly, I take issue with the identification of concepts we like (democracy, human rights, etc) with being Western.
"Rundell’s take is that the Saudi state is, always has been, and always will be anti-terrorist because the ultimate goals of the monarchy are stability, stability, and stability" yet another naivitè, or rather an inability to think outside the box.
* Not
Unfortunately, humans are far too obsessed with talking about gods & religions to pay much attention to the things that really matter.
Irony of history is that young Stalin enrolled in the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis and apparently was very good at that, writing poetry and everything. But obviously being power hungry, he couldn't stay there.
[Quip: But if you compare the social behaviors of the loudest self-professed atheists and the comparable theists...]
I was thinking that Marxism-Leninism was the Official Ideology of the U.S.S.R. under Stalin. Atheism was merely one of M-Lism's (many) points of doctrine - probably buried a fair number of slides down in the PowerPoint deck.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The complete quote shows that Marx sees religion as playing an ambiguous role. For him religion is often used to preach resignation "it doesn't matter what you suffer in this world, the next one is good". But sometimes it's at the center of the rebellion of the "oppressed creature". Think the black civil right movement in the US or the Liberation Theology in South America. So it's not blanket hostility.
But el Glaoui was much more astute than MBS. MBS' grandfather was known for his magnanimity as well as being astute.
Most non-Saudis have a job at a company. Most of my friends' fathers had large businesses of various types. And almost all the people who have jobs have fair wages.
I felt so safe living there, going out to the beach with my family at 2 am is no worry at all.
Most of the people in Saudi Arabia are very friendly.
I know I'll get downvoted, but as a Muslim, this is the best place to live. Muslims want the Sharia law and all the other Islamic stuffs including hijab, prayers and what not.
I don't think you grew up in reality that the majority of population face. Your experience is vastly different from the common folk.
> Muslims want the Sharia law and all the other Islamic stuffs including hijab
It's a shame you don't respect women's choices about that (ask Iranians living under Islamic regime) and generally support oppressive system but I guess this is in everyone's conscience.
Have you grown up in the reality that the majority of the population faces?
If not, it's a bit presumptuous to be telling someone who has grown up there that you know better than them what their country is like.
If someone has decent evidence of situation then it is not.
I have never lived in USSR but I have enough knowledge to dismiss some misleading claims, even if they are coming from people who lived there.
Afghanistan also has all the Islamic stuff. Is it a good place for a Muslim to live?
If not, what's the difference? Is it just the oil money that allows a class of people to live in luxury while exerting Sharia law on the others?
Statisticaly no, the US is only 63% Christian, while Zambia is over 95%. Further I would argue that the actual american figure is lower due to Christianity's persistent cultural foothold in the country. If you count the number of people going to church weekly that figure is going to be much lower.
US is and always was a secular state.
In the same 250 years France had swung between extremes of religious monarchy and ultra-republicanism, back and forth. England’s monarch is also the head of its national church. Even progressive countries like Sweden and Finland have national churches with taxation rights enshrined in law and automatically collected by the state tax authorities.
These are just some examples of how many European countries retain deep state-level power to the church while the society has shifted towards secularism.
America invokes the name of God on their money and their schoolchildren evoke "one nation under God" in their pledge of allegience. State governments constantly fight to be able to teach creationism and intelligent design in schools. Christianity is the reason you can't buy alcohol on Sundays in many places in the US. Christianity is the reason American media censors sex more so than violence. One could go on nearly ad infinitum.
Sure, there's no (officially sanctioned) national religion (It's Evangelical Christianity though) and churches don't collect taxes (rather, they don't pay taxes) but despite the secular (really, Deist) foundations of the Constitution, one would have to be blind not to see the degree to which the US is still very deeply influenced and controlled by Christianity.
What makes the Saudi Arabia a good place to live (for some) is not the extremely theocratic laws. Muslim quality of life isn't improved by beheadings and hijabs, as evidenced by Afghanistan.
Very insightful, surprised to hear people like it there, I'm glad.
I think the problem with Sharia law and such is when people come from say Saudi Arabia or similar middle eastern countries and expect to bring their backwards ass laws with them to EU countries.
TLDR: Bigotry is a two way street. Either appreciate the differences or STFU. You don’t have monopoly on deciding whose laws are backward.
Treating people as shit, or executing them is objectively bad. Merely for their sexual identity/preferences is objectively even worse. You don't have to be from a specific place to be able to appreciate that.
I agree that treating people like shit or executing them is bad and most people would agree with you, but it is not objectively bad, since "bad" in the way you use it here is a subjective value judgement, by definition the polar opposite of objective. Just saying.
But I'm sure you find people who agree with you, all those who want to have their opinions elevated to objective truth, much like churches of old that claimed to have God on their side. To me such a stance is usually indications of prejudice and naïve realism [0], and perhaps worse; relieves one of the hard work of trying to see the other side, preventing one from building a solid case for ones own (subjective, but morally better) stance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...
Should we dismiss all cultural critique because on some level everything is subjective, even experience and knowledge itself?
For all it's flaws and misuse, the scientific method provides the closest thing to an objective approach. Should it be discarded as well?
Now perhaps there are parts of Sharia law worth preserving. Can you steel-man that for me? Because my experience with theocracy based law has not been positive. What I've read of Sharia doesn't strike me as a good legal system.
On my part I too base my ethics on something universal, but it is human universality (that we at most possibly can share with a few other animal species); it bends and shifts with history, geography and social conditions, but with a common denominator and ideal that is empathy. Something entirely subjective, something hard to accomplish and ultimately not completely attainable. And it allows me to keep things like "objective truth" out of ethical considerations.
In the case of Saudi Arabia it allows me to criticize the regime along the same lines as you, but it also requires that I try to understand how things became this bad, i.e. to have some empathy with the people that one otherwise easily could string up in the nearest lamppost if we had the chance.
The scientific method is not relevant for me here at all because it doesn't give us ethical guidance at all. It is relevant only as a tool to sift false assumptions from facts, where the facts are ultimately tentative, not absolute. It can help us for example to weed out illusions like the world being flat, but it doesn't answer everything about what the world is. The world still holds a lot of mystery, and will likely always do. Which is actually a sound position to take, scientifically.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in other places too - please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33768659. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly, so if you'd please fix this, we'd appreciate it.
No normal, rational human being would want to cover their face. If they do, then it means they’re raised that way and brainwashed. Or they’re straight up lying, for fear of prosecution.
We’re raised to cover our bodies in clothes. You accept that as normal but draw the line at covering your face?
Edit: Updated the quote I was replying to.
In the coldest places it is even necessary for someone to cover their face to avoid frostbite.
Let's not pretend enforced face covering anything except the subjection of the female sex. "Enforced" includes the peer pressure to conform even if it's not breaking a law.
Does Sharia law not apply to unbelievers? Do followers choose the faith only in adulthood? Or are people involuntarily indoctrinated from birth? Are apostates and unbelievers granted the same rights and privileges as everyone else?
I'd love to see you to try and survive naked in the desert for an extended period of time. Temperature isn't everything. Also at night it might get pretty cold.
It is also a thing ex Muslim women complains about a lot. It is a thing that systematically and repeatedly ceases to be worn the moment you remove violence and threats from the equation.
Muslim states including Saudi Arabia exert considerable violence against women disagreeing with these laws. They would not needed the violence if it was all voluntary.
I hope we know better than casual No True Scotsman arguments.
There are limits to acceptance as you imply in your comment.
Freedom is measurable and matters.
How long is the list of things that you can do for which the state can repress you in Saudi Arabia? How long is the list in Belgium?
Is there a fair trial process?
Are there equal rights to people?
Yes, some people want to cover their faces and that is fine. Some others don't. That should be fine as well.
There's a vast difference between "saying 'no sane person wants to do X, therefore if you want to do X, you're insane' is wrong" and "everything is morally OK".
I submit that cannibalism is somewhere over the line and I also agree that 'no sane person would want to be eaten alive' could be considered unfortunate phrasing. But how would you phrase it better?
A better argument would be "this is bad because it doesn't respect the autonomy of women", instead of "this is bad because bad people do it, and the people who do it are bad because they do it".
> No normal, rational human being would want to cover their face.
You could say that some women do it willingly out of piety by buying into the cultural mores they grew up in. That from their perspective women who don't do so are crazy and debase themselves. Or throw the no true scotsman fallacy at them as you did. Technically, you've won the argument...
..unfortunately I can't be sure you're not accidentally straw-manning (why can't it be straw personing! As a scarecrow I am offended :P) the person you were replying to.
I say accidentally because I know you to always argue in good faith. And to be fair it is ambiguously and poorly phrased as you say. But lets extend this same good faith to the rest of their sentence:
> If they do, then it means they’re raised that way and brainwashed.
> Or they’re straight up lying, for fear of prosecution.
I think that is the very heart of the matter.
Can't speak for the op and whether they meant to make that point but my reading of their full argument is:
"this is not only bad because bad people do it, but mostly because the bad people gas-light everybody about their culture and piety and the majority of women have to pretend to go along with it willingly".
No true scotsman obviously doesn't apply to, say, a situation like North Korea.
Anyway, I don't like the woke-y phrasings either but lets not be so open minded as to have our brains fall out. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. ;)
When it comes to SA they happen to be correct.
I'd rather say "forcing people to do things they want to do is bad", and let individuals decide whether they want to cover their face or not.
If you ask the French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
> let individuals decide whether they want to cover their face or not.
Sure. Of course, not possible in an absolutist monarchy such as SA and pretending otherwise in an effort to be none-judgmental is (unwittingly, accidentally, what have you) carrying water for them. Which, I don't think is your intention.
It is worth contemplating that playing on this very ambiguity and passive tendencies - in other circumstance perhaps to be commended as sage like reservation - is what keeps places like Russia, SA, NK, Iran coasting.
Honest question about the argument - how would you phrase it (I wrote that comment)?
It makes it sound like they're inhuman monsters and that we'd never do that. The truth is, if you and I were raised there, we probably would, just like we eat meat.
The truth is, if you and I were raised there, we probably would
But that is kinda what I said though, isn’t it?
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to make them sound like monsters (except the rulers, they sure are).
I’ll try to word things better, next time.
Instead, a much better line of thinking is "normal people can do this, under specific circumstances, so we should be very careful not to fall into the same trap ourselves".
I'm agnostic so I don't really have a horse in the race, but it turns out a lot of people (maybe due to anxiety) actually loved an excuse to keep their faces covered in public.
Anyways, many commenters here could benefit from a broader cultural perspective rather than a narrow minded, tunnel visioned view of the world.
I don't think there were any objective opinion polls you could base this on after the point at which disagreeing with the Nazi regime resulted in a visit from the police or worse.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_elec...
This was the last federal election in Germany and followed the Nazis openly attacking left-wing parties, fully controlling state propaganda, practically prohibiting all opposition parties from campaigning and literally shutting down opposition newspapers, plus staging the Reichstag fire -- and they still only got 43.9% of the vote at a 88.7% turnout.
The previous federal election only got them 37.3% of the vote at a 80.6% turnout but this was enough to get Papen and Hindenburg to form a coalition government with Hitler at the helm.
The conquest of France was an unifying (and legitimizing) moment when even the people who were passively skeptical of the regime mostly got behind it (actual opponents were almost all in exile or imprisoned by that point)
Also, the calls for opposition to unifie miss who the opposition was. As in, it was composed of both pro democratic and actual communist party that took directions from Stalin. Who were pro dictatorship too at that point.
I mean, it is popular talking point from from tankies. But, social democrats not unifying with actual communists despite Hitler propaganda claiming they are the same makes sense.
[1] Richard J. Evans - The Third Reich in Power
The Weimar Republic was in essence Germany's first real experiment with democracy so many people in positions of power were still heavily invested in the old ways (whether directly as in the monarchists who wanted to reinstate the emperor, or less directly as in those who wanted to scale back democracy to establish a form of new aristocracy). At the same time you had communist movements trying to take democracy to its logical conclusion (but they were also split into competing factions because things like the Bolshevik revolution were happening around the same time) and a general populace exhausted from a long and failed war of attrition that had seen more death and suffering than any previous war on German territory.
The Nazis didn't get into power by winning the hearts and minds of the people, they got into power by allying with wealthy conservatives who were afraid of leftists and saw the Nazis as a natural antidote against communism. This allowed them free rein to suppress the opposition while also playing out the conservatives as too timid and ineffective because they had been unable to form a stable coalition government.
The death bed wish of Hindenburg was for Hitler to step down and restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. This was after Hitler had already become chancellor and was on his way to becoming the unchecked autocrat via the Enabling Act, which the conservatives co-signed. Hitler of course ignored this but it should tell you all you need to know about the delusions of the conservatives who enabled him.
Once the Nazis were in power, of course their support in the population grew because they claimed responsibility for everything good while creating a smokescreen of grandiose nonsense achievements, breaking ties and treaties with other countries as a show of force (which after the defeat of WW1 rekindled the national pride) and eventually "fighting back against Polish aggression" to start WW2. But at that point all political opposition had been silenced or murdered so of course people were more likely to support them. Questioning the government was not just frowned upon but became actively dangerous. And of course as the war progressed for many it became a sunk cost fallacy.
Reducing this to "actually the Nazis were popular" creates a false sense that there must have been something unique about 1930s Germans to have elected such an obvious evil as the NSDAP when in reality 1) the 1933 NSDAP still allowed for plausible deniability much like certain far-right parties do today, 2) the right (i.e. conservatives) saw the NSDAP as a stabilizing force because they saw the left as a threat to order and 3) even at their peak they couldn't get the majority of votes in a fair election.
People support institutions that do bad things if those bad things are sufficiently normalized. And a good dose of nationalist fervor or revanchism helps the medizine go down.
What I claimed was that the Nazis were popular after having gained power. In fact Nazi ideology even remained popular after the Nazis were defeated. Tony Judt has survey results [1] in his book 'Postwar', e.g. a majority of Germans were of the opinion that Nazism was a good idea but poorly applied. 37% in the US occupied zone said that the extermination of the Jews was warranted.
The problem with Denazification is that it wasn't very thorough. The Allied (and US's in particular) post-war plans was to ramp up defensive capabilities for the Cold War that had slowly manifested itself during WW2. While several high ranking Nazis were executed or at least tried, some fled the country, some died and some were recruited by the victors (e.g. Operation Paperclip) it was considered more important to have "qualified people in charge" to rebuild the country than to avoid putting Nazis back in their positions of power, so back in positions of power many of them went.
Modern Germany made a big show of combatting Nazism but due to the Cold War for a long time that had to go hand in hand with combatting "communism" (e.g. banning the KPD on a legal basis that is today considered to have been largely bogus), making the messaging incoherent by failing to address the disease (protofascism) rather than the symptoms (e.g. symbology).
But my point was that calling the Nazis popular at the time is in the most literal sense survivorship bias. While most people think of the people the Nazis killed outside of Germany when they think of their victims, they also killed and displaced a lot of German residents. So even without the propaganda and the appearance of prosperity, it's iffy to call them "popular" when the people they were very much unpopular with largely died, fled or were imprisoned (and in some cases continued to remain imprisoned after the war, like those accused of homosexuality or being too left wing).
The reason I object is that Nazis (and their ideological analogues in other countries and times) aren't popular. They have to lie, kill and oppress in order to acquire and maintain power and they only become popular with lies and scams: selling a narrative of a chosen people and raiding society for a fiction of wealth. It's an utterly self-destructive ideology and requires constant purges and the designation of new enemies within.
We have culturally gained an understanding in the West that the Nazis were the bad guys of WW2. Thanks to banning their symbols in countries including Germany, and thanks to a very productive movie and television industry, especially in the US. But you will still find large minorities in many countries that would find the fiction the Nazis created about themselves appealing as long as you change the labels and avoid obvious historical details. And if you give them the right justifications, they too will likely think exterminating an entire minority could be "regrettable but necessary". That's a problem.
Sorry if I'm rambling too much. This struck a nerve because the claim "the Nazis were also popular" is too often used to suggest that the Nazis gained power through being popular (which is often used to denounce any political position that's popular as inherently worthless or dangerous) or that there was something unique about Weimar Germans making them so naive or wicked to support the obviously evil Nazis (which is often used to deflect any notion that it could literally happen here/again because we're smarter and morally superior). Modern Germany's treatment of the Third Reich tends to mix the two by insisting that "the Nazis" were all just inherently evil somehow (which means any modern politican who is politically aligned with them can't be a Nazi) but "the Germans" supported them because they were promised good things (so promising good things is deceptive and we simply can't have nice things).
My original post was aimed as a response to a post implicitly claiming that it was only a certain minority in Germany that sympathized with the regime. Whether that sympathy was due to successful propaganda or not isn't really the point when refuting that original statement, as is the way the Nazis came to power. From what I've read (and you also seem to agree with this) the majority of Germans supported the nazi regime while in power.
It would be interesting if you had any numbers for the number of displaced or killed German citizens. There were about 500 thousand Jews in Germany before 1933, most of which probably either left Germany or were murdered. People from the political opposition who had deeply seated beliefs that wouldn't have been subject to propaganda and who just continued to live in Germany in fear, were probably the largest percentage of those that didn't support the Nazis, but I don't have good numbers here. I would assume those would constitute at least 25% and at most something like 40% of the population, but those numbers are speculative. It does seem reasonable to assume that a majority of those who voted for the other conservative parties in the last election would have come to support the Nazis and those plus the people who actually voted for the Nazis already constituted a majority of the German population.
Wearing jeans arguably hastened the end of the Soviet union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeans_Revolution
Alcohol is haram. I hear the attitude towards Jeans in SA is now more lenient but less than a decade ago would get you in hot water with the religious police.
You get the gist of it. The moment they leave that country many of its young people act very differently in ways that would not be allowed/frowned upon back home.
What is up with that? A decadent Rumspringa before they willingly return to the warm embrace of Sharia or an escape from a compulsory punitive society in which they are unwilling participants?
That sounds normal for me. Why you would worry about going out during night?
This happens in many other cultures as well. E.g. Christians are super nice people. But if you reveal you're gay, then suddenly about half of them start treating you like crap.
WTF!
Several of my employees bowl from the pavilion end. Is utterly unthinkable to insist on them transiting through a territory so hostile to their very existence in order to save a few quid on expenses.
Your post is mind boggling to me. Is this how you expect to be treated as an employee?
So if your nation suddenly declared that men were (for example) required to cover their faces at all times and stay indoors unless escorted by a woman, you'd respect that cultural point of view and not protest?
If you're going to say that that's not a matter of violating your "human rights," but just the rights that you think people should have, please explain how those are different things.
I believe that in the end any "right" is just a privilege, there's nothing that makes them 'happen' by themselves. Surely enough, you can strip every "human right" away even if they're declared to be inalienable and before modern times, there were plenty of regimes that violated them. If they exists as something independent of western conceptions of thought, how come they were not a thing until now? The history is much longer than the 200 or so years that they have existed in our minds.
Do you perhaps have some method by which you discover new human rights?
> Do you perhaps have some method by which you discover new human rights?
How does anyone "discover" moral principles? Every society has had some idea of how humans should be treated.
But I will not think that those in power are wrong because of 'human rights violation' or will take action because of that abstract notion (in all honestly I doubt anyone does, to quote Schmitt "Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat"). I would likely think of it as something evil, that is not fit for my dignity and because it'd be forced without clear reason, I'd see it as an attack, on me, on my family and on my culture as a whole.
> How does anyone "discover" moral principles?
Surely someone must discover or at least be able to create new ones, as with the passage of time the number of (human rights grow)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_generations_of_human_rig...].
I'm not quite sure how you'd actually discover new principles, rather, one would apply old principles to new situations.
Thus Christianity sees porn as evil, partly due to theology and partly because of Jesus statements on adultery (committing adultery in ones heart etc) - the morality didn't change per se (no new principles were introduced), but was further developed.
Doubt.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/iran-crackdo...
1. Have lots of oil
It's safe because they need foreigners to work there, since they themselves don't want to work and live off government oil money.
Every individual has their own opinion.
Edit: for the record, i love reading the likes of these articles, even contrarian ones, but these egregious errors are scandalous and totally remove the credibility, totally. Shame because it as really interesting at times!
https://www.c-span.org/video/?188377-1/confessions-innocent-...
But Saudi seems to be progressing. In one generation it’ll likely be a totally different story.
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sau?subnationalFlowSele...
No, it's not. You can even go inside any mosque if you wear the proper clothes, as how Muslims pray.
> "Mecca is the holiest city in Islam where the pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca is celebrated. This destination is only for Muslim tourists. At the entrance, there are several checkpoints where they will check that the visitor is a Muslim, and non-Muslims will be redirected to a highway that surrounds the city. Pilgrims must prove they are Muslim and women must be accompanied by a Mahram, also known as a male guardian."
A non-Muslim can visit Medina but the main mosque is off limits.
road sign with muslim-only lanes leading toward Mecca.
For example, you characterized the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence as "liberal" and the Hanbali school as "conservative". This is a completely inappropriate characterization of these schools and it makes a major mistake in equating them on spectrum of liberal to conservative (politically). They are orthogonal concepts.
As a brief explanation, in Islamic law (Shari'a), within the Sunni tradition of Islam there are 4 major schools of thought with regards to deriving rulings (these are called schools of fiqh, jurisprudence). All of these schools of thought accept each other as valid Islamically. They are named after the founders of the schools of thoughts, who all use the scripture (the Holy Quran), and the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم peace be upon him and his companions. These schools differ in their application of methods to derive the sources of shari'a. For example, the Hanafi school is known to more heavily use Qiyas, or a type of legal reasoning by analogy, to derive rulings. Other sources of Shari'a come from what is known as 'urf, or custom of a particular locality.
To show why characterizing Hanafi as liberal and Hanbali as conservative is laughably incorrect. For example, many Hanafi faqeehs (experts in Hanafi fiqh) will consider the only seafood allowed to eat is fish. On the other hand, the Hanbali school considers fish, shrimp, crab, other seafood, etc. to be permissible to eat.
So to characterize one as liberal and the other as conservative, in general, is incomprehensible.
Next, you did not give the context of the rise of what you term Wahhabism [itself a term considered offensive to use as a pejorative by those on whom this term is applied: because al-Wahhab "the supreme bestower" is one of the names (attributes) used to describe God (Allah). Thus, to use a name of God as an epithet is considered offensive.] The rise of the movement of Abd al-Wahhab stems from the context of Arabia and Muslim practices at the time. At that time, Sufiism was the more officially influential "strain" of Islam, having been embraced by the Ottomans to an extent, and many people in this movement went to the extremes of grave worshiping, visiting shrines, and even praying to the dead for intercession. These are all practices that are outside the mainstream of Islam, but are described as having become more widespread in even Arabia and the Levant (Bilad ash-Shaam). It is in this context that Abd al-Wahhab's movement arises as a reaction. And it is a mistake to talk about Abd al-Wahhab's movement without mentioning the eminent Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah who lived in the time of the Mongol invasions. But I digress for brevity.
Next, to talk about Saudi Arabia's modern history without mentioning the movements among the religious scholars is not giving proper context. For example, you did not mention the Sahwa (awakening) [1] movement among scholars, nor did you give the context of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwaan Al-Muslimoon) and the Arab Spring, which is important to current Saudi religious clerics' attitudes towards dissent, democratization, etc. And it shapes how the Saudi government responds to these movements and those who went beyond the lines they set for them (for example the imprisonment of Salman Al-Awdah).
Next, you mentioned the claim by a cleric of geocentricity. But you are also misunderstanding the position of clerics with regards to fields they are qualified to speak about and the realm of their opinions. In their opinions they are not expert in, they can be incorrect just as an expert in history may not have authority to speak on physics. Actually you can find clips of the clerics deferring judgement of scientific facts to scientists; the authority the cleric speaks with is the evidence he brings from scripture and tradition. If a cleric says the Sun orbits the Earth, but new information comes to him, he can accept that as the realm of scientists while also upholding his own understanding from the evidences.
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Also, I was hoping you would have a bigger section on foreign workers, because it is not simply "wage-slave" and "Saudi prince" in terms of the class structure of society. There is a rich parallel network of foreign nationals that operates under, around, and throughout the Saudi Arabian society. Anyone who has begun speaking to one of the foreign laborers in their native tongue will understand the concept of favors and advice given to one's own people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahwa_movement
For a medium-length but interesting introduction to Islamic scholarship: http://www.chriscaras.com/usul-fiqh/ijtihad/knowledge-schola...