"Saudi women with sexy eyes may be forced to cover them up"

Icalasari

The next logical step is to just incinerate all their woman and throw the ashes to sea

...Of course, seeing as how 15 girls died due to being forced to stay in a burning school since they lacked proper headgear, they may already be implementing that plan...

Put in politics because I just have a feeling that this is going to go in that direction

RedEyedAbyss

*I will not post Hellfire* *I will not post Hellfire*

Though honestly, I'm more concerned about the other bit about letting schoolgirls burn just for not wearing the head cover.

Icalasari

^ Both are a concern (imagine them now not being let out because they can't find their sunglasses)

Forzare

*I will not post Hellfire* *I will not post Hellfire*

dammit

i was going to post that

RedEyedAbyss

It is very relevant, of course. Damn religious fundamentalists.

Legionnaire

I HAVE NO REGRETS OR ORIGINALITY

Icalasari

...Huh. I predict it will become politics and it is already derailing into something else entirely

Them

I feel kind of horrible that the first thing that comes to mind is "Muslims gonna Musl".

RedEyedAbyss

The sheer amount of anti-Muslim discrimination is repulsive, but as long as you're not a right-wing racist and can recognize it's the extremists of the religion rather than all of them, it's fine.

Reminds me of the Norwegian killings which FOX news instantly blamed on the Muslims. The cruel irony being that the guy was staunchly against Muslims.

Them

3/3. Yay.

I'm now going to undermine my own defense by pointing out that Islam isn't a race and its best-known extreme practitioners tend to be fairly right-wing* themselves, making that particular descriptor an odd comparison.

* Whatever that means

RedEyedAbyss

Admittedly, "left" and "right" are useless as actual debating terms since they cover such a broad range of views, and this demonstrates that.

Them

I'm increasingly convinced that their only function is to serve as a catch-all term to describe "people I agree with" versus "people I don't", or vice versa, depending on the speaker.

Ponicalica

The Saudi Arabian government is terrible and continues to be so.

captainbrass

^ The precise version of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia is Wahabism, which is a puritanical, revivalist movement. It's a bit like having the world think that the whole Christianity equals someone like Jerry Falwell. That's not to deny it's a very repressive country, against women, gays, anyone who opposes the government, Muslims who aren't Wahabists...basically anyone who isn't male, Wahabist and ideally a member of the royal family or one of their hangers on.

Gelzo

[Insincere amusingly negative comment about Muslims and women.]

AHR

Well, this does make sense. Now that men have nothing else to fetishize, they're going to go with what's given to them and I'm going to shut up now because my History Of Fashion class is not helping matters at all.

nohaynicklibre

This looks like an Onion headline

captainbrass

And no-one has yet made a joke about the song "Sexy Eyes" by Dr Hook.

Counterclock

So, this is pretty disturbing y/n?

Gelzo

I kinda stopped getting surprised over awful stuff happening in non first world countries.

MadassAlex

This doesn't surprise me coming from the Saudi government. Islamic extremist attitudes towards women are disgusting as a whole, but this is a minor matter within something much more insidious. We're talking about a place and culture where women are very tangibly resources to be bartered with, and where one's wife is more a possession and evidence of one's manhood than a partner.

Not that I want to paint all Islamic folk with the same brush, mind, but Saudi Arabia takes certain traditions to their logical extreme. I'd propose a women's revolution, but I'm near certain that it would fail. I suspect plenty of Saudi women, growing up in this misogynistic environment, consider this a normal and livable state of affairs and therefore wouldn't pledge support. Other women, probably quite rightly, would fear publicly expressing their discontent. In a truly patriarchal society where a significant amount of women cannot be relied upon to fight for basic human dignity, there's no option but failure.

It's a really miserable state of affairs. I wish Saudi women the best of luck. Hopefully the other revolutionary actions in the Middle East will spur some osmotic social change towards more balanced and respectful treatment of women.

captainbrass

^ One can only hope so.

I would also repeat my point that not all Muslim countries go as far as Saudi Arabia in repressing women, although most of them have cultural attitudes that would be regarded as sexist by modern standards (so do most Western countries, just less overtly). The largest Muslim country of all is Indonesia, which has a woman president IIRC.

Icalasari

So how long until they get so desperate that they fetishize voices, then writing, then sign language?

Thinking about it, how long until it goes full circle and wearing clothes is outlawed due to the clothes being fetishized?

Gelzo

Maybe one day some culture will decide sexual pleasure for women is too risque, so they'll remove the clitoris from girls.

Oh wait.

Icalasari

^ How long until they outlaw women and kill off their whole country due to no women being in it?

Them

^ China is getting close.

LouieW

captainbrass,
The precise version of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia is Wahabism, which is a puritanical, revivalist movement. It's a bit like having the world think that the whole Christianity equals someone like Jerry Falwell. That's not to deny it's a very repressive country, against women, gays, anyone who opposes the government, Muslims who aren't Wahabists...basically anyone who isn't male, Wahabist and ideally a member of the royal family or one of their hangers on.

I really think this is an important point. Calling this kind of oppressive treatment extremist or even fundamentalist Islam seems pretty inappropriate to me. Even if the state was forcing everyone to follow Islamic law (which I really do not think it is since it seems to be going much farther than that), I believe that you could make a good argument that doing so would be against the spirit of Islam itself. I mean, from what I can tell, plenty of religious people (especially Muslims) believe that faith is not worth much if it is not volunteered.

As for extremism, I have heard some Muslims say that extremist Islam is more like praying too hard or fasting too much. Acts of oppression or violence, on the other hand, occupy a completely different category in their minds. In that sense, it seems pretty regrettable to me that people occasionally make the association between such acts and Islam itself as if the two are necessarily correlated. People making the claim that the more devout of a Muslim you are the more violent you must become bugs me quite a bit as well.

I have seen people say some of the same stuff about Christians (though more so about the treatment of women and people who are gay) and I believe the same kind of problem exists in that perception of Christianity as well.

MadassAlex

I disagree with that notion, as I would include the use of a philosophy to justify political injustice or violence as extremism as well. All Abrahamic religious texts refer to some kind of punishment for those who don't follow the basic moral principles of the religion in question, and it's not difficult to extrapolate that and use it as justification for violence. In essence, an extreme action done in the name of a philosophy that doesn't necessitate said action could be considered "extremism".

In any case, I would classify this general kind of thing as extremist religious practice, whether it be performed by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists or Pastafarians.

LouieW

Alex,

I am not sure we totally disagree. I can understand why people would say that it is extremism in the sense that something like forcibly covering women's eyes is an extreme measure taken in the name of a religion. In any event, I think you make a good point.

I suppose my qualm is mainly with the idea that measures like those are actually in the spirit of Islam or Christianity and that one cannot be a devout follower of either religion without inevitably embracing one or the other.

Also, while what you say about punishment is probably true, I think there is a big difference between people volunteering to be subject to the punishments of a religious justice system and people being forced to be subject to religious law. I believe that the former tends to be very much consistent with religions like Islam, but the latter is off target from them.

MadassAlex

I would agree that such things are not in character for Abrahamic practices, which tend to argue in favour of compassion and gentle guidance.

Obviously this doesn't prevent some people from taking advantage of them to justify horrible things, though. So as much as I agree that extremist individuals and organisations motivated by misinterpretation of religion don't "count" as part of that religion in the conventional sense, I think it's sensible to consider them rotten branches of their respective religions.

FrodoGoofballCoTV

My proposed solution to this issue.

Seriously, though, letting people die rather than offending public decency?  Makes the WBC seem rational.