The news today, from Saudi Arabia:
"We refuse to marginalize the role of women in Saudi society and in every aspect, within the rules of Sharia...It's all a matter of interpreting the text.
"Muslim women in our Islamic history have demonstrated positions that expressed correct opinions and advice," he said, citing examples from the era of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
He said the members of Saudi Arabia's clerical council, or Ulema, praised and supported his decision.
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63 comments:
The current government of Shitty Arabia is the second-to-worst government in the world. The very worst government is whatever will replace it.
Peter
Next up: Rock The Casbah
Remember Islamic gals, as long as your opinions are correct you can say anything you like in mullahland.
What good is the right to vote in a country that doesn't have elections?
There goes the neighborhood.
Maybe they'll only count 1/2?
Next thing you know, they'll be driving.
Remember GW 1?
They drove, I think there wasn't a law at that time. They did it to make a point.
What a feminist!
Has anyone made a count of the number of Moslem versus Christian women prime ministers, or heads of state up to date?
His wives probably discovered Lysistrata in their book club.
I hear the Flyers will be playing the Rangers for the Satan Cup later today.
It looks like Canada's "Ethical Oil" campaign really hit a home run.
The right to vote in Saudi Idol. Come on, read the fine print.
As long as the women accept subservience the men will NEVER give up their privileges.
The law of gravity will like wise never be repealed until some brave people get upinto their flying machines and soar.
Then all things will become possible.
How is the walked upon moon doing?
First, no woman will be allowed to drive the car to the voting booths.
Imams will stand there and demand to see "how the lady" voted. And, husbands will be there carrying whips.
This "election event" will show you that you wouldn't even be able to tell if it was a man under those black outfits. Or not. Men would have to shave their hands ... in case their hands were hairy.
And, they'd apply eye makeup.
Women who got beaten to death "for not choosing the way Allah prescribes" ... will be carried into the voting stations by pallbearers.
I think the saud's stink. I think they're responsible for 9/11. I think they're responsible for all the politicians bought over the past 20 years ... that made the EURO a "reality."
I fart in their general direction.
King Abdullah is a better leader than the "hate anyone who is a Muslim and hate the Saudis more than anyone" types, recognizes.
Oh, yeah. And, as long as the women stay covered from head to toe, except for eye-slits ... AND they don't drive to campaign stops ... they can also run for office!
You tell me. If you were busy ... and you were a Saudi woman, running ... couldn't you just about send anybody to a campaign stop?
When you move your mouth ... nobody can see it. And, when you want to eat food ... in public ... You need to drop your forkful of food down one of the eye slots.
The saud's should all be killed! If we just killed them all, this would be a better world.
Meanwhile, between the saud's and the iranian's ... it's a whole bunch of other people who are getting killed.
Gadaffi is also hiding out in the desert. (The desert is about the size of the United States. (He also discovered that when he buys his war materials ... the USA is putting in GPS devices.
Gadaffi's not being caught ... because he knows how to live without telephones. And, without electricity coming into his tent.
But, wow. Saudi women can vote! And, then can even run.
While nothing in reality changes.
This story is also running at Reddit.
One of the best comments I saw said "Well, at least the voters won't have to worry about hair styles.)
What if America only adds to our troubles when the TV takes over ... and we get TV contestants in some sort of amateur competition contest?
Not that we should cover everyone up and let them talk through holes in the cloth! (Though Mitt Romney would excel at that. It would be a pure religious experience for him, too.)
Well, that's a start.
I'm kind of over the Arab Springiness of it all and favor a slow but steady approach to at least the 19th century.
It is all about power and money.
It's all a matter of interpreting the text
Yeah, but that's the problem. Or has been.
Bin Laden and the Islamists interpret the text in a not so wonderful way.
There's no Islamic Martin Luther to challenge the orthodoxy because there's no Islamic Pope that promotes it. It's a free-for-all.
"It's all a matter of interpreting the text."
Yes, however there are important "more-s" to it. In the first instance, it's all about writing the text. In the second instance, it's all about collating/editing/rewriting the text. In the third instance, it's all about seeing or hearing the text. In the fourth instance, it's all about interpreting the text. In the fifth instance, it's all about practicing the text.
For a text with the history of the Koran or Hadith, at no point along the way of those instances can one say with certainty that what occurs within those several instances or phases in the phenomenology of a sacred text is in fact the Will of God.
The question of authority unites secular and religious protagonists. Both are bothered by it and the self-honest ones admit at least to themselves that they have no answer for it.
Saudi Arabia is not only one century behind the United States.
King Abdullah is a better leader than the "hate anyone who is a Muslim and hate the Saudis more than anyone" types, recognizes.
The leader - a Monarch mind you - who bans all religions except Islam, who arrests anyone praticing any religion except Islam, is hardly someone I would hold up as "better" leader than the hate-Islam crowd thinks.
In fact, the "hate Islam" crowd can point to Abdullah's views as to why they dislike the religon.
Neither the "King" or the hate-Islam crowd are people I particularly care to listen to.
There's no Islamic Martin Luther
I hate to break it to you, but Luther had more in common with Mohammed than any pope ever has. Moreover, the sola scriptura of Luther is a tenet of Islam.
What Islam needs, and what George W. and Paul Wolfowitz sought to give it, is freedom, especially freedom for Muslim women.
Make that "Saudi Arabia is now only one century behind the United States."
What if the women's fathers, close family or husbands refuse to drive them to the polls, or how will women vote in the presence of "strange" men who man the polling stations (literally)? Seems like this is a "right" that will not be enforceable because of the debilitating nature of Sharia law.
I hate to break it to you, but Luther had more in common with Mohammed than any pope ever has. Moreover, the sola scriptura of Luther is a tenet of Islam.
It's called an analogy.
I'm aware of the horrific anti-semitism - among other terrible ideas - of Luther.
Maybe I should has said reformer.
The right to vote, yes that is a good thing. Now he can get back to mowing down legions of peaceful protestors with American-made weapons, and with the implicit backing of the American government. This tosed-out bone ought to be exchange-able for the lives of 10,000 Saudis, don't you think? Isn't that about the going rate?
OH MY GOD!!! THEY WILL BE DRIVING SOON!!! THE WORLD WILL END!!!
Cedarford said...
King Abdullah is a better leader than the "hate anyone who is a Muslim and hate the Saudis more than anyone" types, recognizes.
Anybody who hates Jews as much as you do is pretty cool, huh?
The most appalling thing about Cedarford's quote is the he repeatedly mocks "fundies" as long as those "fundies" are Christian. King Abdullah presides over a theocratic, fundamentalist state and Cedarford is eager to make excuses for him. Further evidence that the anti-fundamentalist movement in America is little more than class snobbery. Jethrow the mechanic believes in the literal word of God=loser. Most August King Abdullah applies a fundementalist reading of the Koran to the governing of his country=enlightened.
Dances with wolves. The Saudi Kingdom shows how those poor, ignorant tribes that the Europeans conquered and exploited would have fared were their leaders given unlimited wealth instead of conquest and chains. Do you think Kevin Costner will ever make a movie highlighting the way native American tribes mistreated their women?
Now all they need to do is to hold elections.
I wonder if King Abdullah will win the next election for King because so many women will vote for such a free thinker?
Arab spring.
(And King Abdullah is pleased that this move gets the Cedarford seal of approval)
Cedarford should know that sunni monarchists are reallly...fairly close cousins to the jews.
The sons of Ali (shia) being...the
authentic Islam path
"It's all a matter of interpreting the text."
And when you have the power to cut off people's hands or decapitate them you can pretty much interpret the text any old way you fucking want.
I notice they're still not letting them drive cars or wear bikinis or go out in public without a man.
sorepaw said...
It would seem he ( C4 ) has a soft spot for the camel jockey that tickled both his tonsils and prostrate back in 91. Or just like the leftists, there are no enemies to the left to the neo-Nazi's there are no enemies among the anti-Semites. Whatever.
Anyhow isn't it mighty white of the King of the Magic Kingdom granting woman the (non) right to vote for nothing of any significance? This dangerous experiment in democracy might lead to such social outrages of woman driving and showing their faces in public. And you know what sexual deviancy that could lead to.
only a piece of zionist white trash calls the nazis leftists.
like....Cuban-yid!
J said...
Cedarford should know that sunni monarchists are reallly...fairly close cousins to the jews.
The sons of Ali (shia) being...the
authentic Islam path
9/25/11 6:00 PM
Its official: J has been discovered to be Cedarford's younger and far crazier younger brother. Or jelly baby.
Muslims are literate people because they memorize the Koran that includes most of the Torah that is "Completes."
They are not hateful people. They are trapped in legalism with no blood atonement from Temple Sacrificial System or the once for all sacrifice of The Lamb of God.
The trouble is that they are taught to make up for their predicament by sacrificial killing the Infidels or themselves trying.
It seems Mohammed was first and forever a thief and a murderer of anyone with anything worth stealing.
As an Infidel, that makes me hate them about as much as we once hated Japs and Nazis. When they quit, then we will will forgive them.
J said...
only a piece of zionist white trash calls the nazis leftists.
like....Cuban-yid!
9/25/11 6:23 PM
J is having another of his homoerotic fantasies of getting his orifices plugged simultaneously by Adolph and his trusty sidekick Mo.
Thanks for proving that you're Cedarford's certified insane jelly baby. Living proof of de-evolution.
wrong again, c-bob.
read the post again--the jonah goldberg thesis (ie, nazis were leftists) is pure dreck, like your brain. Now, opposing a moron such as Goldberg
doesn't imply one flies a swazi or salutes Der Fuhrer. In fact like most Klanhousers, you're the one with the..Hitler tutu--(right next to yr white sheet with the eyeholes cut out! heh). You just lie about it
you're the faggot,c-bob. Like yr hero EricCantor . Got that wicca filth??
HITLER TUTU time, Cu-bob. With yr klan hoood on too
I don't see how anyone is being asked to say, "Well, that's good enough, then." And I find the hostility to the new rules ridiculous. People want to be upset or something. It makes them happy. But lets cut off our noses to spite our faces just because it's not revolutionary upheaval.
Is measured progress worse than no progress?
Or maybe it is. Reformers and revolutionaries do tend to want to keep things as bad as possible for fear that if things get better people will stop being mad and the reformer won't get everything they wanted because their angry masses find something better to do.
This seems like a good step to me and it ought to be lauded.
Announce the changes at the beginning of a political cycle rather than in the middle or at the end. Isn't that reasonable? If rules are going to change, shouldn't they change when the game starts?
Let people get used to the idea that women are competent to participate. The King is talking to people who think it's reasonable to believe that women have some impediment to making "correct" decisions about important matters. I'm not offended that he chooses an argument that we Westerners feel is, itself, chauvinistic.
I don't think that he's advocating some sort of control or check or even need to make sure women make those correct judgments. He's simply saying that women have shown that they can and implying Muhammad's support in this.
That he remains in power in the region instead of being overthrown is remarkable, and I think that it's due to taking the strong views towards Islam that he takes. It's not in our best interests, perhaps, but the man and his family haven't been deposed and slaughtered and the country is not being taken over by the religious radicals that we denigrate him for pacifying. And it's not in our interests to have that happen either.
the sola scriptura of Luther is a tenet of Islam.
Different scripture, of course.
This seems like a favorable development, and although considerable skepticism is still amply justified, Abdullah and the ruling family ought be given some measure of credit for it. Thank you for posting about this, Prof. Althouse.
The good news is that women in Saudi Arabia now get to vote as much as men do. The bad news is that the men don't get to vote very much.
"The good news is that women in Saudi Arabia now get to vote as much as men do. The bad news is that the men don't get to vote very much."
Heh.
This same thought is in my head just about every time someone goes on about how bad women had it way back when.
There is an assumption that men had it better. And while a few men might have had it better, I see no evidence that most of them did.
There is an assumption that men had it better.
About places like Saudi Arabia - both men and women (and girls and boys) live under harsh, arbitrary and enormous power (wielded by more powerful men, the judicial system, rural tribal council, etc.). One "compensation" for a man, assuming he's at the head of his family, is that he can choose to wield harsh, arbitrary and enormous power over his own family and have it go largely unchecked.
within the rules of Sharia... citing examples from the era of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century...
Those two excerpts render the action meaningless.
Baby steps, folks.
It's hard to appreciate from America that this is really a bold move.
"I hate to break it to you, but Luther had more in common with Mohammed than any pope ever has. Moreover, the sola scriptura of Luther is a tenet of Islam."
As rhetorical flourish, playing to the gallery, that works very well. As conversation, it works very well as an exit line. As assertion, argument or proclamation, it works very well as a risible.
Apparently, there's some weasel-wording going on and it may not exactly be the "right to vote."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/278364/no-explicit-right-vote-saudi-women-nina-shea
Very careful marketing effort. Still, it's a fucking powder keg over there.
I will be impressed when they are also able to drive, travel without the permission and escort of a male relative, attend co-educational colleges, hold a job that gives them authority over a man, and flee burning buildings without a head covering.
Until then, piss on all Wahabbis.
On second thought, if all the women in SA were simultaneously issued guns, none of the above would be relevant, and I would gladly fork over for PPV of the proceedings.
Yes, they will vote. in four years
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