arabian issues

RIP to the absolute legend that was king abdullah of saudi arabia and a warm welcome to his successor, king salman

http://i.imgur.com/0IrHB2B.jpg

there's constantly been chatter about israel forming some kind of agreement w/ SA vis-a-vis Iran. does this help, hurt, or do nothing to that?

does it need a formal arrangement? saudi arabia is mostly about containment/proxy wars with iran until or unless it looks like they are getting nuclear weapons, which it is about as opposed to as israel and has heavily hinted it would get its own if iran does (they supposedly bankrolled the pakistani program)

Some Saudis quietly criticise Abdullah for ducking once again the challenge of picking an heir from the next generation. That will now most likely be Muqrin’s [ie the new Crown Prince] choice, if he wins the crown and lasts into old age. The third generation—the founder’s grandsons—now numbers hundreds of princes; subsequent generations probably take the male tally past 8,000, of whom at least a score may consider themselves eligible one day for the throne. They may be getting impatient.

they can't all serve

they should just form a private company out of all 8000, each having a certain equity in the sovereign wealth, which can be sold on by the more politically disinterested, so a new corporate class of highly leveraged princelets votes to elect each other to corporate governance positions

at least that is what their friends in the west should tell them

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/ministry-justice-contract-saudi-arabia-prison

http://www.paintermagazine.co.uk/users/16907/thm1024/larry.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hNgy83H.jpg

The state news agency SPA quoted an official source as saying in a statement.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia followed with strong sorrow the ugly terrorist and criminal incidents that occurred lately in the Danish capital Copenhagen and in the US state of North Carolina that resulted in the death and injuring of innocent.

On June 19, 2012, Murīʻ bin ʻAlī bin ʻIsá al-ʻAsīrī (مريع بن علي بن عيسى العسيري) was executed by beheading on charges of sorcery and witchcraft, according to Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the state news agency.[10][11] A statement was issued by the Interior Ministry, which said he was found in possession of books and talismans, and had also admitted adultery with two women. After an investigation, security authorities referred the case to the General Court, which sentenced him to death. The sentence was upheld by the Court of Cassation and the Supreme Judicial Council permanent panel.[12]

The culture, the law, are very clear. No pre-marital fooling around, and that includes flirting at HyperPanda. Mall rules are very clear too: It’s an obvious place for boys and girls to check each other out. When mall meets culture, hijinks ensue—and murders sometimes follow, with the male relatives of the girl who’s been compromised at HyperPanda hunting down and killing the boy who accosted her.

Everything is tilting toward the mall, away from the old rules, and the resistance is always futile, and worse yet, ridiculous. Every day one piece of this resistance breaks away. Yesterday it was the new head of the Mutaween admitting that there’s no Scriptural basis for forbidding women to drive.

Kids in Najran already hate the Mutaween. They see kids flirting on TV from the west, and cops chasing grownup criminals, and it strikes them as ridiculous that so many cops devote all their time to the prevention of flirting. Now that the King has ordered the Mutaween to be nice, hate will turn to contempt. Pieces of the old walls will start falling even faster.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/jihad-hyperpanda/

http://i.imgur.com/jStMQ8V.jpg

ibn saud, 1943

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/isis-baghdadi-islamic-state-caliph-many-names-al-qaeda.html

just realized 'sorcery' is a code for ismailism

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/saudiarabia0908web.pdf

Natana DeLong-Bas shatters these stereotypes and misconceptions. Her reading of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's works produces a revisionist thesis: Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements. Rather, he was a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream 18th-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon a monotheism in which Muslims, Christians and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial and treaty relations. Eschewing medieval interpretations of the Quran and hadith (sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad), Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for direct, historically contextualized interpretation of scripture by both women and men. His understanding of theology and Islamic law was rooted in Quranic values, rather than literal interpretations. A strong proponent of women's rights, he called for a balance of rights between women and men both within marriage and in access to education and public space. In the most comprehensive study of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's interpretation of jihad ever written, DeLong-Bas details a vision in which jihad is strictly limited to the self-defense of the Muslim community against military aggression.

In an interview with the Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat of December 21, 2006, while visiting the desert kingdom, DeLong-Bas announced that she had found "no convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center." Her interview was made public in translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at www.memri.org.

Prior to September 11, a relatively unknown DeLong-Bas appeared to be little more than one of many disciples of John L. Esposito, a renowned Georgetown professor and Islamist apologist who directs the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. DeLong-Bas argued in The Boston Globe as early as 2003 that the writings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the eponymous sect, were moderate and unthreatening and treated other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, tolerantly and fairly.

This outlandish opinion, delivered in the wake of the atrocities less than two years before, was fleshed out when her volume Wahhabi Islam was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. There she presented Wahhabism as anti-jihad and so benevolent as to be even feminist. Her book seemed to have been rushed into print with official Saudi support: DeLong-Bas thanked such individuals as Faisal bin Salman, whose status as a Saudi prince she failed to mention; Abd Allah S. al-Uthaymin, son of a notoriously extreme member of the Wahhabi clerical class in the kingdom; and Fahd as-Semmari, director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. She also acknowledged the latter foundation for financial support.

http://zubairqamar.com/2014/03/08/critical-book-review-wahhabi-islam-by-natana-delong-bas/

the reality in the rich islamic consumer-zombiefied arabian peninsula is far worse once you've actually experienced people from it

non of them actually work, most of them don't even know how to put together a cup of tea, use a pair of scissors, or squeeze toothpaste on a brush (not joking)

most teenagers are handed BMW 7 series

a lot of them won't even drive it, their slave will

ive met really nice intelligent women just brainwashed into servitude, like they don't know any better, and it's so sad

the people are completely intellectually uncurious

in the rich arabian peninsula no arab is expected to do any real work, in Kuwait for example, there are far more immigrants living there than Kuwaitis, simply to satisfy the demand for everything to be done for them, so they can spend more time in the luxurious shopping malls. any work is simply beneath them, beause they all get given "government jobs" and handed tonnes of oil money.

its the dream isnt it

Madawi Al-Rasheed @MadawiDr 5h 5 hours ago

King Salman has a great challenge, he cannot leave Caliph Baghdadi claiming victory as sole purger of rejectionists and their backers

Madawi Al-Rasheed @MadawiDr 5h 5 hours ago

Houthis were God-sent for King Salman to restore Saudi imperial fantasies by military means

https://twitter.com/monaelnaggar/status/582295753080446976

lol

What is Wahhabism? You have written a whole book about it. Can you tell us its origin?

Actually I haven’t written a book about it, though Michael Crawford has—a short but well-researched book on Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. As to its origin, I don’t have a good answer. The potential was always there in the Islamic heritage, and it had been realized before, by Ibn Taymiyya and his followers. But I’ve really no idea why this potential should suddenly be activated in eighteenth-century Najd. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself talks about something like a moment when the inspiration came to him.

http://iranian.com/posts/islam-mohammad-and-isil---an-interview-with-a-scholar-of-islam-48366

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/big-cats-of-the-gulf

loooool @ that hunt

loooool @ that hunt
^^^^
as telling in its way as the hunting scene in Rules of the Game

indeed

funny b/c the kuwaitis i know all have a common disgust for animals, dogs, cats, w/e. they're just seen as plain dirty, and the idea of keeping a dog in the house is purely repellant, literally their faces scruch up in horror.

omg did u catch the guy in one of the background shots at the hunt wearing the AGI shirt?

And if you want to taste the sectarianism of all this, just take a look at Saudi Arabia’s latest request to send more Pakistani troops to protect the kingdom (and possibly help to invade Yemen), which came from the new Saudi Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman who at only 34 is not much older than his fighter pilots. But the Saudis added an outrageous second request: that the Pakistanis send only Sunni Muslim soldiers. Pakistani Shia Muslim officers and men (30 per cent of the Pakistani armed forces) would not be welcome.

It’s best left to that fine Pakistani newspaper The Nation – and the writer Khalid Muhammad – to respond to this sectarian demand. “The army and the population of Pakistan are united for the first time in many years to eliminate the scourge of terrorism,” Muhammad writes. But “the Saudis are now trying to not only divide the population, but divide our army as well. When a soldier puts on a uniform, he fights for the country that he calls home, not the religious beliefs that they carry individually… Do they (the Saudis) believe that a professional military like Pakistan… can’t fight for a unified justified cause? If that is the case then why ask Pakistan to send its armed forces?”

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/robert-fisk-who-is-bombing-whom-in-the-middle-east-10222938.html

am off to do duty in the house of Saud right now; maybe I'll ask about bin Salman

just be sure to use the correct translation of his arabic honorific 'his most exalted the top, top, top bloke' king salman

décomposition totale

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/world/middleeast/king-salman-upends-status-quo-in-region-and-the-royal-family.html

from related/ linked article

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-king-wont-attend-camp-david-meeting.html

But, he added, “there’s a growing perception at the White House that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are friends but not allies, while the U.S. and Iran are allies but not friends.”

?

oh snap

Has anyone been to Saudi Arabia on business? Any tips?

Are they still deporting people for being too handsome?

the brass neck on this one

(i've turned down saudi arabia on business but as i've never been i can't help so much - except that given my own experiences of the house of saud so long as you're not an idiot in public you'll be fine)

the mutaween arrest people, even the white foreigners, for practising foreign religion, drinking alcohol, fucking arround etc within the confines of their homes too

the expatriate kleptocrats/tyrants and other scum probably don't show you the polaroids of tortured aluminium war trade unionists or beheaded shi'a/sufists/filipina maids etc

the brass neck on this one

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Wednesday, 20 May 2015 09:02 (1 hour ago)

lol

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/6/5/8735325/germany-bought-2006-world-cup-votes-by-sending-saudi-arabia-rocket

disappointed it was grenades rather than arugula

Miss Arab USA feeling sad

that is some waterproof mascara

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/assad_russia2.jpg?w=1350

https://www.facebook.com/MaryanaNaumovaSport

^ Russia dangerously escalating Assad's defensive capabilities.

http://i.imgur.com/YITx19q.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWi3WoFoCQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwWMZLAIrNg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzqHx7veNjo

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4706675,00.html

I have arrived in Arabia.

It is very warm.

whereabouts

UAE followed by Kuwait then back to UAE.

The essential truth about Syria is that no one apart from Iran knows what they are doing. This isn’t an admission of incompetence. It is a recognition that there are so many different actors in the conflict, so many moving parts to any solution, and so many different linkages with other conflicts and sociopolitical challenges in the wider region, and that so much stuff just happens (such as the shooting down of a Russian fighter plane) that it is impossible to construct a line of argument that has conclusively persuasive evidential or empirical support. To put it another way, you can argue from similar premises to a range of different conclusions.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3fc838a2e2441346358ca22e8071becaa0badf13/278_0_5648_3391/master/5648.jpg?w=1920&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=4068e13016cba106305e9ac24ab8639a

^ Probably going in two weeks if my local colleagues can get around to arranging the visa invitation letter. Seems to be a very limited number of guidebooks available.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/006fd20180e1a0aff0821516ff5ddf3721d6d248/0_0_3075_4235/master/3075.jpg?w=1920&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=70713fb46f332c6cc0587abadad1dad0

https://twitter.com/AliAlAhmed_en/status/691366333401931776

If there is no Turkish intervention on a significant scale then Assad and his allies are winning, because the enhanced Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah intervention has tipped the balance in their favour. The troika of regional Sunni states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – have failed, so far, to overthrow Assad through backing the Syrian armed opposition.

Their enthusiasm for doing so is under strain. Saudi Arabia has a mercurial leadership, is enmeshed in a war in Yemen, and the price of oil may stay at $30 a barrel. Qatar’s actions in Syria are even more incalculable. “We can never figure out Qatar’s policies,” said one Gulf observer in frustration. A more caustic commentator, in Washington, adds that “Qatari foreign policy is a vanity project”, comparing it to Qatar’s desire to buy landmark buildings abroad or host the football World Cup at home.

There is a definite perception that Qatar is awash with cash in a way few others are atm and using some of it to shape opinion in the west.

Some of the ways it is doing that look relatively unsophisticated - strengthening the biases of Al Jazeera (while maintaining a measure of credibility) and shovelling cash to lobbyists and newspapers but I'm increasingly suspicious of a lot of the new ME "experts" who have gone from blogging at AJ to writing for WSJ, Buzzfeed, WP, and using their Twitter platforms to push a much stronger, and in some cases borderline inexplicable, pro Qatar/Saudi/Al-Nusra and anti Iran line.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e541bfaafe62a4c2caafeedf810a41da5b7722e8/0_124_5584_3348/master/5584.jpg?w=1920&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=b3bed8be707458e7cffebd046e8c0123

this is where we commend whoever edits arabia pictures for the guardian

I do occasionally wonder how easy it is to recruit people to the Saudi army and about the calibre of ground troops they have.

their military gets a really bad write-up obviously
and despite hardware advantage they have been fairly crap fighting the houthis
from a 20 yr old book about mercenaries (janice e thompson princeton 1994) i was reading the other day

Examples of nonstate actors exerting decision-making authority over state-owned resources (box 7) are more difficult to find. One possibility is certain nineteenth-century military expeditions that were mounted by private individuals and groups in the United States but that employed U.S. Army officers, soldiers, and equipment. The current arrangement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is perhaps another example. Pakistan provides troops to Saudi Arabia in exchange for economic aid, a practice that is not unusual. What is unusual, however, is that many of the Paki- stani troops are fully integrated into the Saudi forces, even wearing Saudi uniforms. Thus, Saudi Arabia exercises decision-making authority over labor resources that are owned by the Pakistani state.

if some of those looked perhaps more south asian than arab then that might explain the fetish balaclavas (other than 'security reasons' etc)

the CW i've heard is that they're excellent at maintaining rule by way of suppressing internal dissent but maybe not so good at fighting other countries

It wouldn't be a surprise if there were Pakistani troops there. I know they have served in the Air Force before.

UAE has reintroduced conscription to get round this and is currently sending the children of the relatively well-heeled into Yemen. It will be interesting to see how that works out. They are apparently badly trained and don't know what they are doing. I suspect it's partly an effort to get them to stay in school.

Synergy University Dubai Campus is a branch campus of Synergy University (Russian: Университет Синергия) or Moscow University for Industry and Finance “Synergy” (Russian: Московский финансово-промышленный университет «Синергия») based in Dubai.

Synergy University is an institution for higher education aimed at combining traditional academic teaching with fundamental knowledge & practical orientation, also Synergy University is one of the largest universities in Eastern Europe with 35000+ students, 40 regional units & wide international representation in different countries of the world, including United Arab Emirates and Russian Federation.[2]

It runs a in-house TV channel “Synergy TV” in Dubai while maintaining an internal publishing house “Synergy Press”.

that links to....

Synergy Television (Synergy TV) is the first music oriented channel, serving Trinidad and Tobago.

I might give them a ring tomorrow to see if I can set up a visit. I will report back if they say yes.

Dubai is producing music television for Trinidad and Tobago?

yes i think sv might be behind it somehow

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/06/the-return-of-bernard-lewis/

BL: It is normal for human beings to judge others by ourselves. We are now in the 21st century of the Christian era. They are in the early fifteenth century of the Muslim era. It is a different religion based on entirely different historical experience, different message, different teaching, and it is therefore a grave error to do what people normally do, and that is judge others by ourselves. It does not work and it is dangerously misleading. If one looks at Islam from within and for that it is necessary to learn at least one Muslim language, something which many Middle East experts, in fact most Middle East experts in the West, for one reason or another are reluctant to do, if one learns he languages and reads what they say among themselves, and understands it in the context of their own history, their own culture, their own background, then I think I is not too difficult to understand what is happening.