First friends, you must read below report straight out of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (The Week, July 19, 2013).
"Ramadan is mandatory: Saudi Arabia will kick out any foreigner who is not observing a daytime fast for the holy month of Ramadan. 'Non-Muslim residents in the kingdom must not eat or drink in public during Ramadan, in respect to the holiness of Ramadan and the feelings of Muslims,' the Interior Ministry announced. Any expat caught eating or smoking in public from sunup to sundown will be fired from their job and deported. Saudi Arabia is home to some 8 million foreign workers, mostly from Asian countries. In the past, foreigners were asked to refrain from eating in public during Ramadan, but they weren't threatened with punishment. Saudis, meanwhile, will be jailed or lashed if they're caught breaking the fast."
Now, let's briefly talk about this. One can readily see that the Saudi tribe is resolutely marching backwards in history, their reverse gear (leur marche arriere) is fine-tuned to perfection, an achievement in its own right when it comes to our friends in the great kingdom.
Is this the kind of vision and leadership one would expect from a nation? Saudi Arabia, despite its great wealth and implicit influence all over the Middle East, has proven once again that it is no more than a glorified tribe, the quintessential tribe. What standards are being set here in regards freedom, freedom of belief, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of being in general? What is so difficult to understand about the meaning of freedom? How about human rights? Are they optional in Saudi Arabia? Maybe over there expats and citizens alike are not considered full-fledged humans, only some form of sub-humans. What a role model this corrupt and amoral piece of land is, most particularly as the world is well into the 21st century.
One cannot help but think if such ridiculous rules were enacted in Egypt, there would be approximately 10 million Egyptian Copts, other Egyptians, including non-fasting Muslim Egyptians and thousands of foreigners threatened, fearful for their well-being and forced into a way of life not of their choosing, coerced to observe a religion just because government says so and is willing to use force. The high idiocy of this is that if I am obliged to follow the basic acts of a religion, Islam here, under threats from authorities of physical harm or a miserable life, then I am not religious at all, at all, I am simply a scared rat. This is even more moronic for those poor foreigners who happen to live in Saudi Arabia, mightily helping it to look presentable to the rest of the world, not in substance for sure but at least on the surface.
Moreover, one is colossally dumbfounded when attempting to reconcile this announcement of the Saudi Interior Ministry with modern and diverse societies all over the world. It is unfathomable that any nation of the developed world would contemplate in its laws or codified rules such restrictions that blatantly disregard any form of modern human rights and disrespect the global nature of modern societies where diversity rules for the citizenry and expats alike. Just imagine, a Christian-majority country stipulating that during Christmas and Easter, each citizen and expat should attend church services or be punished ......and so on and so forth throughout the world.
On a personal note, a couple of days ago, I was with family and friends in Philadelphia, US. There were 5 of us, 4 Muslims and one Jew. We had a terrific time, walking, talking, having coffee, iced drinks, lunch, etc. Guess what, one of us was fasting, she was right there for the whole of the 5 hours we were together, we did not mind her and hopefully she did not mind us, well, if she did she would not have come along, would she! One thing I am pretty sure of, doing this on a Ramadan day will not prevent me from getting to Heaven, only lousy character, substandard ethics, rotten principles and corrupt morals will.
Hussein
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it -- but all that had gone before." Jacob Riis
