A Girl’s Guide to Saudi Arabia
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/08/maureen-dowd-201008#
“Wow, Saudi Arabia sounds really horrible. Why is this country our ally?”
Good question. Probably because it works out politically for us, despite the disgustingly hypocritical morality issues.
Of course, since none of these things happened to 3bm103, it must all be lies and exaggerations.
One of the more interesting stories I heard, was about a female pilot at my company who had a layover in Saudi Arabia. I think it was in Riyadh. She went outside to the hotel pool, and jumped in, in her bathing suit. The horror, the horror! Apparently they cleared everyone out of the pool, and had to drain it.
Who knows why? I guess you can’t have any ladyparts in a pool in Saudi Arabia, at least where she was. Those women are just sooooo disgusting.
Honestly, it seems like dealing with a bunch of elementary school boys. Oh no, girls, cooties!
Shortly before I went, there was an American businesswoman who went to visit the company she worked for. The power went out so she and a male coworker grabbed their laptops and went to Starbucks to continue working. She wS arrested and thrown in jail for socializing with a male she was unrelated to. Btw I traveled with a male coworker and we told everyone he was my brother (we look enough alike it was plausible). Am on iPhone but will try to find the story I’m referring to.
Bus driver - I flew SAA from Jeddah to Cairo. Once on board I took off my abaya and hijab as I saw other women doing the same. I had on capri length pants and a sweater that was 3/4 length sleeves. The FA moved me, because the man next to me complained because he could see my wrists. Which clearly are tantalizing beyond belief. Note how they reseated ME the woman - not the complaining passenger.
We now come full circle to another thread where people discussed orthodox Jewish men also insisting women be reseated so the men don’t have to sit next to them.
Yep, which was just as pathetic.
I just want to note, though, that my wrists ARE outstanding and clearly DO drive men wild. I’ll be in the next Victoria’s Secret TV special showing them off 
A Girl’s Guide to Saudi Arabia was an interesting read, thanks @brantly for sharing, I can’t even wrap my head around this quote from the article:
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“Wow, Saudi Arabia sounds really horrible. Why is this country our ally?”
Several reasons:
1)Oil…I used to laugh at those ads during the Bush administration, showing how drug users were funding terrorists in south america or the taliban. They should have shown some suburban soccer mom filling up her SUV, given how much of terrorism is funded by petro dollars. Anyway, Saudi is ‘our friend’ because without Saudi oil flowing, the price would go through the roof (perhaps less today with the growth in production elsewhere, but still)
2)During the cold war, Saudi Arabia’s anti communist stance and its geographical position in the mideast, made it a player in the proxy war between the US and Russia (Russia, for example, supporting Egypt and Syria, among others, the US Israel and its proxy states, like Iran at the time).
3)Today, it is the claim that Saudi Arabia is an ally on the fight against terrorism (which to be honest, is something of a joke, given how Saudi money is funding extremists and also funding terrorists as well).
It shouldn’t be a big surprise that the US is and continues to be willing to look “the other way” (anyone wonder why much of the 9/11 report still remains classified? I can guarantee you it isn’t because of confidentiality of spies and such, more than likely it is because it highlights just how much the Saudi’s were tied up in 9/11, members of the government especially). Take a look at US policy in south america, where we supported a bunch of fascist military governments in places like argentina, that among other thing harbored something like 60,000 wanted war criminals from the Nazi regime, not to mention human rights abuses against their own citizens that we only today are starting to see the scope of.
With Saudi Arabia, the answer is that the government and business interests have too many ties to them to want to see the regime change. Plus, as with Iraq, I suspect they are afraid that you would see the same thing we saw elsewhere in the middle east, that the Royal family and their fundamentalist W’habi religion they promote all over the world, as bad as it is, might be replaced by something worse, like an ISIS or worse.
Europeans and those of us who like to travel in Europe don’t want Europe backsliding into the barbarism of treatment of women that pervades the Middle East. Germany and some of the other countries thought they were being altruistic by encouraging these migrants to come to Europe. By way of repaying that kindness, Sweden now has the second highest rate of rape in the world since the large influx of immigrants.
Thanks for the clarification on why Saudi Arabia is our ally. Frankly, it makes it hard for me to take our foreign policy seriously if we support such an obviously evil and abusive culture. Muslims these days are getting a lot of criticism, but there are so many different flavors of Islam in many different countries, they can’t really be lumped together. For example, I have a close female friend from Bangladesh, and her version of Islam looks nothing like what’s described here about Saudi Arabia. She does not wear any sort of cover-up clothing, just normal soccer-mom clothes, and her husband (a doctor) is very kind and treats her like a partner. They lived in London before coming to the US and they are really nice, sophisticated people. I have also known a lot of people from Turkey, and while they do seem to be a little more conservative and biased towards favoring males (and the females wear colorful head scarves), I don’t think the modesty issue is generally carried to the extremes described here. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, sounds like the number one offender for this misogynistic, abusive variety of Islam, and if we want to reject the more evil aspects of Islam, shouldn’t SA be deleted from our friends list?
Not to mention that the government beheaded 47 people this week.
Want to know the kicker, @chris17mom? Their ‘Islam’ is only applicable to certain people. I know firsthand some Saudi princes who got drunk on a regular basis and did things so preverse that even the most hardcore frat boy would blanch at, yet NOTHING is done to them. Because they’re royalty. Funny thing is this exactly the type of inequality and favortism the profit reviled. And their absurd punishments are found nowhere in the Qur’an. @Pizzagirl you would be surprised - and no small measure amused - to know that the Qur’an actualy commands the men to shy away from ogling women. It tells everybody to be modest, but explicitly tells the men to “lower your gaze and guard [your] private parts [from committing a sin]”. I can tell you that when other muslims speak of Saudi Arabians (even people from other GCC countries), it is with thinly veiled disgust. Hell, I’m muslim and some of the Saudis make my skin crawl.
*Prophet. Ughh auto correct. Sorry for the mistakes, but I can’t edit on my phone.
@InfinityMan Wow, that is super creepy!