Today just for fun, exclusive from Saudi Arabia: the tile that makes you sin

As it is Saturday afternoon, I’m going to post something, I ought to have posted sometime ago.

As you know there are some Spanish expatriates in Saudi Arabia who are blogging. One of them, Equisese, wrote about an incident which happened in his office. I’m going to translate his post about the “tile that makes you sin” (it’s not a joke):

I have just lived, some minutes ago, one of the most surrealist and shocking adventures of all my life here in Saudi Arabia. I was working in the office when the office assistant has come to mi office to tell me that there were two Saudis there who wanted to see me for information. This is not normal here, the questions normally come by fax/e-mail. Today all of my bosses were out, so I had to receive them. These two freaks enter till the end of my office, so I have to let them in the meeting room. After my presentations in a very bad Arab, I take into account that they do not understand English, so the office’s secretary, who is an Egyptian, and speaks Arab fluently, comes over to see what’s’ happening.

They began to speak and I see how they pull a tile from a plastic bad and they paint something on with a pen. As I do not understand anything, I conclude they are builders/architects who are just complaining about a faulty consigment. When the Egyptian begins translating to me what they were saying, I couldn’t believe my ears: those guys were complaining about the tiles which were used for their bathroom. One day while one the guys was sat in the toilet he saw in the lines that the tile forms, the figure of a woman and of a man. The gentleman has gone to the Saudi Standards Association to say that how on earth this was permitted and, in the offices of SASO, they have sent them to my office. The man was very angry and said that “he did not want to see men and women in the walls each time he was having a shit (sic)”. The poor man spent some time pointing at the figures he was supposedly seeing in the tile. And as we were totally unable to see them, he just wrote in the tile “Woman’s photo, Man’s photo”.

Conclusiones (from Equisese):

• In this country there are people who are really insane.
• In this country the people are not busy enough.
• In this building, security is very faulty, leaving two people with no identification enter it, and with a plastic bag in one hand.
• Spain is trying to pervert the great Saudi nation with porn tiles.

Now for the photo of the alleged porn tile:

You can read more here, here and here.

There is another very good point though: the tile had been in the bathroom for ten years!!! So why does he complain now? Did he really see the bodies? Or did he just want a change in the tiles of all the bathroom -as he asked-?

This Saudis are foolish!! (or not).

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Pakistan: Al-Qaeda’s priority

I haev read a very interesting post by excellent Italian blogger Paolo di Lautreamont which summarizes very well the situation lived today in Muslim countries:

The new Jihadi Islam’s limit is in Pakistan. The spring campaign in Afganistan was unsuccesful. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Taliban’s ally War-lord and opium trafficker, has announced his decision of funding exclusively a new political party, Hezb-i-islami, similar to Batasuna in Basque Country, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Palestine.  

The attention of the wahhabi strategists is now focused in Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons. All of the Sunni Muslims will have to counterbalance the nuclear challenge of Teheran, without being dependant from  Washington. As a result, Pakistan is one of the countries which are more at risk in the planet, with Iran and Russia, the latter considering itself the victim in a new reissue of the Cold War and considering as a second hand problem the conflict with the Islamic fundamentalism.

The detonators have been the “judicial revolt” and the problems with the Red Mosque. Yesterday 2 suicide terrorist attacks -in the south and in the north- have caused 32 victims, of which the greater part were policemen. Since the “battle” of the Mosque in Islamabad 140 people have been killed by terrorist attacks. The President Pervez Musharraf has proclaimed the Martial Law, after the attack against an office of the ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in exile in London, the only opposition leader who has supported the attack against Red Mosque.

The use of religious structures as a military basis is -according to Daniel Pipes- a new way of war in Islam, after revolution, the cuop d’état and the civil war.L’utilizzo di strutture religiose come basi militari costituisce –sostiene Daniel Pipes- una nuova forma dell’islam di guerra, dopo la rivoluzione, il golpe e la guerra civile.

There are no differences between the guerrilla leaders which operate in Pakistan and the Taliban ideology. The Islam of the soul is dead after the assassination of the Afghan poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, in Peshawar on 1988. He was the author of « Songs of love and war » (Other press), which was dedicated to the pashtun women. For the people inside the Mosque, the Mussharraf’s attack is a shame which must be washed on blood. But the Pakistani Government defines the Taliban as “unbelievers“. And after the “liberation” of the Red Mosque, the effective chief of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has made a statemente against Musharraf. The president (no democrat, ça va sans dire) considered the mosque Lal Mashid as a “fortress which should be conquered by force”, and that was made with the support of the West and China (read L’Opinione of July 17th).

The Mosque of Islamabad, built in the 1980’s, is a part of the religious center built around the madrassa Jamia Hafsa. The Islamic school hosts 9000 students, most of which are women. The founder Maulana Abdullah was reveared because of his anti-Soviet preaching. Maulana Abdullah was murdered in 1998. His successors were his two sons Abdul Aziz and Rashid Ghazi: their ideology derives from the tradition of  Deoband, in India. It is and alternative verssion of the “British” Islam: their foundators were inspired in a return to the “simplicity of the Prophet“, similar to Salafism.

The deobandit school has formed Taliban monk-soldiers since december whose dream was ended on 2001.

According to Roland Jacquard: “Al-Qaeda’s target is to desestabilize Pakistan to obtain Pakistani nuclear arsenal.… Since 1997, bin Laden had already spent great sums to corrupt some nuclear engineer and obtain the complicity of the generals and other members of the Pakistani secret service”. The Intelligence Service is independent. Born in 1948, the ISI is controlled in a little part by Musharraf and has been one of the architects of the uncomprehensible tolerance towards the rise of the Pakistani madrassas. Musharraf hislef has flirted with the Pakistani pro-Al-Qaeda party, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).

Aware of the explicit support of the MMA, and of the implicit one from ISI, the two sons of Maulana Abdullah have built (illegally) dozens of mosques and madrassas, have proceeded to give away books and videos, have closed businesses “deemed against Saria law“, have created the Brigades of the burqa, formed by veiled women and armed with bambou. Today Pakistan is divided in two.

By the way, the Chief Judge Iktifar Chaudry (right) which was expelled by Musharraf has been reinstated in his post. Musharraf has already said he respects the rulling and that he fully accepts it.

[As ever, if any Italian reader considers there is a fault in the translation, please leave a comment about it. Thanks.].

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UN probes ‘abuse’ in Ivory Coast

 

The United Nations is investigating allegations of widespread sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers serving in Ivory Coast. The UN said a unit of its contingent in Bouake, a northern rebel stronghold, had been confined to base. It would not give the nationalities of those troops under investigation. [Why so much secrets about this?]

Claims of sexual abuse have been made against UN troops on various missions, prompting ex-UN chief Kofi Annan to declare a “zero tolerance” policy.

“There have been crimes such as rape, paedophilia and human trafficking,” he said in December 2006, shortly before leaving office.

He said sexual exploitation and abuse were “utterly immoral” and at odds with the UN mission, and would be punished. Sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeeping personnel hit the headlines in 2004 after a UN report detailed widespread abuse in the DR Congo involving UN troops.

More than 300 members of UN peacekeeping missions around the world have been investigated for sexual exploitation and abuse since 2004, including some stationed in Congo, Cambodia and Haiti.

BBC NEWS | Africa | UN probes ‘abuse’ in Ivory Coast

You know, I am not going to say that every Un peacekeeper is an abuser -soemthing that a lo of people have said of the Catholic priests-.

But it would be good that, for a change, the same people who attack the Catholic Church about the children abuse, would also attack the UN about this. In the end, you only belong to the Catholic Church if you want, but all countries -and as a result their citizens- are contributing to UN missions, with money, material and, what is more important, with soldiers. The lack of information that has been provided is also a fault that could not be easily solved.

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