Christians To Seek Converts At Mosques’ Doorsteps

[Budge]

[quote]You're doing the same thing you do when you point out "catholics" who don't follow proper belief. Every issue has it's radical side. However, I'm going to trust someone who has lived in a Muslim country, rather than some books. No one is saying these women are lying, but these are just isolated cases by radical muslims. This is not the norm.[/quote]

Isolated cases?

Entire countries are run by the radical muslim way, sure there are more moderate places like Turkey, but let me ask Cathaholic a few questions...

How long would I last in Saudia Arabia with a box of Bibles and preaching on a street corner or two?

We know even via newstories that some of these nations are run by Sharia law, ie, women in Saudia Arabia are not allowed to drive etc.

You cant claim that there are only a few radical sects when there are entire nations under Sharia Law and in some of these nations they even have religious "police" that go around punishing women who show too much skin and more.
[b]
Am I wrong to believe that Sharia law in more extreme Muslim nations is still in force?[/b]

Sharia law covers entire nations, not just a sect or two.

By the way I stand against evil in my own denimination. I am in between churches now but my last church was indpt Baptist, I did find things that concerned me, {hyles anderson, dominionism, legalisms etc} but I apply same standards there I apply to everyone else. That standard being Gods Word.

As for this writer being a fraud....

Heres the problem, even good ex-Catholics who leave and write books, are called frauds. How do I know youre not just claiming that?

[quote]She joins Norma Khouri and one or two other peddlars of fictional horror stories who have capitalised on the fascination with Muslim women and life 'in the East'. Her real name is Hirshi Magan - she changed her name to make it sound more 'Islamic' - and far from being a persecution victim in Somalia, she actually led a comfortable life in Kenya before emigrating to the Netherlands.[/quote]
[b]She [u]ADMITS the namechange in the book[/u], in fact, I remember that name Hirshi Magan.

She [u]also ADMITTED she was of a HIGHER CLASS[/u], with a father who was vetted at high levels in African govt.[/b]

[b]
What part of her story do you believe is made up?

Lets get specific,....[/b]

she really speaks of her own experiences and that of her family....

is it the arranged marriages, the required dress and more? the female circumcision? her sisters mental illness? Her beating at the hand of the imman?

What part do you believe is FAKE?

The thing I found scary is realizing this woman was of a higher socioeconomic class then most, so if she had this bad, how bad does the average or poor woman have it?

[quote]As for Carmen bin Laden, she lived in Saudi Arabia back when Riyadh was practically rural and camels were more common than cars. She also lived in the bin Laden family. You can't hold one family as representative of typical Saudis.[/quote]

So does this mean that Sharia law is not in place in Saudia Arabia?

That women can now drive, and travel freely without head coverings?

Travel alone?

Carmen Bin Laden is at most in her late 50s?

My family knew some people in govt who were sent over to Saudia Arabia to work, I remember the rules for the women and more. One rule in force is you are not to even have a Bible on your person.
There are definite rules for dress and behavior. Some of the female friends coming back made it clear they were not allowed to travel alone without a male chaperone.

[quote]Male circumcision is an Islamic practice and happens to all baby boys. Female circumcision is not Islamic and never has been. It is not prescribed in the Qur'an and has been explicitly forbidden by various eminent Islamic scholars, such as ibn Qudamah, who argued that it interfered with a woman's sexual pleasure and was therefore wrong.[/quote]

Yes you are correct there, it is not practiced in all Islamic countries.

[quote]'Banning to home' is another myth. Have you never seen Muslim women out at work? I have. Many of them. Muslims do believe that motherhood is a female's most sacred duty, but there's nothing to stop her from doing other jobs as well, providing it doesn't hurt the children.[/quote]

In more moderate countries--Iraq , Turkey etc, I am sure many do work. I suppose too the members of the lower classes have no choice but to work. Do women of ALL CLASSES work in Saudia Arabia? You have grown up there can probably share that more directly.

[quote]As for arranged marriages, they are an Islamic practice. Unquestionably. But they are not unique to Islam. In Nepal, where I was teaching over the summer, arranged marriages happened in the Christian community too. That's what Nepali culture is like. In fact, the Western idea of dating and going out with people prior to marriage is very unfamiliar in many cultures of the world, no matter whether they're Muslim or not. In fact, parents had a great deal more say in their children's marriages in our own culture until comparatively recently.[/quote]

Sure, it happens in other cultures.

But why claim these women are leading people falsely, when they admit arranged marriages are part of the deal? even if it they do happen in other cultures.

[quote]Budge, it is very arrogant to think that education and being in contact with 'the West' are tantamount to the same thing. Fatin is a Saudi, a citizen of a country not renowned for being 'moderate'. She's also not the only female Muslim I know - she is just one specific example I gave. I could talk about many others.[/quote]

No its not arrogant, one needs money to gain education and many folks go overseas to gain this education. By the way what lead you to now live in England? Was that related to education? How did your family decide to leave Saudia Arabia and go to England or was that just you?

One will have more contact with the West just as a Westerner will learn more about the "East" via education. It is a natural outcome.


[quote]Why is it that 20/20 Reports, Time Magazine news articles, and practically every other Western form of journalism have a completely different opinion than you on the abusive treatment women receive in the Middle East? You obviously came from a wealthy family. Is it that your higher status has shielded you from the terrible pain many of your Islamic sisters have suffered? Sudan has a fully functional slave trade.[/quote]

I really find myself asking how could someone deny these things going on? Perhaps they lived in an more moderate enclave, but there have been too many books, too many eyewitnesses for these things to be discounted. I want specifics. Are these things not happening?

[quote]You should be addressing specific points from her books that you disagree with (and subsequently providing evidence to the contrary), not attacking her credibility because she changed her name[/quote].

Since the name change is admitted to in the book, that argument falls flat, I would like Cathohoilic to be more specific as well.

[Budge]

One note: I WANT to know if I am being lied too about these cultures, so if Cathoholic can back up more speficically, things being talked about here, then Im all for it.

I dont think Americans are told the truth about many things in the world....

so the floor is yours Cathohoilic.

{even with this author {Hirshi Magden} Im defending, if you can tell me more Im interested, I know she has a pro-globalist Un agenda and other political and religious views I disagree with, so when I ask you to get specific, its not to be sarcastic, but a real request for specific info}

Edited August 16, 2007 by Budge

[jeffpugh]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1359916' date='Aug 16 2007, 12:37 AM']Just one more thing put as humble as I can before I go. From my experience, conversion is a much longer process than most people really understand. Tim Staples once told me that it takes an average of 21 thought paradigms before a devout person of another faith finds themselves truly convincted to come into the Catholic Church. Most evangelists may cover 1 - 3 paradigms, which means that potential convert must meet at least 7 other good Catholics who equally convict them. As incredible as it is, I have found Tim's average to be right on the money (give or take a paradigm).

I've also found that each paradigm becomes harder with time, requiring more conviction to keep the prospective convert on the right track. You take the chance of a person loosing their faith completely if they don't stay on task, as well. This is why liberal Catholics do not bother to convict people to come into the Church, but tell them to stay where they are. They find the confrontation unsettling and uncontrollable. It does take a sensitive evangelist to stay patient amidst the average person's stubbornous. But those last few paradigms do require a much stricter approach, nonetheless. This is why I find Cathoholics approach limited. Her approach is useful in beginning a discussion, but I cannot see it being effective enough to really lead someone completely into the Church. Apart from trying to defend myself, that was really the point I was trying to make. I hope this at least helps calm things here. I apologize if I let things become uncomfortable for anybody. God bless!

Steve S. -- Abercius24
CatholicQandA.com[/quote]
Personally, I see where you're coming from here. I look back on my levels of conversion (the initial conversion to the faith, then the deeper renewal) and I see what you're talking about. But, I think Cathoholic is going in the right direction. Seriously, though, converting someone can not be done by the book. Everyone must have a unique way of coming to the faith. Jesus didn't heal people the same way twice in scripture... he doesn't call people to His Church with the same formula either. Thanks for the post, though. I've been taking a lot from this thread. God bless.

[edit] I should also mention, I see the problem with the paradigms when talking to a Pentecostal about the faith. I say some stuff that is linked totally biblically, historically, traditionally, and other ways I can't immediately explain without writing a book, and he goes "wha--?". It's deep. And I keep getting deeper. The hardest part is finding the beginning after all that.

Edited August 17, 2007 by Sacred Music Man

[abercius24]

[quote name='Sacred Music Man' post='1360795' date='Aug 16 2007, 10:41 PM']Personally, I see where you're coming from here. I look back on my levels of conversion (the initial conversion to the faith, then the deeper renewal) and I see what you're talking about. But, I think Cathoholic is going in the right direction. Seriously, though, converting someone can not be done by the book. Everyone must have a unique way of coming to the faith. Jesus didn't heal people the same way twice in scripture... he doesn't call people to His Church with the same formula either. Thanks for the post, though. I've been taking a lot from this thread. God bless.

[edit] I should also mention, I see the problem with the paradigms when talking to a Pentecostal about the faith. I say some stuff that is linked totally biblically, historically, traditionally, and other ways I can't immediately explain without writing a book, and he goes "wha--?". It's deep. And I keep getting deeper. The hardest part is finding the beginning after all that.[/quote]

I should better explain the term "thought paradigm". There is an emotional element to the conversion process that I would include in that term. The heart must be evangelized just as much as the mind. Without evengalizing the heart, one can in fact contribute to another's development as an anti-Catholic who is very knowledgable about the Church, but emotionally jaded due to the lack of emotional benefit they received when seeking the Church. People need to be loved and respected. They not only need to know Jesus loves them through the Sacraments, they need to FEEL His love in the Sacraments. They don't need to feel His love all the time (which some foolishly require to sustain their faith), but they do need those intimate moments between them and Christ to sustain them through those emotionally dry periods.

So there are emotional "thought paradigms" as well. This is particularly true when approaching topics like the Eucharist and Marian devotion. There's not much intellectual content to grasp with those doctrines, but there is a profound emotional and spiritual development that goes on when one is challenged to internally address them.

Steve S. -- abercius24
CatholicQandA.com

Edited August 17, 2007 by abercius24

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote]As for this writer being a fraud....

Heres the problem, even good ex-Catholics who leave and write books, are called frauds. How do I know youre not just claiming that?[/quote]

Budge, pause for a moment and consider the huge popularity of 'rags to riches' stories, or stories on a similar line. There is a big market for the Tragic Life Story. Take a drug addict who gets involved in car wrecks and ends up in serious trouble with the police, before dramatically turning his life around and writing a top-selling book - and you have James Frey and [i]A Million Little Pieces[/i]. It turns out that he genuinely did have a drug problem, but he was actually from a nice background and had never been involved in some sort of shady criminal underworld. The 'bad boy' persona and many of the book's spicier details were fabricated.

The same is true of a saddening number of "I-escaped-from-this-that-and-the-other" books. The Holocaust memoirs [i]The Painted Bird[/i] and [i]Fragments[/i]? Made up. Fabricated. Some people do it out of greed, some people for attention, some people as a kind of revenge on family members and friends whom they don't particularly like. I don't know what Hirsi Ali's motivations were, but I do know that her books are riddled with inconsistencies and that people who know her have said that certain things can't be true.

The first alarm bell rang for me when I read that to get asylum in Holland she claimed to have fled wartorn Somalia, when in reality she had been living in Kenya (a perfectly safe country) for the past twelve years. She also lied about her real name, her date of birth, and her presence in Germany to be able to get that asylum permit - something that put her Dutch citizenship in jeopardy when it came out. She was forced to resign from Parliament as a result. Furthermore, a Dutch investigation (publicised on the TV show [i]Zembla[/i]) found that her family had had no knowledge whatsoever of a supposed arranged marriage. As for her 'required dress', it is not required in Nairobi. At all. By her own admission she CHOSE to wear a headscarf and cloak, writing that it gave her 'a sense of superiority'.

Ali faked a history for herself in order to get asylum in Holland (why Holland specifically, when European law states that she should have applied in Germany, the first European country she visited?) and I can quite well believe that she faked an explosive and exotic past in order to further her political career. This suggestion is made all the more likely by the discrepancies that exist between [i]Infidel[/i] and [i]The Caged Virgin[/i]. For example, in [i]The Caged Virgin[/i] Ali wrote that her sister came to the Netherlands to avoid being 'married off'. In [i]Infidel[/i] she says that Haweya came to recover from an illicit affair with a married man that ended in abortion.

Ali is an opportunist, and she's certainly not the first one. The sad thing is that there are women out there who have genuinely been abused and persecuted in Shar'iah states, but their stories are cast into doubt due to opportunists and liars. A glaring example is Mukhtar Mai. Her village council in Pakistan ordered her to be gang-raped as a punishment for a sexual indiscretion that an adolescent boy in her family had committed. She was raped by the brothers of the girl whom this teenager had slept with. And the Pakistani justice system turned a blind eye. The village turned a blind eye. Mukhtar was expected to just accept this as perfectly fair and reasonable.

Only she didn't. She fought it in the courts and she won. Now she is struggling for greater educational opportunity for girls in Pakistan and is busy establishing schools. But she has not received one-fifth of the press attention that Hirsi Ali got. Admittedly Mukhtar Mai's book wasn't launched on the back of a controversial film and the murder of the film's director, but you would think that the media over here in the West would still do a little more for her than print photos of her face at its most tearful in the newspaper, tell the story of the gang rape in graphic detail, and then forget about her and everything she's been trying to do ever since. This is what angers me the most about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her ilk.

[quote name='Budge' post='1360145' date='Aug 16 2007, 07:55 PM']Isolated cases?

Entire countries are run by the radical muslim way, sure there are more moderate places like Turkey, but let me ask Cathaholic a few questions...

How long would I last in Saudia Arabia with a box of Bibles and preaching on a street corner or two?[/quote]

Turkey is not a Muslim country. It's a secular state - so secular that some universities have barred women students wearing [i]hijab[/i] from attending until they take the [i]hijab[/i] off. It's important to realise that a large Muslim population does not always guarantee that the country is following Islamic law, be it 'strict' or 'moderate'.

As I have already explained, if you tried to distribute Bibles or preach on street corners in Saudi Arabia you would be sent back to America. I don't know if that's what you meant by 'How long would I last...?' If you were asking whether you would be executed for such an action, I can only repeat for the third or fourth time in this thread that there is [i]no death penalty[/i] for proselytising in Saudi Arabia. If a foreign missionary comes in, they get deported back to the country where they came from.

[quote]We know even via newstories that some of these nations are run by Sharia law, ie, women in Saudia Arabia are not allowed to drive etc. You cant claim that there are only a few radical sects when there are entire nations under Sharia Law and in some of these nations they even have religious "police" that go around punishing women who show too much skin and more.[/quote]

Iran is an Islamic republic, and women drive there. Pakistan is an Islamic state, and women drive there. Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE - they are all governed in accordance with Shar'iah principles and they all have women drivers. Saudi Arabia is on its own where the driving ban for women is concerned. The government doesn't even try to use a religious justification for the ban. They say that it 'keeps the accident rate down'.

Yes, I know that's ridiculous. So do the rest of the countries in the Middle East. Saudi's law against female drivers can hardly be held up as an example of Shar'iah law in action, as the other Shar'iah countries don't see any point in it

As for the mutawwa'in, the religious police, they exist in Saudi Arabia - but again, they don't always look like the stereotype. I have only had one bad personal encounter with a religious policeman in all my time in Saudi. He was arrogant and rude and aggressive, yelling at me because I hadn't covered my hair. I have also seen an American man in a village near Riyadh being ordered sternly to remove his earrings and submit to an immediate haircut. (Funnily enough, most people in the West ignore the Islamic dress code for men and fixate on the code for women.) But out of all the encounters I've had with the [i]mutawwa'in[/i], those were the only unpleasant ones.

There are two rough categories of mutawwa'in: uneducated and mostly illiterate ex-convicts (usually former drug addicts) who underwent some kind of dramatic religious reform when in prison, and now take to preaching loudly on the streets; and well-educated Islamic scholars. [i]Mutawwa'in[/i] from the second category number among our family's friends. When my rosary was confiscated by some petty airport official, it was a [i]mutawwa[/i] who decided that it was against the law to take it and went to get it back for me. Contrary to the popular misconception, they do have jobs other than chasing after women with uncovered hair. Like looking out for the welfare of the beggars and seeing that alms are distributed fairly. They're not all self-righteous hypocrites on a power trip, although many of them do fit into that category with ease. This may come as a surprise, but many of them become [i]mutawwa'in[/i] because they care. And their chief preoccupations are not the clothes that people have on.

[quote]So does this mean that Sharia law is not in place in Saudia Arabia?

That women can now drive, and travel freely without head coverings?[/quote]

As I have already explained, the ban on driving has absolutely nothing to do with the Shar'iah. Regarding head coverings, that depends on where you live. In Jeddah and in the coastal cities of the Eastern Province I hardly ever wore a scarf. In Riyadh and Taif the dress code is stricter.

But one thing that people often fail to realise when they are busy discussing women's [i]hijab[/i] (and ignoring men's [i]hijab[/i]) is that to most Muslim women it is a fundamental part of their identity and not something they want to get rid of. When my friend Sobia was visiting from Saudi we had a long talk about his, as she has had to struggle with her family for the right to be [i]hijabi[/i] and is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the pressure to remove her scarf when they visit family friends. (Yes! Not all Middle Eastern Muslim families are exactly keen for their daughters to be religious in their dress!) Explaining why she couldn't go back on her choice, Sobia said to me, "I can't take off my [i]hijab[/i] any more than I can take off me." It's about time that some people in the West got off [url="http://www.modernmuslima.com/unveiled.htm"]the cultural high horse and started realising that 'head coverings' are not a Bad Thing just because we say so.[/url]

[quote]Carmen Bin Laden is at most in her late 50s?[/quote]

Saudi Arabia as it is now is completely unrecognisable from the Saudi Arabia of twenty or thirty years ago. My parents can remember a time when Tabuk only had two streets and neither of them were paved - and that was in the 1980s. They can also remember a time when the road from the northern province to Riyadh wasn't a proper road at all, just a track marked out with oil drums. And they are in their mid-fifties.

[quote]My family knew some people in govt who were sent over to Saudia Arabia to work, I remember the rules for the women and more. One rule in force is you are not to even have a Bible on your person.[/quote]

That's false. You are allowed to have Bibles and other religious items for your own personal use. If you take a box of Bibles over the Customs men will assume that you're going to start distributing them to people, and they will be confiscated. I brought Bibles and other articles in for myself and never had a problem, except for the one incident with the rosary - which was resolved by a [i]mutawwa[/i].

[quote]In more moderate countries--Iraq , Turkey etc, I am sure many do work. I suppose too the members of the lower classes have no choice but to work. Do women of ALL CLASSES work in Saudia Arabia? You have grown up there can probably share that more directly.[/quote]

Yes. They go to school. They attend university. And they work. Until recently job choice was quite limited - if you were female and wanted to be anything other than a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, or a social worker, you had no chance - but that's changing now, with women getting involved in everything from business to engineering. They still have a long way to go. A long way. There is something very wrong with the system when women hold fifty-five percent of the university degrees but not quite ten percent of the jobs, but I still don't believe that the blame for that can be laid on Islamic thought when Britain was in a very similar situation not sixty years ago.

[quote]But why claim these women are leading people falsely, when they admit arranged marriages are part of the deal? even if it they do happen in other cultures.
No its not arrogant, one needs money to gain education and many folks go overseas to gain this education. By the way what lead you to now live in England? Was that related to education? How did your family decide to leave Saudia Arabia and go to England or was that just you?[/quote]

Education is free in Saudi state schools and university is heavily subsidised, although the quality is nowhere nearly as good as in the private schools. I am back in Britain because my parents got homesick and decided to move back. I will return as soon as I can, although I have so many commitments in this country now that it looks like I will probably never live there full-time again.

[quote]I really find myself asking how could someone deny these things going on? Perhaps they lived in an more moderate enclave, but there have been too many books, too many eyewitnesses for these things to be discounted. I want specifics. Are these things not happening?[/quote]

Again, I don't deny that bad things go on in Saudi Arabia. Specifics? See my above stats on the current Saudi employment market. Women should be involved in a lot more sectors than they are and there should be a much higher rate of graduate employment. It's gross injustice and extremely belittling. The Saudi justice system is another problem; it's very difficult to get permission for a woman to testify in court due to their supposedly 'excitable natures'. But in all the books on Saudi that I've read, I have yet to come across [i]one[/i] that talks about these problems in detail. Oh, there are stories of doubtful authenticity that talk about sex and veils and more sex, reading like one of the more tasteless Mills and Boon novels, but there's nothing on a problem that's of such a vast scale that it affects around nine in ten Saudi women. Which is odd, as the glass ceiling in the Saudi job market (the concrete ceiling, more like) is considerably more noticeable and prominent than harems populated by nubile concubines - which are largely figments of the Western imagination anyway.

Does sexual abuse go on in Saudi Arabia? Again, yes. But it goes on ANYWHERE. One in six London women will get raped or suffer from other serious sexual assault during their liftetime, but where is the hue and cry about that? If a woman is raped or abused in the Middle East...it must be Islam that's at fault. If a woman is raped and abused in London...what are we going to blame it on?

To clarify my position again: I am not denying that Saudi Arabia has its fair share of problems. What I [i]am[/i] denying is that these problems can be attributed exclusively to Islam or even to Wahhabi Islam, especially given the numerous other factors that have to be taken into account. Socioeconomic development is one example. Saudi Arabia is a nation that got very rich very quickly. Alarmingly quickly. Life in sun-baked mud huts in the depths of Qassim Province is still in living memory for some people. The sudden economic acceleration brought its own challenges, including an influx of Western culture. Some Saudis have embraced it; others have dug their heels in, terrified that their own heritage is going to be buried under McDonald's packaging and European brand-name clothes. These people draw crude distinctions between what is 'Islamic' and what is 'Western', preferring to hang onto the 'Islamic' until their knuckles turn white. One woman I know, for example, refuses to use knives, forks, and spoons. When she got married she insisted on chucking the cutlery out of her husband's family home. Too Western, she said. Not Islamic enough. Let's use our fingers. The same woman also refuses to sleep in a bed, for the same reasons - she prefers the floor.

There is absolutely nothing in the Shari'ah or the Sunnah that prohibits spoons and beds. At all. But this is the irrational way some people are thinking out there, and it is not Islam that is making them think this way - it is the result of many different things. The logic (or the lack of it) goes along these lines: "Women in Saudi can't drive cars because Western women do it, and that means driving must be a Western thing. Let's not be too Western!" Assimilation hasn't happened in some quarters yet because the economic growth and outside influence occurred so rapidly. More time is needed in the Saudi case.

We have to be very careful not to oversimplify the situation when making judgements about behaviour that looks erratic. Saying, "It's all because of Islam" is painfully reductionist and it doesn't give us any real bearing on the situation.

[Winchester]

Bump.

[Budge]

Thanks for bumping this up, I had wondered if this had been responded too but since I was gone for some weeks, lost track of this thread...

[quote]The same is true of a saddening number of "I-escaped-from-this-that-and-the-other" books. The Holocaust memoirs The Painted Bird and Fragments? Made up. Fabricated. Some people do it out of greed, some people for attention, some people as a kind of revenge on family members and friends whom they don't particularly like. I don't know what Hirsi Ali's motivations were, but I do know that her books are riddled with inconsistencies and that people who know her have said that certain things can't be true.[/quote]

Well this would be complex. I certainly wouldnt want people questiong the validity of some Holocaust memrorirs, there are some Holocaust deniers who would jump on that bandwagon. Even Christina Crawford and those who have exposed horrible things and abuse have been called liars. I believe her story about Joan Crawford, even with the denial of one sister.


[quote]The first alarm bell rang for me when I read that to get asylum in Holland she claimed to have fled wartorn Somalia, when in reality she had been living in Kenya (a perfectly safe country) for the past twelve years. She also lied about her real name, her date of birth, and her presence in Germany to be able to get that asylum permit - something that put her Dutch citizenship in jeopardy when it came out.[/quote]

In my edition of the book she did admit to all of these lies. She actually said she was afraid of being caught. She said she did it {not excusing it} because she was so desperate to get asylum.
[quote]She was forced to resign from Parliament as a result.[/quote]

Didnt realize this, at the end of the book she was still getting protection as a member of Parliament, but then I read the book now more then a month ago.
[quote]Furthermore, a Dutch investigation (publicised on the TV show Zembla) found that her family had had no knowledge whatsoever of a supposed arranged marriage. As for her 'required dress', it is not required in Nairobi. At all. By her own admission she CHOSE to wear a headscarf and cloak, writing that it gave her 'a sense of superiority'.[/quote]

Her family was not happy with her at all, father sending a letter basically disowning her. I do think there is a slight possiblity her family would deny this as shame. I did wonder about the dress thing, I have seen pictures of Nairobi, and know a little about African cities from people Ive known in life including my past doctor and friends in college, that part of her story did seem a bit shaky. I know Africa is not like Saudi Arabia in requirements of Sharia Law.

[quote]Ali faked a history for herself in order to get asylum in Holland (why Holland specifically, when European law states that she should have applied in Germany, the first European country she visited?)[/quote]

I wondered about that too...why not Germany? I need to read her other book The Caged Virgin that will help me understand more. The story about the sister DOES seem to be missing some parts, she had severe mental illness but I didnt understand how she got to that point. She seemed to say it was from the former abuse. She does mention the abortion in Infidel. {I may be wrong but I think she ended up having two}


[quote]Ali is an opportunist, and she's certainly not the first one. The sad thing is that there are women out there who have genuinely been abused and persecuted in Shar'iah states, but their stories are cast into doubt due to opportunists and liars. A glaring example is Mukhtar Mai. Her village council in Pakistan ordered her to be gang-raped as a punishment for a sexual indiscretion that an adolescent boy in her family had committed. She was raped by the brothers of the girl whom this teenager had slept with. And the Pakistani justice system turned a blind eye. The village turned a blind eye. Mukhtar was expected to just accept this as perfectly fair and reasonable.[/quote]

I am glad here you admit one of the true stories. That is abomindable!! horrifying...sigh...
What kind of sick village council is that? Have perfectly innocent girl ravaged for crimes of brothers. I am upset that her family didnt protect her either, where was her father and brothers thbey should have refused to allow that to happen to her.

Her story does need to be told too, that is terrible that she has not gotten any press. One thing about Ali is I did realize she came from a family of more prestige and wealth, and connections given her fathers work, how this played into her story...well thats one thing to think about.

[Budge]

[quote]Turkey is not a Muslim country. It's a secular state - so secular that some universities have barred women students wearing hijab from attending until they take the hijab off. It's important to realise that a large Muslim population does not always guarantee that the country is following Islamic law, be it 'strict' or 'moderate'.[/quote]

Yeah I know Turkey is more moderate. They have applied for EU stateship, I dont know if theyve gotten it or not. Do not think so.
[quote]As I have already explained, if you tried to distribute Bibles or preach on street corners in Saudi Arabia you would be sent back to America. I don't know if that's what you meant by 'How long would I last...?' If you were asking whether you would be executed for such an action, I can only repeat for the third or fourth time in this thread that there is no death penalty for proselytising in Saudi Arabia. If a foreign missionary comes in, they get deported back to the country where they came from.[/quote]

Well glad to hear I wouldnt be executed, but I have heard of stories of Muslims converting to Christianity and being sentenced to death. I do not know if Saudia Arabia does that but Afghanistan certainly does...

[url="http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/03/b33225f2-c9c9-44a7-878e-3714a9fefc2f.html"]LINK[/url]

[quote]Iran is an Islamic republic, and women drive there. Pakistan is an Islamic state, and women drive there. Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE - they are all governed in accordance with Shar'iah principles and they all have women drivers. Saudi Arabia is on its own where the driving ban for women is concerned. The government doesn't even try to use a religious justification for the ban. They say that it 'keeps the accident rate down'.[/quote]

Ok glad to hear they can drive in those other places, I always figured Iran was more moderate then SA.
[quote]As for the mutawwa'in, the religious police, they exist in Saudi Arabia - but again, they don't always look like the stereotype. I have only had one bad personal encounter with a religious policeman in all my time in Saudi. He was arrogant and rude and aggressive, yelling at me because I hadn't covered my hair. I have also seen an American man in a village near Riyadh being ordered sternly to remove his earrings and submit to an immediate haircut. (Funnily enough, most people in the West ignore the Islamic dress code for men and fixate on the code for women.) But out of all the encounters I've had with the mutawwa'in, those were the only unpleasant ones.[/quote]

I didnt realize they had one for men, what is that? no long hair? no jewelry, that is very interesting to find out. Yes they do fixate on the code for women. You must understand that Americans find the idea of a religious police in general repugnant even if they do some good with the alms and helping beggars. I certainly even as a NON-Dominionist fundie wouldnt want police running around getting rulers for short skirts here! I would hope the clothes is a side issue too, that is interesting finding out they have other duties.
[quote]As I have already explained, the ban on driving has absolutely nothing to do with the Shar'iah. Regarding head coverings, that depends on where you live. In Jeddah and in the coastal cities of the Eastern Province I hardly ever wore a scarf. In Riyadh and Taif the dress code is stricter.[/quote]

Yeah it is very differnet, just need to see pictures, and well someplaces they are totally covered and some just have their heads covered. I knew these differences exsisted.
[quote]But one thing that people often fail to realise when they are busy discussing women's hijab (and ignoring men's hijab) is that to most Muslim women it is a fundamental part of their identity and not something they want to get rid of. When my friend Sobia was visiting from Saudi we had a long talk about his, as she has had to struggle with her family for the right to be hijabi and is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the pressure to remove her scarf when they visit family friends. (Yes! Not all Middle Eastern Muslim families are exactly keen for their daughters to be religious in their dress!) Explaining why she couldn't go back on her choice, Sobia said to me, "I can't take off my hijab any more than I can take off me." It's about time that some people in the West got off the cultural high horse and started realising that 'head coverings' are not a Bad Thing just because we say so.[/quote]

I suppose when I think of this stuff, I worry about women not being able to breath through the clothe or feeling discomfort in the heat, especially when I see one with her face covered. I know I would have problems breathing through that much cloth, it looks uncomfortable to Western eyes and there is sympathy for a woman being unable to see well when she is outside too.. However the head coverings and long dresses dont bother me. If some women feel more comfortable this way I can understand. I wear long dresses myself...not legalistic or against pants like some here think but just what I am comfortable with.

more later, have to get going....will finish answer rest of your post:)

[jeffpugh]

[quote name='Cathoholic Anonymous' post='1361252' date='Aug 17 2007, 03:58 PM']...
There is absolutely nothing in the Shari'ah or the Sunnah that prohibits spoons and beds. At all. But this is the irrational way some people are thinking out there, and it is not Islam that is making them think this way - it is the result of many different things. The logic (or the lack of it) goes along these lines: "Women in Saudi can't drive cars because Western women do it, and that means driving must be a Western thing. Let's not be too Western!" Assimilation hasn't happened in some quarters yet because the economic growth and outside influence occurred so rapidly. More time is needed in the Saudi case.

We have to be very careful not to oversimplify the situation when making judgements about behaviour that looks erratic. Saying, "It's all because of Islam" is painfully reductionist and it doesn't give us any real bearing on the situation.[/quote]
But, there is no spoon.

[Budge]

[quote]Yes. They go to school. They attend university. And they work. Until recently job choice was quite limited - if you were female and wanted to be anything other than a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, or a social worker, you had no chance - but that's changing now, with women getting involved in everything from business to engineering. They still have a long way to go. A long way.[/quote]

Well that is good to hear. I have heard about the proponderance of women doctors in the Middle East.
[quote]There is something very wrong with the system when women hold fifty-five percent of the university degrees but not quite ten percent of the jobs, but I still don't believe that the blame for that can be laid on Islamic thought when Britain was in a very similar situation not sixty years ago.[/quote]

Yeah thats a problem, of course a university degree in America--male or female== isnt a guarantee of anything now either. Britain definitely was in that position. Ive read enough memroirs of that time.

[quote]Education is free in Saudi state schools and university is heavily subsidised, although the quality is nowhere nearly as good as in the private schools. I am back in Britain because my parents got homesick and decided to move back. I will return as soon as I can, although I have so many commitments in this country now that it looks like I will probably never live there full-time again.[/quote]

Ok thanks for explaining. Are you still looking to join a convent too? {I may have you mixed up with another poster so tell me if Im wrong about that}

[quote]The Saudi justice system is another problem; it's very difficult to get permission for a woman to testify in court due to their supposedly 'excitable natures'. But in all the books on Saudi that I've read, I have yet to come across one that talks about these problems in detail. Oh, there are stories of doubtful authenticity that talk about sex and veils and more sex, reading like one of the more tasteless Mills and Boon novels, but there's nothing on a problem that's of such a vast scale that it affects around nine in ten Saudi women.[/quote]

That problem sounds like a pretty big deal, not accepting the testimony of women in court...how are the property rights can a Saudi woman own property on her own--especially if she is a widow or single? {Those were lacking in America in the 19th century]
[quote]Does sexual abuse go on in Saudi Arabia? Again, yes. But it goes on ANYWHERE. One in six London women will get raped or suffer from other serious sexual assault during their liftetime, but where is the hue and cry about that? If a woman is raped or abused in the Middle East...it must be Islam that's at fault. If a woman is raped and abused in London...what are we going to blame it on?[/quote]

I think Westerners see women in the Middle East as having so few rights, that they see them as more vulnerable to exploitation, and abuse. I know some of the things I have read even in the Koran regarding women has majorly concerned me. That may be subject for other thread. You are right women are raped and abused everywhere. Here is one question that may seem odd to you, is some of the cultural precepts in the dress and having women closer to home in Middle East countries meant as PROTECTION for said women? Ie: husbands fear wives going out in the street unchaperoned, because they may be raped or abused? I have an opinion in American culture that the idea of protecting women has fallen away, to our detriment, ie, women are supposed to be as strong as men, etc. Feminism actually decries women being protected by men. One aspect of being a fundie Christian is things are definitely more old school for us, men are supposed to be leaders of the home and protect their wives and daughters etc.

[quote]Saudi Arabia is a nation that got very rich very quickly. Alarmingly quickly. Life in sun-baked mud huts in the depths of Qassim Province is still in living memory for some people. The sudden economic acceleration brought its own challenges, including an influx of Western culture. Some Saudis have embraced it; others have dug their heels in, terrified that their own heritage is going to be buried under McDonald's packaging and European brand-name clothes.[/quote]

Thats what I figured. Here is one odd question, the wealth is shared in Saudia Arabia isnt it? years ago, someone told me that every family in Saudi Arabia received a certain amount of money from the oil dividends, for some reason I remember hearing the equivalent of $60,000. I dont know if this was accurate or not. I thought that cant be everyone, that must be the royals or elites right?
[quote]These people draw crude distinctions between what is 'Islamic' and what is 'Western', preferring to hang onto the 'Islamic' until their knuckles turn white. One woman I know, for example, refuses to use knives, forks, and spoons. When she got married she insisted on chucking the cutlery out of her husband's family home. Too Western, she said. Not Islamic enough. Let's use our fingers. The same woman also refuses to sleep in a bed, for the same reasons - she prefers the floor.[/quote]

Thats kind of funny....Sounds like some definitely are holding a tight line there. I dont think eating with fingers is always a bad thing....as for sleeping on the floor, I would think anyone would find beds more comfortable but probably half the world sleeps on the floor. I even slept on the floor for some years when I was young and very poor.

[quote]We have to be very careful not to oversimplify the situation when making judgements about behaviour that looks erratic. Saying, "It's all because of Islam" is painfully reductionist and it doesn't give us any real bearing on the situation.[/quote]

Well some are definitely cultural things and influenced by outside factors. I do think a few things have to do with Islam, but this conversation with you has been pretty interesting. I always want to talk to people whove been somewhere with first hand knowledge. I know here in America it is difficult for us to get the total truth about things, media can be biased etc, this is why I wanted to hear your side of things since you grew up in these places and know first hand.