General Middle East & North Africa Thread

Ah, Alan Partridge said it better.

Edit: Interesting pagetopper...

edited 29th Apr '15 1:16:50 PM by Quag15

Saudi Arabia is advertising openings for eight new executioners as "religious functionaries".

I think we have a new entry for Unusual Euphemism on our hands.

Hopping from Arab Spring thread.

And basically it was from analysis from Vox (who are pretty decent at summaries of events), that basically most of the underboiling tension is the Sauds (vs themselves) and the Wahhabist movement. @ Source.

edited 12th Jun '15 12:05:17 PM by PotatoesRock

Vox is much like Vice in that they employ gonzo journalism for their particular viewpoint, so I dunno if I'd take it on face value.

It's less about the removal of religion and more about subverting/sidelining said religion's teachings about decency and moral integrity in favor of so-called "Western culture's enlightenment through societal liberation", or whatever they call it.

What's the actual content of that position though? Because Saudi Arabia isn't exactly a moral or decent country from certain perspectives. The general liberal opinion in the West, for instance, is that Saudi Arabia is a thuggish theocracy, and our alliance with it is either A: a necessary evil for MENA stability, B: a damning indictment of cynical foreign policy, or C: a marriage of convenience that should be dissolved the second we no longer need their oil.

edited 12th Jun '15 1:51:20 PM by Achaemenid

There is a difference between the government and the society. Many of the former's actions — both internal and external — are not condoned by the latter, whose voice is only silenced because of the hanging threat of military force (the rare few demonstrations don't get much more than a couple of hours at the most before the police and/or military crushes them ruthlessly in the middle of a media blackout).

edited 12th Jun '15 1:55:13 PM by MarqFJA

Sure, but I don't think you sustain the argument that Saudi Arabia is a welcoming country for gay people or non-Muslims. What I'm interested in is what people are actually saying about the government undermining morality and decency. What is the government doing to undermine these things?

One example: We have a "book fair" event that is held annually at a particular city that changes each time. ^note don't ask me how the choose the location; I don't know any particular details about anything involving it, as the event seems to be mostly for the intellectual circles or somesuch. From what I've gathered from both second/third-hand sources and the newspapers' official accounts (which, as should be obvious, only gives you what the state allows you to know, even if it's Blatant Lies), the last couple of years had the dubious distinction of the event's attendance being not only "coed" (which itself isn't a problem), but with completely unrestricted intermingling of men and women... and, if my sources are to be believed, flagrant flouting of the hijab by the women, along with other conduct that is highly indecent by the standards of Arabian society (and, again, I am not taking ultraconservative/fundamentalist standards into account; I'm talking standards of moderate Islam here). The CPVPV (or as we call them in Arabic, the "Hai'a") tried to conduct their job, only to be more or less thrown out unceremoniously and later being punished by the government for allegedly exceeding the boundaries of their mission.

Fun fact: The event is sponsored by at least one prince. And there are previous incidents of similar nature in which whatever immoral activity that the CPVPV were trying to put a stop to (and failed) was unofficially being done under the protection of a royal.

And yes, I know that describing the above "infractions" as indecency looks totally backwards to anyone raised in a Western culture that isn't from a highly conservative background. Values Dissonance is a thing; just because you think your values are right doesn't necessarily meant that they are in an absolute sense.

edited 12th Jun '15 2:59:24 PM by MarqFJA

I assume it is not the entire Saudi family that is like this.

That's a fascinating look into Saudi society. Thanks.

So we were discussing the future of Saudi Arabia a while back and I was wondering about your thoughts,seeing as to my knowledge you are the only actual Saudi on this thread, what do you think is going to happen to your country? What would you like to see happen?

Of course not. They are probably spread across a wide portion of the spectrum, thus including very close-minded ultraconservatives (most likely among the ageing old guard).

Can you be more specific?

Where do you see Saudi Arabia in 50 years, and where do you want to see it. The two are not always the same thing. Sorry for not being specific.

In 50 years... I'm not sure. Saudi Arabia will probably have passed the point of peak oil (using current estimates) and enter a period of sharp, terminal decline in oil production, which obviously will have drastic negative effects on the economy if nothing is done. At least the UAE's rulers were smart and foresighted enough that they already began diversifying their economic profile years ago.

What I want to see it become... Well, a democratic constitutional monarchy would be a good start. I wouldn't want a practically powerless monarchy like the UK has, though; it is my firm belief that elected representatives of the people can't be fully trusted to not abuse the power they're given, and thus they need to have someone watching over them who does not answer to them, but to the people instead.

I'd just like to note that the British monarchy still has a lot of technical power that could probably be used if our goverment well full crazy dictatorship. You need royal approval to launch a nuclear strike, the Queen has access to pretty much all government documents and advising the PM accordingly, the monarch is command in chief and as such can order troops to ignore order from the PM (or to stop a coup as happened in Spain), several positions are still technically appointed by the monarch, plus we've only just moved to fixed term parliaments (before the monarch would dissolve parliament at the P Ms request) and moved the declaring of war from the PM (on the behalf of the monarch) to parliament.

WikiLeaks reveals Saudi intrigue and unpaid limo bills

Yeah: they're the emergency release valve on our current model of government. Too much crazy, and they have the constitutional means to get rid of it.

However, the monarch who does that will most likely have to abdicate after the crisis settles down, or face accusations of being Charles "Absolute Monarchy Rules" Stewart reborn (there are few worse insults... although getting called "King John" is still one of them).

Hei, so, question.

NPR recently ran a story about a popular Saudi comedian, Nasser al-Qasabi, who's been making waves with a sketch comedy show called Selfie, aired by the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), that satirizes ISIS and has been earning him (A) positive attention from the majority of Saudis, and (B) death threats from the usual psychos who think ISIS is the hottest shit ever.

I really, really want to watch this show. If anyone outside the Arabic-speaking world has taken the time to subtitle the episodes that have aired (at least two, maybe more, I'm not sure how much of the show has aired), I really, really want to watch it. And I can't find any torrents or streams or anything of it, legal or otherwise, possibly because it hasn't been translated, and at least partially because there is already an existing Western movie and a show that are both called Selfie, making this one difficult to track down.

If anyone has access to it, or has any leads that could help me track it down, that'd be super awesome.

Marq FJA is Saudi, he might be able to help you. Give him a PM.

Or a ping: ~Marq FJA

I dunno if anyone else is interested, but it couldn't hurt to have any relevant information posted in the thread in case it piques anyone else's interest.

I saw bits of those episodes. It's rather stupid, to be honest. While he used to be quite popular many years ago via the annual iterations of the now dead Tash Ma Tash series, Mr. Al-Qasabi's appeal is definitely a few years past the expiry date (and no, said expiry predates his breakup with the other member of the TMT duo, Abdullah Al-Sad'han).

By the way, what is TV like in Saudi Arabia, anyway? What are the popular shows, channels etc...?

It's been years since I ever bothered to watch Saudi-1 and Saudi-2. Too boring, too state propaganda-y, too much obsession with covering any "major" events held or sponsored by the royals with the news report being about 20% the actual report and 80% voiceless, "patriotic music"-saturated coverage of everyone and their mother greeting whichever royal is the primary figure of the event (guest, host, sponsor, whatever you wanna call it), even the weather report is delivered in a mind-numbing monotone. I mostly watch the MBC and Aljazeera channels nowadays... when I bother to watch TV, anyway.

edited 1st Jul '15 2:11:25 PM by MarqFJA

Well, yeah, but, like, is there any way of watching it outside of being physically in Saudi Arabia and catching it when it airs? I know no show appeals to everyone, but I still want to watch it.