There may be more to be gleaned about the problems of our times from this article than from all the movies about 9-11:
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia’s religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs.
The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence.
What can you say to that, other than what Chico once said to Groucho: “Whaddya mean? There is no ‘Sanity Clause.’”
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18 Comments
1. chuck:Didn’t Mao have the Chinese killing birds? Let’s see:
Mao launched an extreme campaign to control pests, including birds and insects. The sparrow bore the brunt of the pest control measure (the goal was to exterminate the bird). Unfortunately, with the decline in the sparrow population the insect population exploded, seriously compromising what few crops grew
More here on the Chinese famine of 1958-61. The Islamists may be medieval but they have nothing on the sheer idiocies of Communism that trace right back to its founder. And like the Communists they seem to engender a misplaced sympathy among academics and artists who one might hope had better sense. The more things change…
Sep 8, 2006 - 9:34 pm 2. Mark_Belt:You like me, you like my dog.
Sep 8, 2006 - 11:46 pm 3. Terrye:It sounds to me lik these people have way too much time on their hands.
I love my cat and I would leave the country before I would give her up. Simple as that.
Sep 9, 2006 - 3:08 am 4. David Thomson:These people are truly mad. This is simply another reminder that the struggle against the Islamic nihilists must not be taken lightly. The true believing members have to be either killed or jailed. Half way measures are useless.
Sep 9, 2006 - 4:02 am 5. Captain Hate:Dogs are good judges of character; no wonder these vermin are afraid of them.
Sep 9, 2006 - 4:06 am 6. PeterUK:Now they have done it,before there was no unifying belief that left and right could inite behind,the left might hate Bush but they love their pussie more.
Sep 9, 2006 - 4:39 am 7. Carl Spackler:PeterUK,
I didn’t see any of the womanís rights apparatíchiksí coming to the aid of Bush, the nation, in the WOT. I don’t see why the PETA, pet leftists would.
About the only leftist group that has chosen America over it’s enemies has been the industrial unions. But, they’re so…so..working class.
I feel that the nerves of the left are so spun, so haywire that conversion to Islam would be welcome to them. Johnny ‘Taliban’ Lindh was ahead of his time. Odd, or not that the two conversions to Islamofascists came out of California and from whacked out leftist parents.
Sep 9, 2006 - 5:29 am 8. Ron:Extreme religions/cults or politics give rise to wierdo’s like the religious police or Chuck’s Mao worshipers. In Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” its thought that 20 million died of starvation while Mao diddled virgins in Beijing.
In the early 50’s Mao thought to get rid of syphilis and other venereal disease by a novel way. He set up health clinics all over China and invited the people to come in for free check ups. If they had a verereal disease they were taken out in the back and shot in the nape of the neck. To this day the people of China are very leary of the “Chinese Health Services.”
Now another horror is foisted upon the poor Chinese by the health services and armed forces which runs a lot of the prisons. All “criminals” are blood typed and through physical exams are given because of the body parts buisness, lots of money for kidney’s and other hard to find organs not given freely on the world market. Need a kidney, got to China, no problemo. They have execution vans now that go around to execute and process the remains while tooling down the hiway. Have always wondered why so many movies are made of the Nazi when the commmunists are so much worse; has to be that Hollywood is full of sympathizers of Lenins nirvana and they want to try it one more time like the academics in our Universities.
Sep 9, 2006 - 8:15 am 9. Connecticut Yankee:Peter UK–
I’m not looking for the Left to defend the right to keep pets (particularly pussycats), when they know that Darth Rove has a cat, the Infidel Pope is also a cat guy, and the Evil Zionist Crusader and Laura have a dog and a cat in the White House.
Sep 9, 2006 - 8:24 am 10. pacwaters:Saudi Arabia is the center of all that is wrong with Islam. It continues to provide the support necessary for the indoctrination of millions around the world. It’s time the west, and, the Bush administration in particular, called it like it is. The Saudi’s are part and parcel of the problems of Islam, hence ours.
Sep 9, 2006 - 8:59 am 11. Skookumchuk:Our cat, Cat of Many Names (Skookumchuk among them), the Snakecatcher, Destroyer of Backyard Birdhouses, Ripper of Furniture, Terrorizer of Moles and Voles, could I’m thinking perform quite the commando operation if clandestinely inserted into that benighted land. I can tell just by her reaction as she reads this over my shoulder that the scheming has begun.
Sep 9, 2006 - 10:00 am 12. PeterUK:One should never underestimate pussy power.
Sep 9, 2006 - 10:19 am 13. MarkD:Great idea. This should do wonders for the rat population. Maybe we’ll see a return of the plague.
Sep 9, 2006 - 5:36 pm 14. Elliot Essman:These people like to have — no NEED — enemies. They have a particular penchant for isolating those who may not be able to protest or fight back.
Sep 10, 2006 - 6:58 am 15. ElMondo:Proof that this isn’t a dispute with rational opponents, but a struggle against dictatorial megalomaniacs. To ban an act because it’s a sign of “Western influence” is to not consider the intrinsic values behind the comission of the act separate from whatever biases and boogeyman fears those banning have.
I mean, dog and cat ownership… Come on! And the Taliban banned kite flying by children on the notion that time was better spent studying the Koran. Neither was an act that achieved its desired affect; on the contrary, both were clearly counterproductive by reducing an entirely profound existential subject – religion – into superficial acts of obedience and contrition. Religion is too important to trivialize it by making children choose between kite flying and Koran studying. And social interactions, as well as personal choices of ownership and acceptance of responsibility (both virtues associated with pet ownership) are too important to subject them to the fashion of worrying whether something is “western influenced” or not.
These are just points along the continuum that demonstrate the complete moral bankrupcy among too many Arab religious leaders. You expect religious leaders to deal with topics of importance, like sin, morality, responsibility, etc. But to delve into such trivial (for religion) subjects… clear sign that those folks have petty minds, not developed enough to properly deal with subjects properly the province of religion.
Sep 10, 2006 - 11:34 am 16. Sandy P:air conditioning, sewers, clean running water, electricity, etc., are all western inventions and I don’t see them giving those up.
Sep 10, 2006 - 9:00 pm 17. Charlie (Colorado):Wasn’t Mohammed a fairly famous cat person?
Sep 11, 2006 - 7:54 am 18. waterdragon52:Charlie:
Yes, Mohammed famously cut away a portion of the hem of his robe so it wouldn’t chafe the back of a pet feline. However, in the convoluted minds of the Saudis, to emulate the Prophet too closely may be akin to preserving his reputed home in Medina, thereby creating a shrine, which could lead, by inference, to worshipping the hallowed spot as one would worship an idol, and, therefore, it was OK to raze the place to make way for some modern real estate development. And never mind mentioning the Kaba.
Too bad that Alhamedi isn’t still blogging as The Religious Policeman at muttawa/blogspot any more or he’d be fisking this item in his inimitable style.
Sep 12, 2006 - 12:35 pm