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Saudi Arabia demands criminalization of everything

Hahahahahahahaha this is the funniest headline I’ve seen in awhile – it’s in the Independent –

Saudi Arabia criticises Norway over human rights record

You must admit.

Ok so what’s the problem? What rights are they neglecting? Prisoners’? Children’s? Foreigners’? Asylum seekers’? Those of the disabled?

No, none of those. It’s the rights of Mohammed and Islam that Norway has been neglecting. How are those human rights, you wonder? They’re…not.

Saudi Arabia has criticised Norway’s human rights record, accusing the country of failing to protect its Muslim citizens and not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed.

Hey, you know what? No country should do anything to “counter criticism” of Mohammed or any other religious figure.

The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal in Norway.

Ok then I call for Islam to be made illegal in Saudi Arabia. Why not? If Saudi can, we all can.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende was in Geneva to hear the concerns from 91 other countries. He told Norway’s NTB newswire prior to the hearing: “It is a paradox that countries which do not support fundamental human rights have influence on the council, but that is the United Nations,” reported The Local.

Human Rights Watch last report noted that in 2012 Saudi Arabia “stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens.”

It continued “Authorities continue to suppress or fail to protect the rights of 9 million Saudi women and girls and 9 million foreign workers. As in past years, thousands of people have received unfair trials or been subject to arbitrary detention. The year has seen trials against half-a-dozen human rights defenders and several others for their peaceful expression or assembly demanding political and human rights reforms.”

Still, it’s nice of them to try to help the rest of the world do better.

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Comments

  1. Andrew B. says

    Doesn’t KSA forbid the practicing of any other religion except Islam (and discriminate harshly against Shia Muslims) within its borders? Jesus, what a bunch of stupid fucking brutes.

  2. says

    So ban all criticism of religion- I suppose Saudi Arabia will ban criticism of Satanism, Wicca, Scientology, Judaism, Shia Islam, Voodoo, Christianity in all its forms, all shamanic systems, Asatru, Hellenic Reconstructionism, etc etc?

  3. Seth says

    Small correction–it’s not “Saudi”. The “Saudi” is an adjective, denoting the country’s ownership by the Saudi crime family, who happen to own the country of Arabia. Said crime family has profited handsomely by the assumption that “Saudi” denotes nationality…it does not. It just denotes membership in the crime family. The proper shortening of “Saudi Arabia” is “Arabia”, no matter what the Saudi crime family wants the rest of the world to think. The Saudis will not (indeed, cannot) own Arabia forever.

  4. RJW says

    Saudi Arabia? Is that the slave-owning, racist, primitive, tribal, viciously misogynistic, theocratic and oppressive Saudi Arabia or is there another one?
    The most repugnant aspect of this squalid affair is that the Saudis are entirely free of hypocrisy, from their perspective, non Muslims are sub-human.
    In a civilised world Saudi Arabia would be illegal.

  5. lpetrich says

    “Saudi” may not be very elegant name, but it distinguishes Saudi Arabia from the other Arab nations. Would “Saudiland” be better?

    Seems to me that Saudiland is a textbook example of the “resource curse”: resource wealth being associated with social backwardness.

  6. lpetrich says

    I’ve found some articles on how oil and democracy don’t mix very well, but if I post a lot of links, my post will go into moderation.

    One can use measures of democracy like the Economist magazine’s measures, and correlate them with GDP per capita and oil earnings per capita, and one finds that oil-rich nations are much less democratic than oil-poor nations with the same GDP. Why is that so? Oil-poor nations’ wealth is usually built on the labors of the nations’ citizens, and skilled workers eventually demand more democracy. Oil-rich nations’ wealth usually goes into the hands of some elite, and politics often gets a contest as to who will get the earnings. With all that wealth, the leaders try to pacify their citizens with welfare statism, police statism, official religiosity, or any combination of these.

  8. sc_770d159609e0f8deaa72849e3731a29d says

    The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal in Norway.

    considering the things Mo said about other religions it would be impossible to do both.

  9. Timus Rian says

    For starters, Norway should start funding Islamic extremist groups around the world, and ban all other religions except Wahhabi Islam. I guess that would satisfy the Saudi government for now 😉

  10. lpetrich says

    In the Middle East and the West, Oil and Democracy Don’t Mix — Research | Columbia News

    An expert on political theory, political economy and the politics of technology, Mitchell asserts that “it was coal that helped create the possibility of modern democracy, and it was oil that helped create its limits.”

    Coal required a big workforce, while oil doesn’t. Coal workers could assert themselves with big strikes and the like, something that helped increase their political pull. Oil is less broad-based.
    Egypt, Oil and Democracy | FiveThirtyEight

    It’s the resource-poor countries, however, that are more likely to be at least partially democratic. The Economist ranks Cyprus and Israel, which have little to no oil, as being democracies (albeit what it calls “flawed democracies”). Likewise, it classifies Lebanon and Turkey, which also have little oil, as “hybrid states” leaning toward being democracies.

    By contrast, The Economist rates all of the oil-rich countries in the region as being authoritarian, with the partial exception of Iraq which — after the United States’ intervention there — was assigned a score of 4.00, placing it just at the brink between authoritarian and partially democratic.

    How do the ruling elites keep in control? An obvious way is with a police-state apparatus.

    But, also, Dr. Ross has hypothesized that the mechanism by which authoritarian regimes perpetuate themselves in oil-rich states is through what he calls the “rentier effect“: popular dissent is quelled through low taxes and lavish government spending. Countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — authoritarian and oil-rich regimes where most citizens nevertheless enjoy a high standard of living — are generally thought to be more stable than others that provide fewer services for their citizens.

    A third way is with religion, and that’s what Saudiland’s leaders are doing, trying to present themselves as super Muslim by supporting the Wahhabi sect’s leaders.

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