This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
Two new installments in the New York Times’ “Generation Faithful” series are running this week, both on the ways of love in Saudi Arabia. The series examines “the lives of the young across the Muslim world at a time of religious revival.”
Follow this link to the entire series
Human rights advocates have attacked a fatwa (Muslim legal opinion) by one of Saudi Arabia’s leading clerics. The fatwa holds that those who challenge the standard view in Saudi Arabia that members of other faiths are “unbelievers” should be declared “apostates” and put to death.
Story at Guardian.com
In light of King Abdullah’s recent call for dialogue [...]
In Saudi Arabia, a country where conversion from Islam to another religion could land you the death penalty, where non-Muslim worship is outlawed, and where even some Muslim sects (Sufis and Shiites, for example) are discriminated against, King Abdullah has called for dialogue between members of the world’s monotheistic religions.
Story from the Associated Press
See also
Next week, we will view the PBS Frontline documentary “Saudi Time Bomb?” Follow this link to the PBS web site for this program: it contains background material and links to other useful content.
More on the history of Saudi Arabia
More on the Wahhabi Movement
H. L. Mencken’s famous definition of puritanism (”the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy”) comes to mind in a story from the BBC out of Saudi Arabia, where a prominent Muslim clergyman, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obaikan, was videotaped performing the traditional Bedouin sword dance at a relative’s wedding. He has come in for [...]
Once again (most recent large scale occurrence was in 1990), Saudi women are protesting the kingdom’s ban on women behind the wheel.
Story from the BBC.
Resources for the PBS film “House of Saud” that we will be watching this week can be found at the course syllabus .
RIYADH (AFP) — A businesswoman was detained and strip-searched by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop with an unrelated man, taboo in the country, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. (Read the whole article.)
I understand that Saudi Arabia is super-ultra-conservative but I do not see a clear reason behind the sexual segregation. In [...]
Watch for news about the following developing stories:
1. Criticism inside Iran of the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to grow.
2. Difficulties boosting Saudi oil production.
3. The annual Shiite rites of “Ashura” are being held worldwide. (Read an account from the BBC) (More on the Shiites)
BBC Middle East