The same reason dollars from the private sector pour in: oil.
Also: please share your definition of civilized.
Does anyone know what has happened with the author, Ibraheem Abbas? His website has been closed. I fear he may have been arrested. It seems he is a major proponent of Arabic SF so this may be an issue larger than just one book. Since I canât read or understand Arabic I havenât been able to find information on this.
Which I kind of applaud, if he had been given the choice of defending himself by admitting itâs all bullshit.
There is a meaningful concept that goes with what gets called âcivilizedâ here, though, and thatâs respecting the rights of individual humans. The US justice system frequently does not, with capital punishment standing out as the most conspicuous example. The Saudi system is worse still.
The bigotry comes from ignoring people in place of the system. It would be wrong to suppose that because a country might have self-determination, it means it isnât barbaric for it to violate the rights of individuals. And itâs wrong to suppose that the people who live there are all barbarians, even when their country does barbaric things.
Because thatâs the point of human rights: that people should be treated as people, rather than as interchangeable parts of a collective.
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The United States may have serious social problems, but it doesnât keep half of itâs population in a state of virtual slavery. Sorry, but as long as some of my people are kept in such a state, I have no problem using the word âbarbarism.â Pretending that the social problems of the U.S. are equivalent to the brutal injustices against women in Saudi Arabia is insulting and tiresome. Does barbarism exist in the U.S.? Sure it does. Does it even begin to match the institutional barbarism that exists in Saudi Arabia? Nope.
I agree with the substance of your second and third paragraphs. I still find the use of the term âcivilized nationsâ extremely problematic because itâs almost always used to reinforce the notion of guilt by association or proximity, and in turn to blame a countryâs people for the oppression they suffer at the hands of abusive authorities. To say that the Saudi system is worse is, IMO, a gross oversimplification. Itâs worse in many ways, but I donât think itâs useful or meaningful to try and quantifiable sum up a whole nationâs system. The only purpose that can really serve is to play childish games of comparing countries, which either becomes jingoism lite, as I believe @Salgak was doing whether intending to or not, or it becomes an apology, as was implicit in @Thecorrectlineâs comments. @Geth is doing it too.
I donât believe any of these commenters are ill-willed individuals (although I find some of their debate tactics immaterial and immature, Iâm willing to believe this is simply the internet bringing out the worst in people). But I believe theyâre enabling a derail of the salient topic, the fact that the author and other free-thinkers are oppressed under Saudi Arabiaâs censorship regime. They seem sincere and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I donât assume theyâre doing it intentionally. But the effect is the same regardless.
The topic is a specific injustice and theyâve taken attention away from it by riding their personal hobby horses and making the thread about injustice dick-sizing. Meanwhile, people in meatspace such as the author are silenced or disappeared. Theyâre so busy exercising their privilege not to be that they debate whether capital punishment halfway around the world is better or worse than censorship in Saudi Arabia. Itâs an irrelevant distraction. Theyâre both wrong. Neither is less wrong than the other. Playing the Oppression Olympics is a lose-lose proposition.
[quote=âGeth, post:45, topic:15269â]
Pretending that the social problems of the U.S. are equivalent to the brutal injustices against women in Saudi Arabia is insulting and tiresome.
[/quote] If that was your take away from my comment, then perhaps I communicated my meaning poorly. The point I was trying to make is that comparing them is a derail. If the man next door beats his wife and the woman across the street beats her children, you wouldnât waste time, energy and the publicâs attention debating which household is less worse. Youâd try to figure out how to address both problems. Please see my reply to @chenille for elaboration.
Yes, a mod did and Iâm actually glad they did - I havenât had a moment I wasnât working or sleeping in the last few days. That was overly snarky. Sorry.
That situation didnât just pop up out of nowhere, apropos nothing. They got themselves into that situation, they bear the responsibility of getting themselves out of it. Societal change can be ugly, even brutal. I guess you can call that victim blaming if you like. It is their society though, and they have to be the ones who change it or not.
Fortunately they are doing just that - girls in school, women driving, the haia reigned in⌠and books like this getting put on shelves in the first place. But on the whole they still believe in Sharia law, and that includes both genders. If that is a problem for anyone, I understand - I just donât support claims of moral superiority for decisions made under that system of laws and beliefs, after all they will make the exact same claim of superiority for the exact same reasons!
Lots of things are banned in western society, in the US in particular - Womens nipples. Canât show those. Trans fats. Got a cookbook from your grandmother? Illegal to serve a lot of those recipes in restaurants in many places around the US. I could go on, but you get the point I hope - The community decides what laws are appropriate. Just because another community makes laws you donât like doesnât give anyone a morally superior position. What is the result to following that kind of supposed moral superiority, bomb them into western philosophy? Anonymous missiles from the sky or something crazy like that?
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[quote=âThecorrectline, post:48, topic:15269â]
Yes, a mod did and Iâm actually glad they did - I havenât had a moment I wasnât working or sleeping in the last few days. That was overly snarky. Sorry.
[/quote] Apology accepted and thank you. Everyone has those days. Iâve shown my ass as often as anyone. Besides, my initial reply to you was a bit overly verbose :-/
I donât actually disagree with most of what youâre saying. I just think itâs deraily to turn a conversation about censorship in Saudi Arabia into a discussion of capital punishment in the United States. And while I agree that a society must find its own way if self-determination is to be worth a damn, I donât see why they (or we) should have to do it alone. Itâs true that we should be cautious of imposing our own cultural assumptions on other cultures, but that doesnât mean there isnât room for standing in solidarity against injustice. And yes, every member of every society has a measure of civic responsibility. But not everyone has the same power to effect change, and those with little power really can be and often are victims of those with a lot of power. We cannot in good conscious abandon our fellow human beings merely because they as a group have gone in certain directions. There are other ways of helping than using force.
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