I recently read a story about how Saudi police are cracking down on red rose sales in advance of Valentine's Day.
What got me was how the story got into how the Saudi version of Sunni Islam prevented unrelated men and women from mixing and how the crackdown was intended to put the kibosh on romantic gestures between unmarried couples. Yet there was nothing about how maybe the Mullahs might not want the people celebrating the feast day of a Catholic saint. There was nothing about how well-secularized this holiday has become that it's even celebrated by Muslims. If Saudis celebrate the feast of St. Valentine, what's next? Saint Christopher medals?
We laugh at how they say the West is corrupting people, but when we're tricking devout Muslims into celebrating a Catholic holiday, maybe they're right. Or maybe, just maybe, if they hadn't spent all these years stealing all the nation's oil wealth for a tiny class of the super rich and let the mullahs keep the people ignorant and poor, the people might actually have enough critical thinking skills not to be duped into celebrating Valentine's Day. But if the people had critical thinking skills, they mignt realize how much the Saudi political and religious elite are screwing them and make some changes.
Tags: middle east, religion
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It's hard to tell which the mullahs want less:
-- Muslim people celebrating an (originally) Catholic feast day and saint, or
-- letting women get the idea that they can choose whom they want to marry.
Salon's Broadsheet had an interesting angle on that second angle today.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/