Fausta's blog

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The official blog of Fausta's Blog Talk Radio show.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Saudi Arabia: He who pays the piper calls the tune

In today's Australian, Saudis' secret agenda doesn't reveal anything we haven't heard before, but it illustrates well how it's done:
It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney's Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. More than 35 years after Sydney cleric Khalil Shami received the cheque, he insists it came with no strings attached. But while the cheque had no tangible conditions in the form of written instructions or binding contracts, the cleric received a message from his donors several months after depositing it.
"They said: 'Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what's happened to them in your sermon?"' Shami tells Inquirer. "Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn't see a negative in their request."

The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients, whether the money is bankrolling a religious centre, a clerical allowance or Queensland's Griffith University, which was exposed by The Australian last month for seeking a $1.37million Saudi grant, of which $100,000 was received, and offering to keep elements of the deal a secret.

The Saudi Government - largely through its embassy - is believed to have funnelled at least $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to propagate hardline Islam, bankroll radical clerics and build mosques, schools and charitable orgnisations.

But the Saudi cash that has flowed into Australia, that also allegedly has paid the allowance of hardline Canberra cleric Mohammed Swaiti, who has publicly praised jihadists, is dwarfed by the $90 billion Riyadh is believed to have pumped into promoting Islamic fundamentalism internationally.
Of course all of this funding for their point of view doesn't allow a cultural interchange.: To paraphrase what Siggy said in last Friday's podcast: the reason the fundamentalists are supported by the regime is that they are a means for the regime to control society.

And then there's the mysogyny, which subjugates totally one half of the population:
While Saudi Arabia exports its Wahhabi version of Islam to the world, Saudi society groans under the weight of its internal contradictions. The first class of female law students will graduate from King Abdul Aziz University this year, but the Saudi Ministry of Justice prohibits female lawyers from practising. Judges consider women to be lacking in reason and faith, and have refused to allow them to speak in the courtroom because their voices are shameful
Think about that: women's voices are shameful to the Saudis.

Yes, I know, this is not my typical Sunday post, but it had to be said.
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Speaking of last Friday's podcast, Pamela has a post on the latest glamorizing of institutionalized mysogyny on an American magazine: W Cultural Clitorectomy: CAIRO

Of course, why be bothered by things such when there's plant dignity to worry about?
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The Carnival of the Insanities is up. Go check it out.
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This week's WSJ's Five Best Books, on baseball, selected by Nicholas Dawidoff:



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Today's shoes, Aerosoles Women's Soul Mate Thong in silver:

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