American Bedu

We have been seeing a lot of ”firsts” for Saudi women lately.

Saudi woman Raha Moharrak reached the summit of Nepal’s Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, in a first for the conservative Muslim kingdom where women’s sports are severely restricted, tourism officials said on Sunday.
She reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) summit early Saturday morning with a party of 12, consisting of other foreign mountaineers and Nepalese guides.

In Saudi Arabia sports for women are severely restricted. Last year after great pressure Saudi Arabia allowed for the first time for two women to participate in the Olympic games, last month the government allowed girls in girls schools (schools are segregated of course) to do some sports under certain restrictions.  The schools will have to ensure girls wear “a covering and decent outfit” for sport activities in “suitable areas”.

Raha Moharrak is 25, she is not only became the first Saudi woman to attempt the climb but also the youngest Arab to make it to the top of Everest. Raha is part of a four-person expedition that also includes the first Qatari man and the first Palestinian man attempting to reach the summit. The group is trying to raise $1m for education projects in Nepal.
Originally from Jeddah, Raha is a university graduate currently based in Dubai.
Raha’s climb team stated that as a woman from Saudi Arabia she had to break a lot of barriers to achieve her goal.
A biography on the expedition website said convincing Raha’s family to agree to her climb “was as great a challenge as the mountain itself”, though they fully support her now.

“We have been able to contact her and she is very exhausted and now resting,” according to Hassan Moharrak, the climber’s father, adding that the family was very happy with her achievement.

“I really don’t care about being the first,” she is quoted as saying. “So long as it inspires someone else to be second.”

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We have posted on the first Saudi movie directed by a woman before. The movie by now has gained many accolades, and there is a trailer for the movie.

Saudi Arabia’s first woman film maker, Haifaa Al-Mansour, said her country was becoming “more tolerant and more accepting” as she picked up an award in Cannes on Saturday for her acclaimed film “Wadjda”.
The 2012 tale of an impish young Saudi girl who plots to own a bicycle in defiance of a ban has won the hearts of critics and public alike in France, Germany and Switzerland, where it is being distributed.

Filming “Wadjda” was an odyssey in itself.
In conservative neighbourhoods, local residents would block shooting, or Mansour would have to direct from a van with a walkie-talkie, as she could not be seen in public together with male crew and actors.

In Saudi Arabia the film itself will only be seen on DVD or on television, as cinemas there are banned.

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One of the readers asked about showing old pictures of Saudi Arabia, so here are some vintage photos.
Now it is very easy to find old photos of Mecca, of the ”picture postcard” type, but I choose to show some images of people. These sets of photos show the human face of Saudi Arabia, Saudis are normal people just like everybody else. They have families, cook dinner, go on outings.
These photos are from before the social engineering project to force all women to wear abayas, so you see women in the 50s and 60′s wore a large variety of clothes in public, from full traditional covering to Western fashions.

Enjoy.

A Saudi family in the 50′s.

A Saudi feast!

Saudi women  enjoying the seaside in Jeddah. This photo is also from the 50′s or 60′s.

Saudi couple on an outing in the desert.

A garden in Jeddah

Saudi family in traditional dress in the 1930′s

When oil production really took off there was a large influx of expat families, Here you see women and children from Aramco visiting king Ibn Saud.

Old colour photograph, from the 70′s?

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Neighbors called in the FBI when Saudi student Talal Al Rouki was spotted walking across the street carrying a suspicious looking object.
Which turned out to be a pressure cooker containing khabsa he was taking to bring to a friend. (Saudi men are very good at cooking rice)

Talal said he was questioned by the FBI last Friday about the suspicious ”bullet-colored” pressure cooker.

“I was eating breakfast and I heard the [doorbell] ring at an unusual time, and when I opened the door… [there was an FBI team] and one of them asked me, ‘Are you Talal?’” Rouki told Okaz, according to a Huffington Post translation of the article. “In that moment I was nervous, though I am confident and I have nothing to hide, so I replied to them that they are in front of Talal [right now].”
“So they [questioned] me calmly at the door, after that they asked me for entrance into the house so I allowed them that and their questions revolved around my studies and the history [of my time] in the United States and the activities I plan to [pursue] after college,” he added.
Satisfied, the agents withdrew, but not before one of them told al Rouki to “be more careful moving around with such things.”

When contacted by The Huffington Post, FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said he is not familiar with the incident. A representative for the FBI’s Detroit office had no comment, and a representative for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Another Arab man was detained at Detroit airport, also for carrying a suspect pressure cooker.
His nephew, Nasser Almarzooq, told The Associated Press that he had asked his uncle to bring him the pressure cooker so he could make lamb. The college student said two pressure cookers he bought in the U.S. were “not good at all,” and said the ones available in Saudi Arabia are higher quality.
“I’m Arabic,” said Almarzooq, who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio, about 55 miles south of Detroit. “I always use pressure cookers to cook”.

A criminal complaint alleges that Al Khawahir arrived at the airport Saturday on a flight from Saudi Arabia via Amsterdam, and that he told agents he was visiting his nephew.
He originally said he brought the pressure cooker with him because pressure cookers aren’t sold in America, then later said his nephew had bought one but it “was cheap” and broke after one use, according to the complaint.
Agents said they also noticed a page was missing from Al Khawahir’s passport from Saudi Arabia. He told them he didn’t how it had been removed, and said the document had been locked in a box that only he, his wife and three children have access to in his home, according to the complaint.
Al Khawahir was read his Miranda rights, which he said he understood, and he invoked his right to remain silent, according to the complaint.
Gina Balaya, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit, said Al Khawahir made his initial court appearance Sunday, but his Monday detention hearing was delayed until Tuesday afternoon. A message seeking comment was left with his defense attorney.

Pressure cookers have been a source of tension in the wake of the Boston bombings, the bombs were made out of shrapnel filled pressure cookers they killed three people and injured 260.

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Huffington Post

Yahoo News

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We posted on the possible censorship of services like Skype on the 3oth of March, CNN now reported that Saudi Arabia may indeed try to block internet social media. The social media on the internet gives Saudi people new possibilities of interacting. Social interaction between different genders has been forbidden over the last few decades and is very difficult in the real world for people who live in Saudi Arabia. Although it does happen. Facebook and Twitter are hugely popular in Saudi Arabia, but now Saudi Arabia may block access to popular Internet messaging applications like Skype, Viber and WhatsApp if telecommunication providers there don’t comply with rules and regulatory conditions, according to the country’s official news agency, SPA.
A statement from Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission released via SPA read, “The Commission emphasizes that it will take appropriate action regarding these applications and services in the event of failure to meet those conditions.” The statement did not address how the applications in question — which allow Internet users to communicate with each other via text messages and voice calls — were violating any rules, but it did highlight the need for service providers in the country to quickly “work with the developers of these applications to meet regulatory requirements.”

This desire for control over people’s private lives and communications may be inspired by the fact that for example the Egyptian overthrowing of Mubarak was engineered via social media, and the footage uploaded via the internet of Jarir square and atrocities committed by Mubaraks thugs preceded the newsagencies reports. There have been some small scale demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, calling for the release of political prisoners, these were organized via ”WhatsApp”. According to the blogger Eman Al-Nafjan Saudi activists feel safer communicating using applications like WhatsApp and Skype, as they are encrypted. “A lot of human rights activists that communicate in Saudi Arabia do so using WhatsApp,” added Al-Nafjan. “And women’s rights movement members are communicating using WhatsApp.”

Saudi authorities threatened to ban BlackBerry service in the kingdom in 2010, accusing the company of not complying with regulations. The CITC demanded the company install local servers so the service could be censored. An agreement was eventually reached but it is not known what steps were taken by the manufacturer of the Canadian smartphone in order to do so. This was all over the news in the Middle East, so people are well aware of the dangers and will simply move on to another method of communication.
“People who are aware know that it’s not that big of a deal even if these applications are blocked,” said Eman Al-Nafjan. “The issue is if they ban the Internet or if they don’t provide Internet sevices. As long as the Internet is available, there’s no way that they can end freedom of speech  it’s gone beyond the point of no return.”

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has called on the Saudi Telecommunication Authority to drop these reported plans to block social media platforms, describing the action — if implemented — as a “losing war.”
Alwaleed Bin Talal announced in late 2011 that he and his investment firm, Kingdom Holding Co., had bought a $300 million stake in Twitter.

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Read more: CNN

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Dear friends and readers of American Bedu, I am sorry to have to tell you that Carol is not doing well.  Carol has been admitted to ER last sunday, her cancer has taken a turn for the worse.

The news has been a bad shock to her family and friends.  Carol is in hospital now, but due to the heavy pain medication she is not able to read or write. Her friends will read to her all the sweet, encouraging and supporting comments you have written and will write, as soon as she feels up to it. Your support and prayers will give her great support.

Although her son and friends are still hoping she will pull through she may not make it. Carol is very courageous and a great fighter.

Carol’s friends are holding a 72 hour prayer rally, starting today, Monday, at 3pm until Thursday 3pm.

AA

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