My husband travelled to Saudi Arabia last year on business - he was chosen for the trip because he is only half-Jewish and had never been to Israel, unlike everyone else in his office. He was repeatedly advised not to mention his semi-religious affiliations, and reports that he did not see a woman's face for the entire 3 weeks of his stay. At one point his camera was confiscated by a thuggish teenager with a machine gun because he was taking photos of the outside of a television station. Ironically, part of his work involved filming a public service announcement for television, about domestic violence and the evils of beating up your female spouse, which included a very realistic scene in which a Saudi man beats up a Saudi woman.
At the time that he was applying for his Visa, there was no such thing as Saudi tourism - visas only extended to business travellers or pilgrims. Has the Saudi government decided to allow tourists as some sort of PR move?

I really enjoyed reading this. Anything which brings pressure on the House of Saud to come into line with 20th Century ethics and standards is commendable. Excellent.

well done, you. Goodness only knows what they would do with a drunk jewish woman in charge of a car..

I'm all for not allowing women to drive. as long as the government provides me with a full-time chauffer. a good-looking chauffer. preferably topless.

Saudi is a culture shock i know - originally from the UK myself, but I have lived a number of years in Kuwait and Saudi. It really isnt as bad as people make out. I would advise people to try not listen to the news or even just not to be influenced by it. Nobody ever shows the progress that has been made since the first gulf war in Kuwait, or the public celebrations for religious holidays in Saudi- do you celebrate Lent? Nowadays Lent being a sacrifice of 'something you love', they celebrate ramadan, a sacrifice by fasting.
Laurie, to say that your husband didnt see a female face for three weeks is not true, women do not have to completely cover up. Its comments like that which sway people to think that Saudi is a female bashing nation of terrorist males. Domestic violence is a global problem - why do people think that it is much worse when its about the muslims?
The last point i will make is also about the 11 hijackers, please do not think for one second that i condone or support any terror...i am purely defending Saudi as a country - Bin Laden was exiled many many years ago from Saudi and he was also disowned by his family with this. People in Saudi are ashamed by his actions. This very small minority of extremists has made an untrue stereotype of a typical Saudi. I have Saudi friends that are scared to walk down the street in Saudi if they see somebody with a beard...scared in their own country - is that something you ever thought of? There are minority groups globally - look at the war in Northern Ireland - bombings, shootings, stabings etc...Saudis should not be discriminated against because of 11 hijackers.
I am very open to hearing other peoples opinions on Saudi - however i do ask people not to judge to strongly until they have been there themselves. This is their way of life and as a culture, they have so much to offer.

Just a few notes on this:

1. Saudi has 25% of the world's oil reserves.
2. The US has been a staunch and key supporter of Saudi because of this and also driven by the fear of a more radical political structure coming into being - the Saudi website posting I must admit surprised me. Whilst religious division is a fact of life in the Middle East, if not the entire world, the Saudis try not to annoy the West, their biggest customer.
3. That's approx.$58,000,000,000 per annum folks.
4. It is an absolute monarchy. This is not a good thing.
5. There is well documented and extensive links between the Bush family and the House of Saud. This is not from the realm of conspiracy theorists.
6. Finally, in my personal experience, most countries that have a reputation for extremism are essentially dominated by those extremists with the majority of people being just regular & ordinary, trying to get on with their day. This does not excuse the extremism, nor release the House of Saud from their responsibilities to deal with it effectively.

I stand by my statement re him not seeing a female face - he worked in a television station for 3 weeks and while there were female employees, they were swaddled to the point of being unrecognizable. IN the hotel, only male business visitors and male employees from other countries. But I'm sure that in other arenas women are allowed to be partially exposed. This was his experience. I agree that the majority of Saudis are probably decent people, not terrorists, and the fact that they made the effort to create a PSA about domestic violence is commendable. But there are such serious problems, especially for women - there was a very good article in the New Yorker about 2 months ago, wherein a reporter spent time with young Saudi journalists - some really disturbing stuff about a girls' school that caught on fire, and the fact that many girls died or were severely injured because the religious police would not allow them out of the building - because they had abandoned their head and face coverings while in school.

Obviously it's an extraordinarily complicated issue, but the fact is that the Saudi government is repressive and secretive, and both Saudis and business visitors live in fear.

Not to mention their charming 'No Jews Allowed' policy, which I'm sure hasn't changed just because it was striken from the website.

Just to clarify: I meant that it was surprising they had publically stated their policy, not that such a policy exists, either formal or informal. Stating it causes problems for their allies in the west, the most important of which is the US (by far), because it forces those western governments to publically acknowledge what they've known all along: that the ruling monarchy of Saudi Arabia is not going to win any human rights awards. As for their attitude to women, spotted any women Catholic priests recently? Did you know that 5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition? The cultural degradation of women is just a little more visible in some places than others. Of course this is not to defend it but to highlight that it is generally impossible to defend both full religious freedom and true gender equality.

Should we not be similarly alarmed at other countries whose laws differentiate between people of one religion and those not of that religion ? Where laws regarding property ownership, immigration and the use of public highways differentiate between the two groups ? Especially when such countries are the largest recipients of US foreign aid.

Sure - Egypt, Jordan and Syria are plenty alarming.

"Did you know that 5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition?"
Did this happen on Super Bowl Sunday?
Where is this statistic from and how was it derived?

Actually, the numbers killed for heresy & witchcraft etc. is a hotly contested issue like all good history. Depending on the source and how they choose to interpret the various historical sources available to them, estimates run from about 4 (offcial church numbers) to 9 million (satan worshippers). The period covered is between 300 & 500 hundred years. I think it's fair to say that an awful lot of women (& men) died both directly and indirectly as a result of the inquisition. In any event, the point was to highlight the Catholic Church's deep antipathy to women and like all useful statistics can be neither proven nor disproven.

An article in my hometown paper (The Arab News) touches on this this morning:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=41618&d=21&m=3&y=2004

You see, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

Of course. Let us turn to the govenment-controlled, Saudi-published "Arab News" for an impartial assessment of their latest quandry.

John:

You write "like all useful statistics can be neither proven nor disproven".

The nature of statistics is that they CAN be proven or disproven. That's why they are called statistics.

You are obviously pulling patently ridiculous numbers out of your ass in order to reinforce your cultural prejudices.

Cite your sources, bozo.

Cite your sources, bozo?...interesting how abuse replaces argument so easily. Clearly you fail to distinguish between facts and statistics e.g. if Bill Gates and an unemployed man are in room, statistically the average wealth of the people in the room is $30bn dollars. Does this mean it is a fact that nobody in the room is poor?

John:

I asked you to cite your sources. You responded with some type of bizarre riddle. Since you cannot cite a reliable source for your statistics, one must assume that you are full of shit.

I quite understand the difference between facts and statistics. Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with quantifiable information.

A statement such as “5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition” is a statistic, albeit an absurd one. That’s about one tenth of Europe’s population at the time. Historians date the Spanish Inquisition from 1478 to 1834. According to you, this means that over 14,000 women were burned EVERY DAY. Boy, were they busy.

You might want to take those huge, floppy, orange shoes off the coffee table and go get a BOOK (a rectangular object with sheaths of marked paper) and have someone read it to you. In it you may find that reliable historical estimates of victims of the Inquisition range from 3,000 to 30,000.

Rather than let reason or scholarship guide you, you are more than willing to dream up ridiculous fictions in order to defame religious minorities of which you are not a member.

You are an ignorant bigot, and you insult the intelligence of everyone who reads this site.

Please keep posting. You’re a scream.

Ah, more abuse - now I'm feeling right at home. I must admit though, I've never been called an ignorant bigot before. I feel all warm and tingly. Why huge, floppy, orange shoes? Whom am I bigoted against, exactly? I don't have a coffee table, is that bad? One of my majors was statistics, probability & game theory in which I got a first. A sheath is a condom, a sheaf is a collection of bound objects. As we're suggesting books to each other, perhaps you might start with a dictionary.

Really not sure why I'm bothering (you must remember I really, really don't care) but 1478 to 1834 is 356 years, which is 129,940 days. 5 million divided by 129,940 is 38.47 per day. 5 million divided by 365 (one year) is 13,698.63. Statistics, eh? Clearly you may find a calculator handy too.

Oh please, the world doesn't need another macho pissing contest. Why can't you boys play nicely. The very obnoxious poster does have point though. How did you hear about five million women being burned? Is this true?

Frida:
Why do you presume that I am a man? Just because I am obnoxious doesn’t mean I have a penis.

John:
Sorry I left my slide rule and pocket dictionary at home.
I could correct your grammatical and mathematical errors (“whom” is used as the object of a preposition, not the subject of a sentence; an ampersand is not grammatically acceptable; did you forget to factor in leap years?, etc.), but let’s once again attempt to focus on the absurd untruth you are perpetuating.

You wrote: “the ruling monarchy of Saudi Arabia is not going to win any human rights awards. As for their attitude to women, spotted any women Catholic priests recently? Did you know that 5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition?”

This would be a ridiculous non sequitur, except in the context of America and the UK, where it is perfectly acceptable to be biased against Arab and Catholic cultures. I won’t use the word prejudice: liberals are incapable of prejudice because they’re far too sophisticated.

Why do you need to believe this so badly? If you majored in probability and statistics, as you claim, your education has obviously failed you miserably. Your “statistic” is ridiculous. A refund is in order.

You post about everything except the issue. Why don’t you try to address the argument at hand for a change?

I suspect you are too cowardly too retract your lie (“an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker”) because, as you say, where truth is concerned you just don’t care.

(BTW, I got a dictionary. The definition of bigot is “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices”. Thanks for the suggestion.)

My final word on this: The reason I do not respond to you seriously is because the tone and nature of your postings do not deserve anything other than cheerful ridicule. I'm happy to note that you accept you are obnoxious, though perhaps lack a penis. Any mathematical error in respect of leap years is minor and irrelevant, your error was fundamental to the point you were failing to make. My original point, which you have never addressed, was that the Catholic Church does not accord women equal status and that gender bias based on religion is not confined to Islamic states. My original response to you set out my position that the lack of primary sources makes the estimation of deaths impossible for any independent party to state with any statistical certainty and I acknowleged that opinion on the subject is widely divergent (even your own figures show an impressive range of uncertainty: up to ten times your chosen minimum) -if anyone is clinging to a predjudical position, it's you. I live in neither the UK nor the US. If I'm bigoted against Catholic culture then I'm in big trouble. I (allegedly) went to a Catholic University after six years of education by Benedictine Monks, preceded by Nuns. I was raised Catholic in a 95% Catholic country. No doubt you'll be happy explain how I really hate myself and pretty much everyone I know. I have absolutely no intention of posting again on this but would like to thank you for this entertaining exchange.

john:
Your autobiography is riveting but irrelevant.

You choose to ignore the many scholarly resources on the subject and repeat myths and impossibilities as truths.

In one post you state that the estimation of deaths is impossible.
In another you state without reservation that "5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition."
This is transparently contradictory.

Again you prattle on and on, but this cannot distract from the obvious: you are wrong and too arrogant to admit it.

john:
Your autobiography is riveting but irrelevant.

You choose to ignore the many scholarly resources on the subject and repeat myths and impossibilities as truths.

In one post you state that the estimation of deaths is impossible.
In another you state without reservation that "5 million women were burnt alive during the inquisition."
This is transparently contradictory.

Again you prattle on and on, but this cannot distract from the obvious: you are wrong and too arrogant to admit it.

ohh. Too much talk about my country!!!

i came to this site by chance while i am searching for some tourism ads, Guys Saudi Arabia has been a closed country for many years. if your sources of infomation about my country are today medias, then you will never know the truth about the reality of Saudi Arabia. i advice everyone interested to know the real Saudi Arabia to go back and read history and think out of the box for one second!!

Best Regards to all of you.

Saud
Saudi Arabia