Bluetooth and Saudi Arabia
Posted by Mystique
Written By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 6, 2006; Page A01
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia –
Three a.m., two luxury cars side by side on an empty street, slicing through the sticky seaside air at 100 miles per hour.The girl in the gold Lexus waved at Husam Thobaity. She was in the back seat, covered by a black veil that hid everything but her eyes.
To read the article click here
P.S. Thank you Yamen for the article..
16 comments so far
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Interesting.. Not that it holds anything new, but that people are openly talking about flirting via bluetooth and dating these days.. but i still don’t get the flirting via bluetooth thing.. LOOOOL @ Nana (who sent him the pic of Madonna giving him the middle finger).. I guess that’ll be my reaction :/
P.S. important question: if he really thought she was the one, why doesn’t he just be a man, tell his mom, and propose to her?? i don’t like guys who r “scared” of their parents.. Allah la yibleena..
Message to Hussam: If you really want her, then just do it! (propose ya3ni!)
where is my comment?
very interesting article mystique..
Didi you are right! but as u already know that the majority of the guys wouldn’t take this seriously..keef a56ob wa7da attragamat be bluetooth! u know the classical excuse..
to me..targeem itself is a STUPID thing whether its via traditional methods or as in bluetooth..
Ahmad: Exactly!! Targeem is such a stupid method to meet someone!! I mean it’s sooo cheap!!
Hmmmmm…
Well i read the article, and its familiar to life in Kuwait. But i dont know if it was wise to publish something like that :/ did u c the comments made on the article?
Most the readers think we’re backward & insane & have no freedom :/ it depresses me when we’re criticised in that way, what they dont know is that if we had the choice…we would rather live as we are living than how they live.
Actually I wouldn’t want to live like we’re living, then again, I also wouldn’t want to live like they are living.. I think each is an extreme… Personally, I’d like to find middle ground where u can have some freedom, but not too much freedom where it becomes abusive to others
Well,
If we thought about how men can meet women in this country, you can find that it is very limited, like we don’t have many options.
luckily some of us travel or live abroad, some live with openminded families, which makes the meeting part easier.
but what about the people who don’t have any other choice.
The whole bluetooth idea has never appealed to me but I wouldn’t mind if it did to other ppl
“Targeem” or just stupidly throwing numbers using the bluetooth is rather a stupid and a shallow thing to do but I think it would be more acceptable if ppl used it as a method of chatting.
My friend always exchanges notes and comments with others. Mostly it would end when any of the involved parties leave but sometimes he’d ask for a number or give his
I don’t know but as Mystique pointed, it’s not easy to meet someone here
I’m in the Mood of praying in the middle of night for Allah to yestor 3laina we 3la shabab we banat al muslemeen
Well, as it’s said above, that’s such a stupid thing to talk about, or to be proud of in puplic. Yeah i know (it’s the same if it’s underneath the table) but IMO this is not about strict rules and such stuff rather it’s about our religion and believes. I’d say for those who would jump over these believes (either people who admit that they’re doing it in a wrong way, or the people who wants *such* a freedom) that this is not a way to meet – or *love* as the article mentioned – a girl (that’s for the first kind of people), as for those who are convinced of such a freedom, i’d rather say that you have to review your believes (if you’re a muslim) and rethink about it religiously.
Perhaps these rules we have are the most strict rules, but it could be easier, if we behave and live as what we should.
and i’d like to point out something, we do have such dates, meetings…etc uncovered or in public sometimes, but asking for that is such a miserable thing. People in many contries suffer from problems regarding to male and female, and they’re trying to find ways to reduce such problems, but we have such a safe rules ( i refer to the Qura’an and Hadeeth Nabawi), but some of us keep pushing our people downwards.
Thanks for sharing that, Salam.
but the question we have to ask is, how many are you going to meet before you find the right one? and is it worth being tried out so many times? and this whole notion of ‘right one’, in reality ask anyone, there really isnt any such a thing. They slowly comprimise and you become right for each other. The rest is just short lived.
Here in the west it is like that, it is their culture they have accepted it to go around and around until they are old and their asses are hanging below their knees then they realise Oh Shit, no one is going to buy this ass.
Do you want that in saudi?
is our country really bad that i have to meet someone like this way i dont think so i rather stay single all my life
u know what guys I’m one the fence regarding the hole targeem Bluetooth saga. I know one thing is 4sure it’s not for me, never was and in shaa allah never will but who knows if I get desperate
No seriously the idea of having some random horney hooligan (no offence guys I’m not generalizing here) toss his number at me or send me a cheesy ass message just doesn’t appeal to me. If your interested just come up and say so.
Untill recently it didn’t even occur to me that it did to any other self respecting girl, I was like, seriously why do they bother no one will ever call them. Newsflash I was wrong!!!!!
Stupid, desperate I suppose but when u really think about it can we really judge those who choose to meet this way? As Mystique said earlier not all of us are privileged enough to have open minded parents or other outlets to meet people so what are they suppose to do…. I don’t know that’s just me
I hate living in London sometimes, but when I read this article (and the comments) I realised how glad I am too. Just because there are not strict “cultural” boundaries we have to keep within does not mean we have to go round and round until our asses are hanging down behind our knees at all. The whole point of dating is that, in theory at least, you either find someone you like or who likes you, you meet & you chat, if you like each other you meet again, you chat more. Eventually you might find you either really can’t stand to be around that person or can’t stand to live without them. The whole point is that you have the choice – you are the one gonna be spending your life with them. Dating more than one person before marriage is so you can be pretty certain that when it comes time to settle down you’ve both made a sensible choice, probably by having made a few bad ones along the way.
I’m in my 30s now, and have two daughters, one’s 3 the other’s 5. Obviously, I was once a teenage boy, so I can fully appreciate what your parents think they’re saving you from. But they’re also in a way preventing you from being the person you otherwise could be. Like all parents, I expect my children to live after I’ve died, my job now is to try and teach them and encourage them to learn about the world they live in, not to keep them from it. It won’t go away, so they better know how to look after themselves in it. They aren’t going to learn by being locked up in the house, are they?
PS: Trying not to rant here, but Hayhatta – how many English people did you meet before deciding how worthless our culture is? Are we the only people with slack morals? Frankly, I’m with -OT- – too much repression sucks, too much freedom does too.
http://arabist.net/arabawy/2006/11/01/protest-sexual-assaults/
London Friend, many, dont get my wrong all westerners are not village tricycles. Even in the west people look at such behaviour with a huge moral Question mark. However, allot of people use freedom unresponsibly and do allot of damage to the society.
The cultural standards in the west are different between Saudi and the west for example UK. It is ok in the UK to have been with a few girls and guys before marriage. In our religion and culture it isnt.
By that i dont mean marry someone you dont know, but how much must you know them before you marry them, before you have crossed the line into using them?
Dazed and Confused, beautifully said sister.
the reporter was supposed to write about how we use technology in the most beneficial way in this country. his guide was a friend of mine who was trying to show him how youth here handle technology well. that we r not technologically challenged. but all the reporter wrote was this declaration of how trivial saudi society is.. my friend was so shocked at what was written! The type of society we were shown as. it doesnt help our image at all.
after what the reporter had told us Saudi Arabia is disgusting with all those dumb rules
their society by not letting people meet and much more normal living like lebanon
have talked about the majority of gays and lesbians in ksa because of thier restrictions and
so on , and in 2004 ksa has banned cam phones i mean come onnnnn people grow up .
thank you :>