Iraqi Blood and Money, Kuwait University Wears The Burqa’a, Saudi Softening

Middle East Notes


In Iraq, the Prime Minister plans to submit candidates for the last positions in the cabinet next Sunday. Sunday? I guess he has never seen that old Melina Mercuri film.
Some violence has erupted in Basrah in the south, but it is among the militias…no suicide homicides against civilians there. The government declared a state of emergency in the city for a month. The PM and President plan a visit, presumably in order to try mediation .
Press reports claim that an early item on the new Iraqi parliament’s agenda is raising the salaries and benefits of its members. Now why does that sound so familiar here where I am sitting right now in the U.S. of A. I wonder what they would ask for if they hear about the $400+ million that the clubby board of Exxon-Mobil gave its departing CEO recently.

German media report that three German women have been arrested while planning terrorist activities in Iraq and Pakistan. Apparently the women are married to Islamic fundamentalists. The report claims that security agents were able to track the women from Internet chat rooms that they frequented. The reports claim that two of the women were planning on taking their children along.

Jordan has not announced uncovering any new plots, intercepting any new arms shipments, or any new arrests for a few days now. However, the king was in Washington, again. Didn’t I see him only two weeks ago with the President? Well, this reminds me of the late Arafat and Bill Clinton, and how they got together almost every month at the White House to solve the world’s pressing problems. And, incidentally, perhaps talk about money. Something is going on.

In Kuwait, the Dean of the Shari’a College (Islamic Theology) at Kuwait University has issued a Fatwa (a religious edict) that a husband has the right to impose the candidate of his choice on his wife and that she would have to vote for that candidate- otherwise he can divorce her. That means the husband gets to choose who or what his wife votes for. It is true that the said Dean was appointed in his position by the government, as are the religious shaikhs appointed by the same government- they are both state bureaucrats. But since when do academic types who are not even ordained or appointed religious men issue fatwas?
It is truly a country of batteikh (watermelon for most of you foreign types), sort of like a moral wild wild west.

A high Saudi royal and religious adviser has said it is proper for a qualified learned woman to give opinion and fatwas. He said that in ancient Islamic history, there were women who gave fatwas and even taught men about the faith. This is a first.
Wait, there is more, and better, news: he also said it is not necessarily bad that there are Internet sites that get men and women together for marriage.

Cheers
Mohammed