Saudi Arabia Says It Will Sue Twitter Users Who Compare It To ISIS; Apparently Skips The NY Times
from the can-a-whole-country-do-a-streisand-effect dept
Just about a week ago, the NY Times had a giant article comparing Saudi Arabia to ISIS. It was a rather powerful article that highlights the similarities and connections between the two, while really highlighting the incredibly hypocritical attitude of many Western politicians who freely embrace the Saudi government while claiming that ISIS is barbaric.
Then, just a few days later, Saudi Arabia’s Justice Ministry announced that it would sue someone for calling Saudi Arabia “ISIS-like.” Of course, it’s not the NY Times that the Saudi government is going after, but a Twitter user, who compared a Saudi death sentence for a Palestinian poet to the way ISIS carries out its own “justice” system. The Twitter user in question has not been named. It seems like the strategy here is to scare people away from comparing Saudi Arabia to ISIS, but there’s a decent chance that it goes in the other direction. Such a plan is so ridiculous that it seems only likely to draw many more comparisons.
And, really, if your goal is to distance yourself from a group of crazy nutjobs who appear to have a somewhat arbitrary sense of justice and thrive on using the death penalty as a weapon, perhaps announcing plans to go after individuals criticizing you on Twitter isn’t the best way to further the distinction.
Filed Under: free speech, isis, saudi arabia, threats
Comments on “Saudi Arabia Says It Will Sue Twitter Users Who Compare It To ISIS; Apparently Skips The NY Times”
Relevant image
http://www.detroityes.com/mb/attachment.php?attachmentid=3040&stc=1&d=1252785821
cultural clashes
“And, really, if your goal is to distance yourself from a group of crazy nutjobs who appear to have a somewhat arbitrary sense of justice and thrive on using the death penalty as a weapon, perhaps announcing plans to go after individuals criticizing you on Twitter isn’t the best way to further the distinction.”
This has nothing to do with distancing themselves from a crazy group but about saving face. The threat of a lawsuit is more to get others to agree that this is wrong thinking then to appear less nutty.
Sounds familiar
Sounds like something ISIS would try.
Re: Sounds familiar
sounds like a new jeff foxworthy bit:
you might be isis if…
…you behead people you don’t like !
You cannot compare Saudi Arabia to ISIS
Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of petroleum in the world. Also they buy lots of weapons in the right price class from the right people rather than second-hand AK47 machine guns.
And they are very progressive. Why, by now women are even allowed to drive a car when accompanied by their male guardian. They are not in Kansas anymore.
Granted, they still have way to go before allowing gay marriage. Like lifting the death penalty on homosexuality. Or political dissent. Or an infidel having intercourse with a believer. Or a believer converting to another religion. Or a number of other things their God wouldn’t stand for.
But darn, do they have a lot of petroleum.
Re: You cannot compare Saudi Arabia to ISIS
zero income tax, YUGE petroleum and energy eng. salaries, cheap gasoline,
beautiful country- club- like expat gated communities…
BUT they will cut your head, feet and/or hands if there is any misunderstanding…
Re: Re: You cannot compare Saudi Arabia to ISIS
and YOU get an sms if any of your wifes goes near an airport or border…
Re: You cannot compare Saudi Arabia to ISIS
Re: Re: You cannot compare Saudi Arabia to ISIS
You are right. My memory was faulty and I was too optimistic. They are still legally banned from driving at all.
from John Fenderson
‘It seems like the strategy here is to scare people away’
now where else uses this same strategy?
It’s not such a bad comparison. I don’t remember off the top of my head where I saw this, but just recently they did a poll and the people of Saudi Arabia overwhelmingly support what ISIS is doing. Something like 75-80% approval, according to this poll at least.
The whole country is a mess from beginning to end, starting with the name. Imagine if a group of rabid fundamentalists led by a guy named Jones got together an army and took over Texas, and decided to rename it “Jones’s Texas”, and because they held all the oil fields everyone decided to just play along and not provoke them, and you’d have a situation exactly analogous to what a vicious barbarian warlord by the name of Saud did in a land that used to be known simply as “Arabia.”
The Bin Laden family are Saudi oil billionaires. Saudi Arabia funded the 9/11 bombers, and the people rejoiced in the streets when the attacks went off. When are we going to finally admit the simple truth that they are not our friends?
It’s not just the one country, either. ISTM the best thing to do, which would be a lot simpler if it wasn’t for oil, would be to build a big wall around the entire Middle East. Turn the entire place into one big quarantine zone and check in once every hundred years or so to see if they’ve either 1) all killed each other off yet or 2) somehow managed to work out their differences and develop to a point at which they’re ready to join the civilized world. But frankly, my bet would be on outcome #3: neither 1 nor 2 ever happens.
Alas, there’s oil there and we still care about that, so that’s not likely to ever actually happen.
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Well, good thing then that democracy is farthest from the minds of the Saudi government.
But maybe half of the approval is from women who consider it progress to be permitted suicide bombings without mandatory accompaniment by their male guardian (as women in Saudi Arabia do when being in public areas).
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Turn the entire place into one big quarantine zone and check in once every hundred years or so to see if they’ve either 1) all killed each other off yet or 2) somehow managed to work out
Unfortunately there are too many innocents in the region for this to be a plausibly moral line.
Also the Saudis are promoting their version of the religion with their oil wealth throughout the world – and there are many other places that will come to resemble the middle east if we don’t stop them. Indonesia and Malaysia spring to mind (not to mention Palistan and Bangladesh). Violence against non Muslims is already increasing in these countries.
We need to take on the propaganda head on. When the moderates say “this has nothing to do with Islam” we need to make them justify that statement – not just take their word for it. If we don’t do that them the effect is to give ideological “cover” to ISIS.
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The problem is, they’re right. This isn’t a Muslim issue, not really. If you look at the history of the region, the exact same problems that run rampant today have been around for thousands of years, long predating Islam. All Mohamed really did was codify a toxic culture, and it’s those underlying, endemic cultural issues that need to be worked out before they can be safely admitted to the community of the rest of the civilized world.
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Mason Wheeler wrote:
Unlike the oh-so-enlightened and forward-thinking people who casually write off over one billion people as unworthy of belonging to humanity…
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I didn’t say they’re unworthy of belonging to humanity; I said they’re too uncivilized to safely mix with people who have learned better ways of resolving problems than “violence and/or the threat thereof as the first resort.” I used the word “quarantine” in my earlier post for a reason.
Most places in the world, as wealth and improved technology flow in, it improves the standard of living generally and tends to reduce crime and violence. “A rising tide lifts all ships,” as they say. But in the deserts of the Middle East, where water is in scarce supply, this nautical metaphor for sociological conditions just doesn’t seem to hold true, largely due to overriding cultural problems.
And for all your high-minded attempts to throw around large numbers, that figure actually is exactly what you would expect. Given a bell-curve distribution of a population of approximately 7 billion, you’re statistically likely to have a little over 1 billion located 1 SD or more to the left.
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Perhaps I was unclear earlier, so I’ll rephrase:
You’re a bigot. Your views are reprehensible and stand in the way of the advancement of the civilization you purport to defend.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Throw around ugly words all you want. My “views” are simply the recognition of millennia of historical fact, and those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
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If you look at the history of the region, the exact same problems that run rampant today have been around for thousands of years, long predating Islam.
Hmm – that doesn’t stand up very well to my mind.
Immediately before the advent of Mohammed, Mecca was multi-faith and relatively tolerant. Certainly it was not significantly worse than any other place at that time.
Much of the rest of the region was either Christian or Jewish (Yathrib – now medina was a Jewish settlement before Mohammed). Syria was the home of Christian mystics who had very modern moral concepts eg St Isaac
“And what is a merciful heart? – It is the heart’s burning for the sake of the entire creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every created thing; and by the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful man pour forth abundant tears. From the strong and vehement mercy which grips his heart and from his great compassion, his heart is humbled and he cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in creation. For this reason he offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner he even prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in his heart in the likeness of God.”
Mohammed came along and trashed all that. (although according to St Isaac God still loves him!)
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I doubt we can really put all that much blame on him. Let’s not forget that Islam literally worships the same God as Judaism and Christianity. Also, while Europe drowned in the Middle Ages, mathematics and science blossomed in Arabia. Frederick II tried to import a lot (and courted a lot of Jewish and Muslim scholars), but after his death, science and philosophy took a dive again until the Renaissance.
The holy books of Judaism (and thus also of Christianity) are not really less bloody than the Quran, and the Middle Ages (with Charlemagne slaughtering the Saxons unwilling to convert and beheading them on the stump of their holy oak which he had felled) and the witch hunts and the Inquisition should be enough to show that.
We managed to get out.
It’s sort of a historical irony that modern life substantially is based on crude oil from Arabia: again, they supplied what finally brought us forward, allowing us eventually to propel them backward.
So in short: I don’t see the point in blaming Mohammed. A lot of back and forth happened in history since then, and it seems like more or less chance that civilization and science ended up significantly in the hands of countries with a nominal Christian tradition (but basically secular by now).
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I doubt we can really put all that much blame on him. Let’s not forget that Islam literally worships the same God as Judaism and Christianity.
Not true. Anyone can claim to be worshipping the same God – but you have to look “underneath the hood” to see what was really going on
Mohammed plagiarised the old testament (rather inaccurately) and at one time (when he was trying to ingratiate himself with the Jewish tribes in Yatrib) adopted some Jewish customs but he later rejected much of that. No the Islamic God is a monotheisitic version of the same Moon god that had been worshipped in Mecca before. The clue is in the Islamic symbol.
Also, while Europe drowned in the Middle Ages, mathematics and science blossomed in Arabia. Frederick II tried to import a lot (and courted a lot of Jewish and Muslim scholars), but after his death, science and philosophy took a dive again until the Renaissance.
A well worn myth of rather recent origin. The reality is quite different.
Almost all (if not all) of the scholars were either conquered Christians and Jews or atheists who were only tolerated by their masters because of their learning. Also the doors shut on the so called “golden age” quite quickly.
Attributing this scholarly output to Islam is about the same as attributing the glories of German physics between the wars (Einstein, Schrodinger Heisenberg, Born etc) to Nazism.
The holy books of Judaism (and thus also of Christianity) are not really less bloody than the Quran,
You can say that because you haven’t studied either of them properly. Try Googling “Statistical Islam” and you will see how wrong you are.
Charlemagne slaughtering the Saxons unwilling to convert
Brutalised by the experience of his grandfather in dealing with the Muslim invasion of France.
and it seems like more or less chance that civilization and science ended up significantly in the hands of countries with a nominal Christian tradition
Far from it. The combination of humility before God/nature and belief in the rationality of God was key. Islam was in terminal decline by then because it was always incapable of progress without the assistance of conquered peoples.
How many muslims have won the Nobel Prize? How many Jews have won the Nobel prize? How many Christians? Look it up!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
Have fun refuting this.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Have fun refuting this.
Of course the Muslim brotherhood have put a lot of effort into reinforcing this myth – and you have fallen for it.
Wikipedia unfortunately suffers from an army of islamic apologists who have whitewashed their history. I don’t believe anything about islam posted on wikipedia – because of the things that I know to be factually incorrect that are posted there.
Look at wikiislam if you want the truth
http://178.62.150.129/wiki/Islam_Science_and_the_Problems_at_Wikipedia
At Wikipedia, Islam-related articles are often compromised by pro-Islamic editors. An example of this is a 2010 incident where an editor with over 67,000 edits was caught intentionally inserting false information into articles. Jagged 85 had been editing there for five years, and his/her inaccurate edits and articles have been reproduced all over the net by other websites which use Wikipedia as a source.
or the short version here:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Myths-of-Islam.htm#science
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I’m not going to write off Islam and its people because you don’t like the source of information I used.
I will not hate.
Besides, we’ve had our own problems: the Crusaders behaved so appallingly the Arabs still hate us for what they did. In fact, when you think about it, any accusation you could level at them can equally be levelled at us.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
Why not throw in a few links to Breitbart and Infowars while you’re at it. They’d be about as reliable.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I’m not talking about “immediately before Mohammed;” I’m talking about thousands of years of history in the region. The cultural problems in the area have been pretty consistent since the days of Ishmael and Esau, if not longer.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I’m not talking about “immediately before Mohammed;” I’m tal.king about thousands of years of history in the region. The cultural problems in the area have been pretty consistent since the days of Ishmael and Esau, if not longer.
Go back that far and you’ll find cultural problems everywhere – except maybe in places where you don’t find culture.
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ISIS is not particularly enamored with culture, though.
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Note that civilization has the Arabians to thank due to their saving the texts that built Western civilization.
Delete “saving the texts that built Western civilization”
insert “saving a few of the texts that built Western civilization having destroyed most of them themselves”
Had Islam not existed Byzantium would have survived – along with the texts you mention – and many more.
Islam trashed most of middle eastern civilisation in much the same way as ISIS is doing now. Should we really be pathetically grateful for the small fragment that they spared?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Byzantium was raided by the Crusaders. Only after being ransacked and attacked repeatedly by Rome were they weakened enough not to withstand the Ottomans which they had previously hired as mercenaries in order to defend against the Catholics. And Rome was not interested in helping them defend themselves.
The fall of Byzantium is really more of a Christian story than one of Islam. And the Ottomans were not exactly Arabians either.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
…and why were the Crusaders there in the first place? Because the Byzantine Emperor begged for aid from the West to retake territory that had been conquered by Muslim invaders, without which there would have been no Crusades at all.
And then, in the culmination of centuries of the sort of scheming and infighting that have since made the word “Byzantine” synonymous with “deadly, treacherous politics”, they proved unable to deal with the consequences of what they had unleashed. It may not be strictly true that “no country has ever been conquered from without unless it had already rotted from within,” but it was certainly true in this case! As I said above, it’s not really a religious problem, but a cultural one endemic to the Middle East. Islam is just a symptom; the real problem is that the people who live there have been at each other’s throats literally for thousands of years, regardless of which religious or political entity held sway at any given time.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Islam is just a symptom; the real problem is that the people who live there have been at each other’s throats literally for thousands of years, regardless of which religious or political entity held sway at any given time.
Frankly this is racism.
You want to spare the ideology for some reason and so you attack the people instead.
Frankly when you consider the many desert fathers in Egypt and Syria and their moral insights (cf St Isaac noted above) or the present day monasteries of St Anthony and St Macarius then blaming the people is not credible.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
Frankly this is history. As anyone who knows anything about the region can tell you, there are several distinct ethnicities who live there. Pray tell, which one(s) am I allegedly being racist against?
I’m not trying to “spare the ideology”; I’m talking about what really happened, and had been happening for thousands of years before Islam came along, formally codified the worst of it, and packaged it up for export by the sword.
And please bear in mind that the existence of a few cherry-picked exceptions does not invalidate any general rule.
My personal theory is that it when you get down to it, it has nothing to do with race, religion, or anything similar, but that deserts are simply a really toxic place to live. It’s the most fundamental theory of civilization that it starts with producing an abundance of food through agriculture, which allows the majority of the populace to get beyond subsistence and begin to specialize in things that raise society to a higher level. But when a climate poor in water makes the widespread practice of agriculture difficult or impossible, you can’t lay that foundation, and so instead of collaborating to build up civilization, you end up with a culture that never moves beyond highly xenophobic tribes competing with their neighbors (which often means warring/raiding) for scarce resources. The problem is that cultural ideas often become traditions that long outlive the conditions that originally made them necessary. (Particularly when formalized by religion, the most effective mechanism that humanity has ever come up with for preserving information over the extreme long term!)
This explains why, looking back through history, you see a lot of the same cultural problems in many distinct races living in the Middle East, and why things don’t tend to get better even when abundance is introduced and scarce resources become less scarce.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
And you’re making yet another ignorant assumption by associating Islam with a single region in the world, when in fact almost 70% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live outside the Middle East and North Africa.
See http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/table-muslim-population-by-country/ . (I used the 2010 population estimates and a broad definition of Middle East and North Africa.)
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Byzantium was raided by the Crusaders. Only after being ransacked and attacked repeatedly by Rome were they weakened enough not to withstand the Ottomans
But had there been no Islam none of this chain of events would have happened. The stupidity of the west in dealing with Islam is the common thread through all of this history and it makes little sense to blame the Byzantines for this.
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Wahhabism/Salafism is a British/twisted “muslim” co-invention.
For real. The word Wahhabism comes from some guy’s name who was called a-Wahab or something like this. Research it when having insomnia.
I don’t remember off the top of my head where I saw this, but just recently they did a poll and ….
don’t let your lack of sources keep you from making wild conclusions.
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Because 2015 has completely broken my sarcasm detector, I cannot tell if you are serious, and so I have to ask:
Do you truly believe that constitutes censorship?
Re: Re:
Source is available on any of the pages from this Google search
Saudi Arabia is just the muslim version of Trump’s America.
Re: Re:
trump is nothing compared to the oil tribe,
you can watch the series: “the prize”
just to get an idea on who really the wealthiest families on earth are
http://youtu.be/Qspu35JG59Q
or even better, read the book
Guess they won't be going after US citizens in the US...
The SPEECH Act says that foreign defamation judgements are unenforceable in the US if it would be protected by the first amendment.
Governments are not eligible as defamation targets in the US. Therefore, no defamation suit would stick.
But that also cuts the punch of the headline too: the NY Times has that same protection. Might make it a bit uncomfortable for NYT reporters going to Saudi Arabia in person, though.
Re: Guess they won't be going after US citizens in the US...
don`t they OWN cnn already?
wow.
perhaps your time in J school (presuming of course anybody there went) was spent playing Zelda. But this is just ridiculous…
“…had a giant article comparing Saudi Arabia to ISIS…”
First, it was an OpEd, not an article. HUGE difference. And Second, here is the definition of the word “giant” so you don’t use it wrong again…
“something unusually large or powerful” This OpEd was neither.
The Al Jazeera poll referenced does not ask about the voter’s country (I just voted!), and is an online poll, so… not meaningful. (Note that I just voted. Vote for yourself and all your friends at http://www.aljazeera.net/votes/pages?voteid=5270 )
There’s another poll worth looking at:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/in-nations-with-significant-muslim-populations-much-disdain-for-isis/
It doesn’t include Saudi Arabia, likely because getting meaningful polling results in such an oppressive state is very difficult, but I doubt that Saudi Arabia would be such an outlier as to have the “75-80% support for ISIS” as was claimed.
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Sorry – That was meant as a reply to Richard comment #14.
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I merely quoted the poll that I presumed that the previous commenter had remembered. Not offering an opinion – just supplying facts.
Other Al-Jazeera polls are broken down by country and don’t include Saudi so it may not be included in that one anyway. However I don’t think you can dismiss such a poll quite so easily when it gives such a high percentage.
Suggestions ??????
Henceforth when you compare an individual or group to ISIS we refer to it as a _________. (similar to a Godwin)
Dave: Hey bob did you see what AJ did over in the copywrong thread?
bob: Oh yeah, he said that Tim wants to behead people who make $100,000,000 movies.
Dave: yes sir. totally ____________’d that discussion.
I don’t have a good suggestion, but I’m sure more than a few people here will.
Re: "Daeshing" or "Daeshed" ;]
Another statistic that's wrong
I wish to high heaven that people would stop thinking we import more oil to the US from Saudi Arabia than we do.
We import it mainly from Canada, and other countries-not the Persian Gulf.
Need proof? Here you go:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbblpd_a.htm
Please note the amount of imports from all countries in the Persian Gulf are far less than we think they are.
That doesn’t mean that the NY Times isn’t wrong, though and that Saudi Arabia isn’t full of crap.
Just it’s irritating when the facts stated are wrong.
Re: Another statistic that's wrong
Crude oil is traded on a global market. That more oil of Canadian than Middle Eastern origin ends up in the U.S. is a matter of ergonomics rather than politics. If the U.S. used less oil, the Saudis would sell less.
Re: Re: Another statistic that's wrong
…If the U.S. used less oil, the Saudis would sell less…
Not necessarily. There are other countries that would buy what the US didn’t; many are US allies. The big problem is transportation security which is why the US has a military presence in the region. Most of the military forces in the area are barely adequate for local defense. If the US military left the region entirely the price of oil would skyrocket and a few producers and transporters would leave the area.
Re: Re: Re: Another statistic that's wrong
“The big problem is transportation security which is why the US has a military presence in the region”
tee hehe
that was funny!
Re: Re: Re:2 Another statistic that's wrong
watch “the prize” it is free in youtube
it will destroy your brain
http://youtu.be/Qspu35JG59Q
They stand a good chance what with being supported by the US government no matter what atrocities they do. I mean what are the odds they will finally tell them to take a hike and stop harassing people instead of continuously sucking up to them.
Beheaders
I think Saudi Arabia should be lauded. After all, in response to anyone comparing Saudi Arabia to ISIS will only result in a lawsuit. In the good, old days they might have beheaded you (for comparing them to ‘beheaders’).
Oh dear, my irony detector circuits just over-loaded.
Too broad a brush
Comparing ISIS to Saudi Arabia might have a host of problems:
Just because both share the same religion and are usually from the same region, it does not mean that they are painfully the same in morality and the like.
Note that not all Americans are right-wing gun-crazies even though most people in America share roughly the same ideas of democracy and republican government.
Re: Too broad a brush
Saudi Arabia just condemned the poet Ashraf Fajadh to death 2 weeks ago because the court has judged him to have abandoned faith.
Too broad or not, that brush is made from the same bristles.
FTFY
Saudi Arabia Says It Will Behead Twitter Users Who Compare It To ISIS;
they can just buy Twitter don`t they?
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and then DIGITALLY behead haram Twitter?
Maybe they are still in shock that the NYT stepped outside its “official mouthpiece of the US gov’t” box to criticize them.
1000s 0f years fighting over sand
The US made Saudi Arabia rich with oil revenues and now the actual heart of some of those is revealing itself to the world. Its not fair to compare everyone in Saudi Arabia with those barbarians just like it isn’t fair to judge all Americans because of a few nasty ones.
Re: 1000s 0f years fighting over sand
“The US made Saudi Arabia rich with oil revenues”
OMG
people, really, come on, do some research before exposing yourselves like that for internet bullying…
http://youtu.be/Qspu35JG59Q
Re: Re: 1000s 0f years fighting over sand
they have destroyed the MEA plenty of times
even the “good CIA assets” like Hussein and Gaddaffi
this is basic history
which you will never get from MTV
Re: 1000s 0f years fighting over sand
It would be easier not to judge all Americans because of a few nasty ones if the others didn’t keep electing the nasty ones.
Stop throwing your votes away by voting for a major party. Because neither major party is interested in either a republic or a democracy. You’ll just get another Greenback of Notre Dame that way.
François Hollande compared “global warming” to “terrorism”.
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He’s right, though depending on how he made the comparison, possibly not in the way he thinks.
Terrorism (well, terrorism of the Islamist variety, the one that everyone’s been so concerned about for the last decade-and-a-half or so,) is funded in large part by oil money. If we were to get serious about stopping either global warming or terrorism, the single most significant part of the solution–do away with petroleum-based fuels–would go a long way toward solving both problems.