Categories
Religion

Wahabi weirdness

My teacher was telling me about some of his experiences when he went on Haj. That is the pilgrimage that all muslims should take to Mecca if they can. He, his wife, and his mother all went together by bus. When they got to the Saudi border, the men and the women were separated into different busses. From that point onwards, the only time he could actually be in the presence of his wife and mother was in the main mosque in Mecca, everywhere else it was forbidden for the sexes to mingle. There were even separate hotels for the men and the women, even though he was married to one of them. The idea was that he needed to be protected from seeing any other man’s wife, it might incite lust in him…

It gets better than that, he learned of some real bizarre practices by some Whabis. There are apparently hadiths (Islamic writings used by the faithful to guide their practice) against men hugging or kissing their sisters or daughters because of the fear of arousing sexual feelings. Also, if a husband and wife have sex, it must be in total darkness. To be fair, I think that the orthodox Jews have similar restrictions, or at least the ultra orthodox Hasidim do… Here’s my favorite one, some people believe that it is dangerous for women to chop cucumbers or carrots. Yes, it’s for the reason that you think. How twisted is that? Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t want women to cut those vegetables due to fear of them getting vengeful ideas in their heads…

At some point you have to wonder if all of these restrictions have the opposite effect. Instead of avoiding lustful thoughts, people will get the idea that every single thing can, and does relate to sex and sexual feelings. By keeping it in the forefront all the time, they may be twisting people more than protecting them.

We talked a little about the treatment of women in Saudi, you know its repressive if a Yemeni thinks they are crazy. It wasn’t too long ago that the law in Saudi allowed women to go to school and work unescorted, but many people do not approve of these laws. My teacher is constantly pained by the idea that people world wide associate wahabism with muslims in general. As a matter of fact, I have yet to meet a single muslim that didn’t think that the wahabis are crazy. Unfortunately, I think that many people do think of wahabis when they think of muslims, especially in the US. It’s too bad… My teacher believes that the reason that the Arab world is in such bad shape is because God is punishing them for the actions of the Wahabis. Now there’s something to think about….

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Categories
odds and ends

Sleeping too much

I don’t know what my problem is, no matter what time I go to bed, I can only rouse myself at noon. I’m blaming ramadan for this, I’m still sleeping on a ramadan schedule. It took me a couple of weeks to get into it, and I guess it’ll take a couple of weeks to get out of it as well… Luckily, my class isn’t until 4, so there hasn’t been too many problems. Of course the diretor of the school leaves at around noonish, so I’ll have to drag my carcass out of bed at the crack of 10 O’clock one morning so I can pay him.

Categories
Rants

Bank issues solved…

So I was still having trouble with my ATM card. I had verified the transactions that I had made, but the next time I used it, I was refused again. I called up the bank and they explained that I was OK by them, but that VISA had put the card into the fraud investigation category. My bank put me in touch with VISA, I answered their questions and was told that I was now clear to use the card. OK, so that night I go to the ATM and… it was refused again. Grrrr… So I called again today, was told that VISA had put a hold on the card for the fraud investigation. I mentioned that I had already jumped through VISA’s hoops, the lady on the other end did some clicking away at her keyboard and confirmed that I had done it, but the guy that had been helping me neglected to pass the info along to the necessary person to clear the card. So I answered a few more questions successfully and the lady said that the card would be ready to use in 5 or six minutes and there was nothing else for me to do. I thanked her and then told her that I would stay on the line until she told me that the card was ready. That did the trick. A couple of minutes later, she informed me that the entire process was completed. Tonight I went back to the ATM and… Success!! Whew! Now I can proceed to spend all of my money…

Categories
Yemen

Banking in Yemen

My teacher and I had another interesting chat today. The concept of interest came up for some reason and I asked him how Islamic banks get around the prohibition on usury. Turns out that is a sore subject with him. The way he explained it, if you give the bank money and you earn a certain percent interest on it, that is harram (forbidden). But if you give the money to the bank and they agree to give you a certain amount more back after they complete a transaction, that is OK by Islamic bank standards because it is directly tied to another transaction. My teacher feels (quite correctly I think) that it doesn’t matter, the bank customer is earning interest in both cases and so it should be harram in both cases.

We then started talking about banks in the US. He was blown away by the idea that I rarely handled actual cash back home. I had direct deposit and I used an ATM card for most transactions. “But it’s just numbers, how do you know that you have the money?” That sounds like a strange question, but coming from someone in a cash economy, it’s a logical one. “If you wanted a million dollars in cash, could you get it from your bank?” Needless to say, the concept of fractional reserve banking was incomprehensible to him. To be fair, a lot of Americans have never heard of this and get a little nervous when they find out that the bank doesn’t actually have all of it’s money in cash. It was a challenge trying to differentiate between M1 and M2 in Arabic, I’m not sure if I suceeded… The concept of bank runs came up and so I tried to explain the great depression, bank runs, the FDIC, etc. All in all, it was quite a work out for my Arabic, and I was told a fair number of new words.

The upshot of all of this is that not so many people keep their money, or at least a large part of their money in a bank here. Either they worry about religious obligations, or they just do not trust the banks. There is no insurance here, and without earning interest, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put their money in a bank. People that have a lot of money and are worried about the prohibition on earning interest simply invest their money in land and businesses. I get the feeling that a lot of the people with money aren’t so worried about religious problems with earning interest, maybe that’s why they are rich, and the rest of the country is pretty poor. If there isn’t a good reason to save your money (i.e. making money off of it) then there is a powerful incentive to simply spend it all. It’s almost impossible to create any wealth at all if there isn’t much saving going on. The straightforward prohibition helps explain a lot of the poverty in this part of the world. Money should be able to work for you without you having to monitor every single aspect of your investments. But what can they do? It’s a very explicit command, there isn’t any wiggle room. It sucks that they have to choose between adhering to their religion and following a sound method of wealth creation.

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Categories
Yemen

It looks like I’m not the only one…

I read a recent op-ed in the Yemen times that summed up my experience of Ramadan. The editor apologized for the thin papers out out during Ramadan. She then said that they tried to put out the normal papers, but because of the fasting people were apparently unable to work, or think (her words). She then pointed out that Yemen is the only place where you are not expected to continue with your regular life during Ramadan. You are supposed to fast during the day, so the Yemenis turn day into night. They stay up all night and sleep during the day. Not only does this screw up productivity, but it also calls into question the entire reason behind Ramadan. If the fasting isn’t difficult, does it have any meaning? Yemen basically shuts down for a month and a week. I agree with the editor that a country as poor as Yemen can ill afford throwing away 8% of their productivity a year…

Categories
Rants

Gah!

My money is slipping away quickly. I’ve renewed my health insurance, I finially paid my rent for october, Just paid a million riyals (rounding to the nearest million of course)to get my visa extended, I need to pay for my tuition, and I’m going to buy an airline ticket to go home for Christmas. A while back, I had made a calculation that said that I could be here until september of next year, but I’ve veered from my budget significantly. The big blows have been the two round trip airline tickets back home. They were necessary though, I needed them for my sanity. They were worth about 4 to 5 months of living here though… I’ve also strayed from my food budget. I’ve given up eating on the cheap, the food just isn’t that good. It’s not that I’m spending a lot on food, but more than I budgeted for. Even the best places to eat are only on a par with the restaurants back home, and I’m usually eating at places cheaper than that.

I should start teaching soon, so that should take up the slack in my money supply. At this point, I will come back after Christmas for at least a couple more months. If I’m getting what I hope I can get from the school, I’ll do another year here. I should find out soon enough…

Categories
Rants

Bank issues

A few weeks ago, I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM here while it was being filled with money. It spit out the card and told me to wait. When they were done, I put it back in and there were no problems. A little while later my father informed me that my bank had sent a letter informing me of “suspicious activity” with my ATM card. I had to call them up and verify the transactions (including the botched one). Today, I went down to the ATM and it told me that my bank has refused the transaction. What the hell? I’ve been using this card here, in Dubai, Istanbul, Greece, and Malta without any problems for the past year.
Now
they’re suspicious… It isn’t a huge deal just yet, but I need to straighten this out, it’s the only way I have of getting money here. Yemen is strictly a cash economy, credit cards are all but useless here. Well, I guess I’ll call them again, wish me luck…
Categories
Arabic

Classes start tomorrow

I haven’t been doing any Arabic studying for a month or so. I have been talking on and off, and just like my other breaks, I feel that I am more comfortable with the Arabic that I know. Of course I also realize that there are some words that I have forgotten, they just aren’t coming to me when I need them. That’s easy enough to fix, review is always easier than learning new stuff. I’ve also been scanning some of the Arabic newspapers and I feel that I’m getting more out of them. I still can’t sit down and read them, but I’m getting the idea of a lot of headlines now. there’s two problems with me and the headlines. The first is that I just don’t know all the words. That’ll come with time. The other problem is that often times the headlines don’t make any sense. They only hint at what the article is about as opposed to summarizing it. Many times, I don’t really know what the article is about. I’ve been told that this is on purpose.
The newspapers in this part of the world tend to be written in a more literary style than the US. I’ve been told that this is because when they were released from colonial rule, they didn’t have any newspaper tradition at all. The governments went to the only writers that they had access to, men studying Arabic and Arabic literature. The press here is frequently criticized for being too editorializing and not facts based enough. I’m betting that their headline writing is a symptom of this.
I’m hoping that in the next part of my class, we’ll concentrate more on the papers and perhaps doing some more word drills. I’d like to have some text in front of me and be forced to identify the subject, object, predicate (which doesn’t necessarily involve verbs), masdars (gerunds to us English speakers), participles, etc. It’ll be about as thrilling as it sounds, but it will help me considerably. The dictionaries for Arabic frequently only list the roots of words, so if I’m looking for a participle, gerund, plural, or any other number of variations, I could very well be out of luck unless I can spot the root. If I come across a word I don’t know (which is very frequently in the papers), I usually need to know what part of speech it is in order to look it up.
I consider this progress. At least now I know what I need to know in order to learn more… I’m also hoping that studying will be more interesting if it’s primarily reading. We’ll see how it goes…

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Categories
Economics

Sounds like a good program…

If you’re interested in how developing countries can improve, this show sounds like it will be interesting. It’s nice to see how people can help themselves instead of relying on the government to come to their rescue…

Hello.  Thank you again for giving us coverage on the Milton Friedman biography which aired on PBS in January.  We alerted you earlier in the year to our new program

The Ultimate Resource
.  I am pleased to announce the program is scheduled to broadcast on PBS starting November 2, 2007 at 8PM EST.  A list of broadcasting stations is available here:
http://www.freetochoosemedia.net/production/ultimate_resource/press/ur_station_listings.pdf


The program was filmed on location world-wide.  In Ghana, we document parents striving to choose the best schools for their children.  Knowing school choice is a topic of much interest, we thought you might want to alert your readers to this program.  Below, you’ll find links to the segment on school choice, as well as other segment previews.  

Direct link to the Ghana segment dealing with school choice:

http://www.ideachannel.tv/video/videopreview2.php?video=victoria_long

Link to all previews of
The Ultimate Resource:


http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/production/ultimate_resource/press.php

Link via YouTube to the Ghana segment dealing with school choice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7efh-2J1A4
 
The program features some of today’s most leading experts.  In Bangladesh, we interview 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus.  In Peru, we speak to economist Hernando de Soto.  James Tooley, Professor of Education Policy, is featured in the segment on school choice.  And scholar Johan Norberg meets us in Estonia to discuss the country’s huge leap in economic grown since the fall of the Soviet Union.

We would appreciate you alerting your readers to the PBS broadcast of
The Ultimate Resource
.  Please let me know if I can provide additional information or a DVD screener.

Kind regards,
 
Christina Belski, Promotion Coordinator
Free To Choose Media   
Phone: 814-833-7140
Email:
christina@freetochoosemedia.org

Web:
www.freetochoosemedia.org
 

 
Categories
Arabic

Good Luck

We just got in a new housemate from Italy. We talked with him for a bit last night and got some basic info about the whys wheres and hows of him being here. Turns out that he’s a programmer and his employer wants someone that can communicate in Arabic and/or read instructions in Arabic so that they can branch out into this world. So what did they do? They sent him here for 3 weeks. He doesn’t know a lick of Arabic and he will be here for three weeks to learn what his boss wants. He’ll be taking 6 hours of class a day, but even with that, there’s no way in hell anyone could be useful in this language in three weeks. With 6 hours a day, the chances of him remembering a majority of what they go over in class is close to zero. I’ve been in this country 8 or 9 months and I’m just now getting confident enough to talk to people regularly. No, I’m not the world’s best language student, but still, this is a tough language, three weeks? Give me a break…

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