Divorce Warnings

A new Kuwaiti study warns about the increase in cases of divorce in the country. The reasons given are men's sexual impotence, women's "frigidity," the "unvirginity" (is this even a word?) of the wife and homosexuality. The headline, however, mentions only homosexuality and women's frigidity just to make sure that we place the blame where it belongs: on the homos and the women!

The four causes seem to be all related to sexual activity: a lack of in the first two cases (impotence and frigidity) and a presence of in the last two (unvirginity and homosexuality). So people are getting divorced for both not having sex and for having it! In other words, in Kuwait you are divorced if you do and divorced if you don't.

And since I'm on the subject of divorce, this story about Palestine warns of the damaging role cell phone cameras are playing in Palestinian society. Some people take unauthorized photos and circulate them, which is an invasion of privacy that is creating problems . One story is about a man who saw a picture of his wife dancing in a wedding on other people's phones. Of course he did what any reasonable man in his place would do: he divorced her immediately. So not only can we snap fast pictures of unknowing victims, we can also divorce them just as fast. Who said we are not keeping up with technology?

"Only You"

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Torturing Kids

Speaking of ten-year-old kids, here's another story.

Muslim Woman Can't Be French

"A French court has denied citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco, ruling that her practice of "radical" Islam is not compatible with French values... Social services reports said the burqa-wearing Faiza M lived in 'total submission to her male relatives'.

I'm sure denying her French citizenship will help empower her so she is not in "total submission to her male relatives."

Worse Than Apartheid

"When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid," says a member of a South African delegation visiting the West Bank. Read more.

With diplomats like these ...

"A retired U.S. diplomat was sentenced on Friday to one year in prison and fined $10,000 for sending racist, threatening messages to an Arab-American group , the Justice Department said."

Among the things he wrote to the Arab American Institute was "The only good Arab is a dead Arab."

And you wonder why US diplomacy in the Arab world is not doing so good!

Happy Yemen

In my school history textbook, Yemen was referred to as "Al Yaman al Sa3eed" (Happy Yemen). So I had an image in my head of a country where every one was smiling: the women, the men, and particularly the children. Neighbors loved each other; people walked down the street holding hands; and there were always dances at sunset. The whole country, marked on the map at the corner of that large block of desert, was green and happy. The rest of the Arabs, of course, were miserable.

Those damned school textbooks! They are useless!

Because soon Yaman became Yamanain (to quote Duraid Lahham): North and South. And they slaughtered each other. Then they got "unified." So now there is one Yaman again, but it is certainly not happy.

At least we know of two little girls there who were not happy. Nujoud, 10, and Arwa, 8 were married off to older men who raped and beat them. But they ran away, went to court, and asked for divorce. I blogged about Nujoud a while back. Now Arwa has her story in the NYT.

My son is 8.

Those who refuse to raise the marriage age for girls in the name of Islam are ...

You fill in the blank!!

Women are Nice...

In some African countries, like Mauritania, fat is beautiful because it indicates wealth. A fat wife was a sign of status. So girls are stuffed by experts who run fat farms. But things are changing now. No, not because of any feminist revolution (god protect us all) but because as one man put it:

"We're fed up of fat women here. Always fat women! Now we want thin women."

Of course, women will oblige. If men want thin women, women will do whatever they can to be thin. Fat farms will just work in reverse: you go there to lose weight.

Women are nice. They always oblige. When it was a sign of beauty/status to be pale, because only peasants had tans, women did all they could to stay away from the sun. But when it became a sign of wealth and beauty to be tanned--it meant you had the leisure to lie on the beach instead of working in an office all day--women tanned themselves to skin cancer and premature aging.

Because women are nice. They oblige.