Peer Pressure!

So, my mother (like your mother, I am sure) never bought the excuse "But everyone else is doing it/has one/is allowed to!" In fact, her response was (exactly what your mother's response was): "And if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?" It's very hard to win an argument with your mother.

Actually, I heard someone, somewhere, defend this. Ah, yes, it was in college. We had a huge argument. Somebody or another was arguing (and believed it, too, I think) that it is okay for your 12-year-old daughter to date somebody just because "everyone else is doing it." And that it is okay because, and I paraphrase here, "You have no idea how much they might suffer in the lunch room if they don't." It was clearly extraordinarily important for this person that his/her child be popular. Without popularity, why live?

As you can probably tell, I buy this argument not at all. I was brought up to cherish my individuality and my freedom of thought, and not to let people push me around. In fact, I was more likely to do the OPPOSITE of what everyone else was doing, just so I could avoid being like everybody else. I was that kid for much of highschool - you know the one, the one who is standing in the back whining "Guys, I don't think this is such a good idea....". Only instead of whining I was generally the one saying "No. No NONONONONONONONONONO." Luckily my friends chose to continue to hang out with me, mostly because they were also brought up to cherish individuality, and they preferred to keep me around to tease me about my enormous conscience (which they named Nevada) and because I was such a scintillating, fascinating person.
Essentially, I am the last person in the world who would follow my friends off a cliff. Unless they needed saving, in which case it's possible, but that's a whole other issue.

Anyway. This post has a point, I swear. And that point is this: even I, maven of individuality and protector of the small and weak, find myself caving to peer pressure now and again. But it's a much more insidious sort of peer pressure, none of that 'dude, you are so not cool unless you own a pink Barbie watch with flashing lights'. It's the peer pressure that comes naturally from living as a minority of any sort. I now, by the way, have incredible amounts of respect for other people who have lived as a minority, and I'm much more conscious of it in my life when I'm in the States and definitely not a minority.

I'm a Christian, I'm a white kid, I'm a blond woman who stands out a mile as a foreigner. I study Islam, I study Arabic, and I am honestly, truly interested in all of this. And, to top it off, I'm the sort of person who is constantly reexamining myself and my beliefs. I can't tell you how many times I have been asked whether I am Muslim, or whether I am intending to convert, because obviously if I study Islam and move to Saudi Arabia I am clearly intending to be Muslim. No, I patiently explain, I am very interested and I find much of Islam beautiful, but I'm very happy with my religion and don't really feel the need for another one, thank you very much.

But why, then, would I be spending my time studying Islam? Clearly I must be vulnerable. So I get invited to all sorts of "Welcome to Islam!" bashes, and I get given huge numbers of informative pamphlets (because once I know enough obviously I will see the Truth). The people who know me have figured out that I am well-informed and very curious, but they've given up on converting me (or, bless their souls, they never tried in the first place).

Doth I protest too much? Yeah, that's the problem. Because although I don't feel in need of a different religion or a change in lifestyle or values (I like myself, and my values, and my religion, just fine thank you very much - even if I'm occasionally uncertain of who exactly I am and what, exactly, my values and religion are), I am still very conscious of the underlying message that my would-be converters are sending: you are not good enough until you are Muslim. You are not "right" until you are Muslim. You are not "saved" until you are Muslim. You are a deluded, hell-bound infidel demon until you are Muslim. Okay, the last might be an exaggeration (but then again, maybe not).

I suspect I'd get the same thing if I were in a conservative religious community anywhere. Unless, of course, I were willing to hide who I was and what I believed, and I've never really been a big fan of doing that. I took a class on the early history of Christianity, and you know in Rome pre-Constantine they used to force people to stomp on a picture of Jesus or else they would be killed? Even though I can't imagine that God would consider stomping on a picture to be really that bad if it saved your life, the idea of publicly renouncing your beliefs in order to fit in still feels incredibly, incredibly wrong. Although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be brave enough to die for my beliefs, I gotta say the idea of stomping on that picture makes my stomach turn. And yet, when you're surrounded by a group of people who think differently from you (and simultaneously think, with absolute certitude, that YOU are wrong), it's really, really really really really hard not to feel pressure to conform. It weighs on you, the knowledge that everyone else thinks your moral system is corrupt and wrong. It gets to the point where you assume everybody thinks you're going to hell because it's easier than assuming the opposite and then being unpleasantly surprised. That's the worst part, for me. I find myself constantly underestimating the open-mindedness of the people around me just because I can't bear to be disappointed in them. I struggle to keep myself from doing this, but it's hard.

It's not easy to constantly be aware that you're considered freakish. I can only be thankful that there are lots of people out there, Muslim and non-Muslim, who don't consider me freakish.

It would be much easier if I were like my sister, who is pretty darn sure of who she is and what she believes (and she is NOT afraid of letting you know), but then I am not sure I'd really get as much out of the experience. But who knows. The fact of the matter is, I'm not like that. Like I said, I'm a pretty fuzzy outline in my mind, and to be honest I like that about me. I like to think I'm adaptable and willing to honestly reflect on myself in order to improve. Maybe I'm just wishy-washy. But regardless, in a community where you feel constantly judged (negatively), it's tough to keep that from affecting you as you renegotiate yourself. I think in the long run it's probably good for me ("builds character" as my father would say), and I think it makes me take a deeper look at what I really believe and why. I don't even entirely dislike the experience. It's a trial by fire, and even if it weren't a fascinating to look at the society around me, it would be fascinating to try to navigate personal relationships around the inevitable landmines that exist because of different cultural and religious values. And I've found to my delight that a lot of the time there are many fewer landmines than I think there are and, more than that, I've found a huge number of things that I truly admire about the culture and the people and the religion here, so there are things about myself that have changed positively because of the experience.

I'm rambling. All of this thought crystallized a little today because of two things. One, I found this blog (via the Daily Dish) and spent much of the day reading back through all of the archives, and two I talked to my sister about it. We are both fascinated by social experiments like this (for those who are too lazy to click the link, it's a lady who is Living Oprah - meaning, she watches Oprah daily, reads O magazine, and uses Oprah's website and is trying to create a holistic system of life by following all of Oprah's edicts on what to read, eat, how to dress, what to buy, how to think, etc.) where someone immerses themselves in a lifestyle very different from their own in order to test their own boundaries and to experience another point of view (or, in this case, to make a larger point about the unfortunately large role celebrity gurus play in our lives). That's kindof what I'm doing here, and my sister said she would be interested in joining a fundamentalist church to do something similar. But reading the Living Oprah blog, the blogger talks a lot about how she ends up feeling like she is inadequate in some huge way for not having immediately found the enlightenment and self-love that Oprah seems to expect us all to acquire easily. I completely related to that. Okay, I haven't chosen to follow Oprah's word as the Word of God, but I did choose to move to a country with a religious code different from my own. I think, where I feel the weight of the whole society here on me, our Living Oprah blogger feels the huge weight of Oprah's enormous charisma/star power/celebrity as a society of its own, a society in which everyone is well-adjusted, skinny, energetic and clutter-free.

That's all I've got. I realize this wasn't the most coherent post ever, but hey, obviously coherency is not one of my strong points. And I am, as I say, a work in progress, so I reserve the right to completely contradict myself in the future.

Del.icio.us

Hello all! Update on the blog I thought I'd make you aware of. I joined Del.icio.us which is a much better way to collect bookmarks and interesting links than I currently use. My current method involves sending myself long long long gmail conversations (of 80 letters or more) filled with nothing but links. Not the most practical thing ever.

So I'll be switching over to this. The advantage is the linkroll you see down the right -- as I bookmark something in my fantastic internet journey, it appears here on my blog automatically! So, I'll be posting in my blog only the very tippy top of the coolest stuff, or if I have something particular to say about something. But if you want to see a lot of cool stuff, check out the links on the right for what I've been looking at recently.

Surfing the internet is something I have only recently truly understood. Letting yourself open a random link, because it looks interesting, and then finding another random link to open, and then another and then another, and then eventually you're somewhere and you don't know how you got there but man is it nice.

Take, for example, my discovery of the following completely amazing blog: LikeCOOL. It's a collection of nifty stuff, and it's updated all the time. Who here isn't thrilled by a constantly updated collection of nifty stuff? I know I am.

In fact, I'm so thrilled that I'm adding it to my blogroll. Yes, I said it.

Anyway, just thought I'd give you an update.

Downtown Jeddah

It's been a while since I posted. Thanks to the lovely Saudi Telecom Company, our internet connection was down for a week. Actually, 9 days. Believe me, I was counting. Nowhere in the normal world would an ISP be able to keep service down for so long and still have any customers. But as we all know, this is not part of the normal world. Anyway, it was kindof interesting. For some reason our offices use a different internet connection than the residence, so my office still had connectivity. This means that I spent an ungodly amount of time in my office this past weekend.

ANYWAY, what I came here to discuss an interesting trip we went on the other day. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism in downtown Jeddah is run by a wonderful man who leads the fight to preserve and restore the old historical buildings of Jeddah. By far his biggest success is the restoration of Naseef House into a museum. One of the things he does on the side, and for which the Jeddah community is extremely grateful, is to give tours of Nassef House and the historic district. I have been lucky enough to go on this tour a few times, and it always fascinates me. Today, we were there because of some architects who were visiting us from abroad and who were naturally fascinated by the historic part of the city and the traditional architecture to be found there.

It quickly became clear that our guide was really happy to have the opportunity to ask our architect guests their opinion on something that has been vexing him for a while: the everlasting debate between restoring and preserving using traditional materials and methods, and restoring and preserving using modern materials and methods. Listening to them all talk, it sounds like it's been pretty well established that modern materials and methods don't work. They tried to protect the stained glass of the Notre Dame with plastic, and a century later the plastic had to come out as it was causing more problems than otherwise. Similarly, it sounds like they are trying to convince a French firm not to inject the walls of these houses with concrete. The idea would be to shore them up, but our guide was convinced this would be a disaster, and listening to them talk it sounds like they might be right.

Anyway, I wanted to give you an idea of what the old houses of Jeddah looked like, so here are some of my pictures.

The old houses of Jeddah were generally built about 150-100 years ago by the wealthiest families living in the region. This was before the Saudis had permanently claimed this region, but they still had influence and the families here deferred to them. Naseef House, the oldest of them, is roughly 150 years old and is also the biggest. The Naseef family is still one of the wealthiest here, and at the time they were by far the wealthiest. In fact, when the soon-to-be King of Saudi Arabia was visiting Jeddah, the Naseef family gave him the top floor of their house to stay in.

All the houses are built of coral, which I find fascinating, but makes sense given the fact that we're right on the Red Sea. So they make this sort of cement out of coral and sand, and then use wood supports to hold the "cement" in place (it obviously is not as strong as real cement). The walls get thinner as you go up, so that there's less pressure on the lower floors.

The houses have big windows, both to minimize the weight of the materials on the lower floors and to let the air circulate, and the windows are covered with a patterned wooden grate to protect the privacy of the people within. The grates are colored in a variety of ways (natural brown, green, blue) depending on the whims of the city's mayors when they were built, I think.

We saw, in addition, a mosque built 1400 years ago and renovated consistently since then. The oldest bit, the minaret, is 900 years old.

The highlight of the tour, hands down, is the end. Our guide led us up to the very top of Naseef House and, on the roof, there is a little wooden room that is open to the air. We got up there and sat down just as maghrib prayer started. Just at sunset. It was stunning. We sat up there and looked over the old city as the prayer call from a hundred mosques hit us all at the same time in a beautiful cacophony. It is easy to see how one might be inspired to prayer.

Protestantism, Catholocism, and Islam

There is a very interesting parallel to be drawn, I think, between Protestantism and salafism/wahhabism on the one hand, and Catholicism/traditional sunni Islam on the other.

Catholicism and traditional Islam share a belief that religion and religious law is an enormously complicated subject that only the well-qualified are truly capable of judging. In Catholicism, only the priesthood is well-enough qualified. In Islam, the definitions are a bit fuzzier, but the religious scholars, those capable of making judgments, dedicate their lives to unraveling the complexities of the law. One scholar of the Shafi'i school responds to a question from a believer, who has made an independent judgment about a Shafi'i ruling on the basis of his independent reading of the Sunnah, and says:

[Your question] is welcome on account that it indicates a desire to live as close as possible to the Quran and Sunnah; but worrisome because it initially oversimplifies matters of considerable complexity, and subsequently develops into the passing of judgment by persons, that if truth be told, are vastly unqualified for the task.

In direct contrast, Wahhabism claims that religious judgments are obvious. If you read the foundation texts, the answers will be obvious. The education that young Saudis get here on religion is learning by rote: there is only one correct answer, and generally it is backed up by nothing more than a quote from the Qu'ran. Likewise, most of the people I talk to believe that they do completely understand their religion. There's no questioning, no time spent pondering essential questions about the soul and the meaning of the universe. There is no understanding of the complexity of the issues involved, or that Islam has always adapted to meet the needs of the reality in which it found itself.

Protestantism makes many of the same claims. Hence all of the early fights about translating the Bible so that it would be readily accessible for easy interpretation.

Many people have already drawn this parallel. The most famous may be Samuel Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, who makes what is perhaps the first such analogy. Steven Schwartz, in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly, makes the argument that, not only are Wahhabism and Protestantism congruent, but that Catholicism (and its Muslim parallel, traditional Islam), are preferable beliefs because, as he says:

In Islam, there has always been the argument that Wahhabism arose directly as an imitation of Protestant Christianity. And there are Wahhabis who do make this comparison. They say, "We are creating a Protestant Islam." I used to respond to this by saying to Wahhabis, "If you're looking for models from the Christian world, the Catholics are much better models." If I went to Jerry Falwell and asked him how he thinks the poetry of William Blake relates to theology, it is very doubtful he would even know what I was talking about. If I were to go to Pat Robertson and ask him what he thought of John Milton as a representative of Protestant culture, it's very doubtful he would have an intelligent comment. But I can go to a Catholic priest anywhere in the Catholic world and talk about philosophy and poetry, literature and art, because Catholicism is a whole civilization. If you want a Protestant-style Islam, fine, I can't stop you from wanting that, but Protestantism begins with John Milton and ends with Jimmy Swaggart. A Protestant-style Islam would be stripped down, with no spirituality, no sense of Islam as a civilization or a culture, no love of poetry, of mysticism, of religious philosophy, no beautiful mosques.

Steven Schwartz's view of Wahhabi Islam and of Protestantism is clearly not very positive, but even he does not think the parallel is perfect:

There is one extremely important difference, however. Protestantism did not attempt to enforce conformity. Protestantism fostered pluralism.

While I think there are certainly important issues with this parallel, I think Mr. Schwartz's example is flawed.

First of all, the original Protestantism did not at all foster pluralism. You can't even call it "Protestantism" because each individual Protestant had his own beliefs and his own flock of believers. The early Calvinists took over Geneva and exiled or killed those who disagreed and those who did not behave in "proper" fashion. There were enormous arguments between different Protestant sects, each of whom believed theirs was the only path to salvation. (Many Protestant sects still believe theirs is the only path to salvation). What Protestantism did that Catholicism failed to do was to separate religion from the heirarchy of the Church and to make each individual responsible for their own religious education.

The pluralism of Protestantism, then, came directly from the fact that it allowed and promoted an individual interpretation of religion, and it only happened over time, and largely in response to religious persecution by Catholics in Europe. Similarly, although currently Saudi Arabian religion is controlled fairly tightly by the state, there is hope that the spread of Wahhabism through petrodollars might foster the same sense of individual responsibility and individual interpretation, and might lead to a similarly pluralistic form of Islam. It might, however, require persecution similar to that the Puritans met in England, for example, in order to wind up resulting in a recognition of the value of pluralism and religious tolerance.

You could also argue that Islam did not need this sort of breakaway from authority in the first place, because in fact the hierarchy of religious scholars in Islam is only advisory; no one presumes to speak the whole truth, or to know all of the answers. In fact, traditional Islam is fairly pluralistic to start with. It is only recently that Islam began to be seen as uncompromising, and that is mostly due to the growing influence of Wahhabism. But certainly, there are similarities between the Catholic system, where priests are the only ones qualified and educated enough to speak on an issue as complicated as religion, and the traditional Islamic system that depends on men who spend their whole life becoming qualified to speak on issues that they see as incredibly complicated. Protestantism and Wahhabism, on the other hand, see religious decisions as simple ones; just look back to the original text, and the answers are there for any well-intentioned believer to see.

For an interesting discussion of this analogy, see this article.

I should mention as a postscript that most "Wahhabis" see that term as derogatory. They prefer just "Muslims". They practice, after all, the only right form of Islam. Similar to Protestants much? I think so. But for lack of a better term (unless you want to use salafi - one who goes back to the roots - or puritan, but both of those predicate a bit of knowledge of Islam and religion which I don't want to assume).

Food, Glorious Food

Haha! More awesome stuff via the Daily Dish.


Creative food sculptures and photoshopped pictures of animals as food.

Divorce Cakes

Tuesday we had a party for one of our colleagues who was getting married. We had a big party, and all of the married women went out of their way to rib her about married life. I guess this happens elsewhere, but I don't have enough married friends elsewhere to have seen it anywhere else. Plus, it's still mostly assumed that you're a virgin at marriage here, which means that the conversations included bawdy commentary and whatnot. I have always said that marriage is a weird sort of public ceremony; getting up in front of all of my closest friends and relatives and announcing to them, "tonight I will be having sex with this man," always seems just a tad bit ... mortifying. And here is even worse than the West, because you may never have even dated anyone before.

Weird.

But obviously that has nothing to do with divorce, and hopefully it never will. But while I was there I discovered that the latest trendy thing is Divorce Parties! You can now celebrate your divorce and your newly-regained freedom with a specially-made divorce cake!

One of my friends sent me some examples.

It seems like a lot of these have the "kill the cheating, lying bastard" theme, which leads me to believe that divorce parties are perhaps more popular among women. I suppose that makes sense. I can't really see a bunch of guys gathering around a wedding cake to celebrate the dissolution of their marriages. I can't really see a bunch of guys gathering around a wedding cake for any purpose beyond a wedding.

Women, on the other hand, really enjoy throwing parties. I cannot complain; I enjoy parties as much as the next girl. Well, I lie. I'm sure men celebrate the same things women celebrate, but I can't help but feel that there is probably more cake involved in female parties.

Anyway, divorce parties sounds like a good sort of tradition to encourage. Especially given the bitter humor displayed in these cakes. I always like a good bitter humor cake.

One of my friends told me the story of a Lebanese woman and her daughter who converted to Islam, and then her daughter also converted. These stories of conversion are fairly common here. Everybody's got at least one to tell. I don't know whether they're true or whether they're urban legends, but they're interesting. This one involved the mother being in a life-threatening situation and finding herself reciting the Ayat al-Kursi completely by accident. When she converted to Islam, her husband was really upset and their marriage fell apart: they ended up divorced. The daughter lived a life of dissolution and hedonism (as my friend put it to me, "she didn't believe in anything"). One day she fell into a completely random coma in her house. Because of her lifestyle, she hadn't made any close friends and no one came to see her and check if she were okay. After ten days of this she started reciting "Ya Rub" ('O God' in Arabic), and miraculously someone came and found her and she recovered (converting to Islam in the process).

Now for those of you who know anything about traditional Islamic Law, the rule goes that a Muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish woman, but a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man. I think this comes from the general idea that the child will inherit the religion of the father.

Anyway, the mention of divorce brings up an interesting hypothetical here. Obviously, once she had converted to Islam, the mother and daughter would be expected to marry a Muslim man. But the mother already was married, and to a Christian. My question is, if they hadn't gotten divorced for other reasons, would she have been legally bound (under Islamic Law) to divorce him now that she was a Muslim but he wasn't? Divorce isn't really considered a great thing in Islam (any more than it is anywhere else) and you're really supposed to use it as a last resort. Should you stand by your husband even if he isn't Muslim, or do you dump him and go looking for a Muslim husband?

Just a thing to think about.

The UK is Ridiculous

So, I just found the following story on News of the Weird - apparently the UK has started a game show designed to pit religious groups against each other. It's called Faith Off. How clever. And how TOTALLY unlikely to spread intolerance and misunderstanding. Color me skeptical. And a teensy bit appalled.

Then again, it's not like this is new. Maybe it's something in the drinking water, but the UK aired something I felt was equally inane sometime last year: Make me a Muslim. It's the wild and wacky reality TV show based on the concept that a conservative imam and a few other volunteer Muslims could take a couple of morally corrupt Westerners and improve their lives by converting them to Islam. The lucky contestants included a bitter alcohol-imbibing middle-class man, a single mother stripping to pay the bills, a gay man (this is going to be good), and some woman dating a "fallen" Muslim.

I was "fortunate" enough to see a part of this TV show one day. The highlights included telling the gay man that he was only gay because he spent too much time with women (so he was sent off to play cricket with "the boys" while the imam wandered the town showing his picture around to likely-looking young ladies in order to find him a wife) and a really awkward conversation with the woman and her Muslim boyfriend about whether they slept in the same bed ("but do you do more than sleeping?"). How do you suppose the volunteer Muslim guides justified their participation in this to themselves?

Anyway, apparently the UK is at it again. I hope I get to see an episode of Faith Off. I suspect it will be.... enlightening.

Snow Globes!

I remember making a snow globe out of Fimo and a goldfish bowl for my little sister's birthday one year. I used to be such an amazing big sister....I wonder what happened?

Anyway, I was reminded happily of those days by a post on the Daily Dish which linked to another blog which linked to... well. Check it out. These snow globes were created by Walter Martin and Pamela Munoz and the results are... twisted. (They also make creepy little islands). I highly recommend going to the artists' website and looking at all of them. Here are some highlights.There will apparently be an exhibition of their work at the George Adams Gallery in New York City July 10-August 29. If anybody's in the area.... go!

Did anybody else read those amazingly creepy children's books by John Bellairs (and generally illustrated by the King of Creep Edward Gorey)? Who can honestly tell me that this doesn't remind them of that:

Check them all out. Freakin' amazing.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Barack Obama

Now here's a man who speaks the language of my generation, the language of my heart:

When Mr. Wenner asked how Mr. Obama might respond to harsh attacks from Republicans, suggesting that Democrats have “cowered” in the past, Mr. Obama replied, “Yeah, I don’t do cowering.”

Rock on! Damn The Man! Free Tibet!

Via DailyKos

It's good to be sarcastic

Demotivation is eternally entertaining.


Ah, makes me feel right at home.

Technorage!

Sometime this year I coined a term (that probably already exists somewhere, but whatever, I'm special, I made it up too) to describe that unique form of uncontrollable rage caused by malfunctioning technology. I don't know if other people experience this the same way I do, but I find that my technology-related wailing and gnashing of teeth is much more waily and gnashy than any other sort of wailing and gnashing. In fact, I think if I ever commit homicide (or hurl a computer out of a window), it will be because of this. If road anger gets its own special name, why not technology anger?

For those of you who are going to say "well, obviously you need a new computer/cell phone/ipod," I say no. My computer/cell phone/ipod has served me well, and I will not abandon it now in its time of need. I'll just fling it about the room once in a while when it misbehaves.

To everybody out there suffering from technorage, Bill Gates feels your pain. Or at least he felt your pain. And if he's using Vista, he's probably still feeling it.

Nothing is as it seems

Golly. This is an allegory, and an interesting insight into the way the internet actually works versus the way we think it works. A small taste:

A long time ago, people used signposts to get where they wanted to go. Each signpost was a little underlined phrase in blue that took you to a new place. People would wander all over the place, hopping from one place to another, looking at signposts to see where to go next. These signposts made a sort of map.

Sounds like me!

And on an entirely different subject, this is... just frightening:

Their alleged “crime” was that the graduate student had downloaded an Al-Qaeda training manual from a US government website for research purposes, as he’s writing his MA dissertation on Islamic extremism and international terrorist networks. He had then sent this to his friend in the Department of Engineering for printing. The printed material had been spotted by other staff and reported to the University authorities who passed on the information to the police.

And to add additional possibility for extreme error, they've recently upped the number of days you can be held without charge to 28. That's all well and good if you trust your government to only pick the guilty people. But it is ungodly stupid to trust your government. Particularly about something like this. Laws exist explicitly so that people don't have to trust their government.

I guess maybe it's good to see that it's not just America.

An interesting idea

I spent a while browsing around today. It's amazing the sort of stuff you can find out there. It's amazing how often you find yourself becoming engrossed in something completely bizarre, that you would never find interesting if it were presented to you in any other way. So, somehow, I stumbled across this really cool idea - a wiki book! And then, because that post was so fantastical, I started reading, and I found all sorts of interesting things.

So, here's one of those interesting things. What if it were possible to view the world as it is, without trying to weigh things against one another. What do I mean by that? Well, what if you could look at something happening in the world, and take a good effect, and a bad effect, and see them both separately, without judging between them.

Or, as the author himself says, after discussing the relationship between progress and inequality:

For some reason we spend most of our time assessing which of these changes outweighs the other rather than just admitting that both stories have some truth to them. In a technological age, inequality provides one of the driving forces for innovation that generates long-run growth. In a society where basic goods are rationed by price, inequality will put more of those basic goods out of reach of the poorer ranks of society.

This would be a great skill to have, I feel: being able to see many truths at a time rather than looking for just one. I think you can extrapolate and try to apply it elsewhere as well -- why does only one thing have to be right, or better? Why can't both/all be accepted? The most obvious place to use this would be religion. Why does there only have to be one religion? Why can't there be truth in each of the varied ways that humans find to connect to God? I was trying to use an example in a conversation with a friend, and this is what I came up with: asking which religion is the right one (or even assuming that there IS only one right one) is like saying there's only one way to Makkah, and only one correct direction for prayer. But this is patently false; the Ka'aba is in a different direction from each place that you stand. If you made people face in the same direction from each place in the world, you would have some people praying towards Makkah, others towards Brazil. Instead, there is a specific direction for each location on earth. Thus each person has his or her own individual path to find and follow, and there is no single correct answer.

These two arguments seem very similar. Why does humanity always search for the Truth, the eternally applicable One Answer, rather than accepting that there are lots of true things, lots of answers, and that each of them has its own place?

And some entertaining endpoints. First, this article about the new threat to energy efficiency in Japan.

Secondly, a dude living all by himself on an island just declared independence.

Third, the awesomest apartment ever.

Finally, apparently a Pew survey found that one in five Americans who identify themselves as atheist also say they believe in God (via).

.....huh?

UPDATE: Toilets are a big thing everywhere, apparently. Who knew?

UPDATE 2: If you like the idea of what's-his-face in Forvik declaring independence, then check out the history of the six tiniest nations in the world. Apparently this isn't that unusual.

UPDATE 3: Gosh, micronations are everywhere.

Who's Got it Worse?

Every time I meet someone unfamiliar with Saudi Arabia, I inevitably get some question along the lines of, "Is it hard to be a woman there?"

And, of course, the answer is "Yes." But they're asking the wrong question, because it's not just hard to be a woman here. It's hard to be anybody here, if you're not surrounded by a strong network of friends and family (and sometimes even if you are). And being single and male in Saudi is arguably harder than being single and female.

Whenever I get in a taxi and find a non-Saudi driver (which is fairly common; most of the drivers around here are South Asian), they generally start a conversation. So we talk about where they're from, and whether they have family, and what part of America I'm from, and then we get around to whether I'm Muslim. And once it becomes clear I'm an American woman, non-Muslim, here by myself, then they assume I will agree when they begin complaining about Saudi. And they do; almost every taxi driver I have spoken to hates it here. HATES it here. They are lonely, they are bored to tears, their families are back home and everyone they know here has business interests, there are no "real" friendships. And I can spend a lot of time complaining about how hard it is to get out, how hard it is to go wherever I want, how isolated I sometimes feel, but at least I have a community of ex-pats I can go to, I have a community at my job I can go to, and if I talk to strangers they do not immediately assume I am creepy. I would say ethnicity, religion and social class are all MUCH bigger determinants of how happy you are here than your gender.

But, like I said, it might even be harder for men than for women. Saudi Jeans is responsible for getting the word out that, in Saudi, single men are frequently kept out of malls by security guards, on the assumption that the only reason single men would want to be in malls is to hunt down the single women. And when they're not kept out, apparently they're sometimes charged money to enter (thanks to Saudi Jeans, here's the original Arabic article if you're interested). Again, because the single women inside are...worth it? But no, even if they pay to enter, they can't do anything that would be construed as flirting, or they risk being arrested. Women get arrested for this sort of thing too (as last year's famous Starbucks arrest proves) but it's much less common. And, as the idea of gender equality picks up steam here, women are moving more and more into the public sphere, but the private sphere hasn't become very welcoming to men. More on that below. Suffice it to say the young men particularly are getting bored. More than 60% of the Saudi population is under 25, and sometimes the young men go crazy. The same goes not just for Saudi men, but for taxi drivers and, from my experience, also the poor Marines (all five of them) who guard the American consulate here.

This is because women have a lot of power. First off, most men are a little bit afraid of us. We're mysterious, exotic, and have the power to draw them into sin. What's not to love? Plus, the dress code means that men (particularly the religious police) are likely to get flustered if they see anything other than the abaya. There are urban legends about Western women who get out of trouble by threatening to open their abaya and scaring the men away. In addition, the entire society is organized around the goal of protecting women (and their "virtue"). For a long time (I dunno whether it's still in the rulebook or not) police didn't pull over cars with women in them. When you walk into a store full of men, you frequently go to the front of the line. If there are no seats available, someone gets up to let you sit down. You get driven everywhere you want to go, dropped off and picked up at the door so you never have to walk, and people will fall all over themselves to carry things for you.

And finally, because of the restrictions on mingling with the opposite sex (and because of the nature of young men), single women are in VERY high demand. VERY high demand. If you make accidental eye contact with somebody (as happened to me once when I was in the car with Melvi), you risk having him follow you home in his car, laughing and honking and acting like a lovestruck maniac. The Washington Post and the New York Times (love from the girls' side, from the boys' side) have both done series on flirting and dating in Saudi Arabia, but the general message is this: if women want to find a boyfriend, it's pretty easy to do. I'm not going to say you'll get fantastic quality, but if I walked down the street towards the supermarket I could probably find a boyfriend before I got there. It gets downright uncomfortable sometimes; I have even gotten this sort of attention from Westerners. It's like those cartoons they used to show where the starving guy on an island looks at his companion and sees him suddenly as a giant turkey dinner. I am the turkey.

The same cannot be said for the men. You could certainly argue that all of these "advantages" that women have merely showcase the skewed, paternalistic, commodity-driven view that men hold of women here, and I'm not necessarily going to disagree. But if I have to choose between not being allowed to do anything because I might sin, and being treated like I'm an object on a pedestal because someone might sin against me, I choose the pedestal.

The situation is in some ways analogous to some of the debates going on in the US about the difficulty men have in finding their roles in society now that women can do anything men can do. Now that the concepts of gender equality are spreading here, and almost everyone here now feels that women belong in the public sphere to some degree (though obviously with protections to ensure their privacy and modesty), women are encroaching more and more on what used to be the male sphere, the public domain. But, because modesty and privacy are still considered essential for the protection of women, that means that the public sphere must adapt to permit women to enter. Many companies who want to hire women (banks and government agencies in particular) are required to completely retrofit the infrastructure to create a separate, protected place for women to work: separate bathrooms, separate elevators, separate work space. Men are required to be considerate of women and their needs in their place of work, in stores and restaurants, and other public spaces.

But men have not likewise made inroads into the private sphere. Where there are women, women's needs rule. Women can enter their male colleagues' work spaces freely; men are constrained to warn the women of their approach before entering the women's areas. Women can use predominantly male bank branches, but they also have branches specifically for women. Coffee shops (Starbucks, for example) don't really enforce the singles/family divisions, so women can sit in the male areas in malls and outside, for example, but they still have their own area if they wish it.

This whole thing is eloquently visible where I work. It's a primarily female environment, where women study and with mostly female employees. Thus, the main area of campus is free from abayas and headscarves. However, we employ maybe 20 men in the faculty and IT (there are many more maintenance men who work after hours). Those men are kept in a small, separate area, and before they leave they need to have an escort and the women in the building he is going to will be warned by email of his approach. If he is coming to the admin building, he follows a hidden tunnel to a locked door, where he waits, knocking more and more urgently, until someone on the other side finds a key to let him out (but not until everyone is properly covered).

As I hope I have made clear elsewhere, I don't feel like my freedom or my lifestyle is hugely curtailed here; somewhat curtailed, yes, but if you find a good group (or groups) then life is wonderful. I guess I mean only to make the point that gender is really not a deciding factor in whether life is good or not here. There are arguments to be made on either side, but life is not all roses for the men.

Thursday Morning Walking

I woke up this morning at 7:45, got in the shower, and by the time I got out at 8:01 my ride had left without me. Frustrating. But, because I am turning over a new leaf of incredible productivity, instead of going back to bed I walked to Sarawat, the supermarket about 2km away. It took about half an hour, in the direct sunlight. So I'm a little toasty now, after walking back. But I got some necessities so I can survive another week without milk or veggies, I hope. I am so proud of myself. It's 11am and my day has just begun! I am kindof exhausted though, so we'll see how long I hold out before I take a nap.

However, I had a great walk to the store. I wore my bright blue headscarf and put my ipod up all the way (under my headscarf and abaya) so i could totally ignore everybody and everything and just stride down the street listening to The Dandy Warhols (who are arguably the best band for purposeful striding). Once I got to the store, half an hour later, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to cover my head on the way back, so I take off my headscarf, and then standing unobtrusively in the juice aisle I unbutton part of my abaya so I can get to my ipod to turn it off. But of course, some young man walks by at just that time and whistles at me. Peachy.

And on the way back, wearing my abaya but no headscarf, I got NOTICEABLY more attention. Part of it might have been that i was walking over there early, before things opened, and on the way back things were open and there were people around, but i have to believe part of it was my shocking blond hair. I passed two little children and their mother - the kids were sitting on some sort of abandoned sofa on the side of the road, and as I pass by the little girl sees me and her eyes widen. I smiled at her and she looked even more incredulous. She starts tugging on her brother's shirt saying "Shoof! Shoof!" ("Look! Look!") and pointing at me. Perhaps they've legitimately never seen a blond person before? I can't really believe that to be the case, there are too many foreigners in Jeddah. But who knows what kind of sheltered lives these kids might lead. Anyway, at least I provided the world with some entertainment. That's a good start.

The pictures are of where I live, by the way. The bit you can see from outside, anyway. The gate of the residence is on a roundabout with a giant sculpture of a book in it; it's really a beautiful sculpture, it's too bad it's so out of the way. In the picture at the top you can see two of the biggest landmarks of my part of town, as well: the NCB Bank building, which is situated right in the middle of balad, the old city, and the Khozama Palace water/observation tower (I'm not entirely sure which it is), which is situated right across the street from us in its own fabulous compound (which includes, I am told, an Olympic-size swimming pool. I live behind the gate. Fairly intimidating, no? The gate is enormous, and has a huge padlock on it, although I don't think I've ever seen the padlock locked. Maybe in the middle of the night they lock it. The gate guards are there 24/7 to let you in, though, so it's not as much like a prison as it looks. You can pretty much wander out and wander back in whenever you want, as I did this morning. It is pretty heavy, though, and squeaks like crazy, so I don't think you could sneak out very well. Pity.