Religious Apartheid, with Porn

Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 8:12:09 am PDT

In the religious apartheid kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where men and women are strictly segregated and clerics rail against the immorality of Western culture, the files exchanged by teenagers with their mobile phones are up to 70% pornography.

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers’ mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.

The same researcher also found that 88% of girls say they have been victims of harassment using Bluetooth technology.

Saudi Arabia has toughened penalties for misuse of mobile phones which challenge its strict social traditions.

“The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence,” said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.