NY Times Pro-Saudi Charm Offensive Shows Some Cracks
This article is one of several the NY Times ran recently in an apparent effort to humanize people trapped in Saudi Arabia’s Islamist nightmare. Despite the Times’ best efforts, pro-jihadi statements and information on the horrible condition of women continues to leak out. And the “pictures” of completely covered black-bagged women speak for themselves.
“Ms. Tukhaifi and Shaden both spoke admiringly of the religious police, whom they see as the guardians of perfectly normal Saudi social values, and Shaden boasted lightly about an older brother who has become multazim, very strict in his faith, and who has been seeing to it that all her family members become more punctilious in their religious observance. “Praise be to God, he became multazim when he was in ninth grade,” Shaden recalled, fondly. “I remember how he started to grow his beard — it was so wispy when it started — and to wear a shorter thobe.” Saudi men often grow their beards long and wear their thobes cut above the ankles as signals of their religious devotion.
“I always go to him when I have problems,” said Shaden who, like many of the young Saudi women interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition that her last name be omitted. “And he’s not too strict — he still listens to music sometimes. I asked him once, ‘You do everything right and yet you’re listening to music?’ He said, ‘I know music is haram, and inshallah, with time I will be able to stop listening to music too.’ ” Haram means forbidden, and inshallah means “God willing.”
She added, “I told him, ‘I want a husband like you.’ ”