News: religion conference, sex "crimes"

[qatarperegrine]

The fourth annual Conference on Dialogue of Religions opened in Doha yesterday. Here are the talks so far that have made the news:

• Insulting prophets unacceptable


• Most reputed institutes of Islamic studies are in the West


• Islam not in conflict with science -- this may have been at the conference for diaspora Arab scientists; it's unclear


• Visiting rabbi impressed with Muslims for their hospitality -- this one depressed me greatly, particularly:

  "Contrary to general belief that since the Jews control the US economy, all American Jews are rich, there are a large number of poor Jews as well in the United States, said Lazar."

  The total lack of questioning of the "fact" that Jews control the US economy is disturbing to me, but as Justin pointed out, it's hard to tell whether that was intentional or just a result of bad sentence structure. Honestly, though, I don't think it's just bad sentence structure.

In unrelated news, the Gulf Times is reporting that a maid and driver have been acquitted of illicit premarital relations, because nobody actually witnessed the relations. Despite the fact that this made the case completely unprosecutable, the maid spent six months in jail before the case was dismissed. Nevertheless, "legal sources said the maid cannot complain about the detention after the acquittal, as such a step is usually taken to protect her." Yes, I'm sure she's very grateful.

Comments

[meshach.livejournal.com]

Do you think anything would have happened to her if she was free? (Not that I'm agreeing with jailing someone without valid charges.)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can even imagine what could happen to her, let alone predict its probability. It is curious that she has switched sponsorship in the midst of all this; maybe her former employers would have treated her less kindly than jailers?

[meshach.livejournal.com]

*nods* I don't know. It makes you wonder. I'm glad she's made it out mostly alright. Poor lady though.