Qatar news: CMU faculty, humidity, rain, temporary wives

[qatarperegrine]

• This week both faculty and student orientation are taking place at CMU, so suddenly there is life in the hallways again! It is most wonderful. The Peninsula published a list of our new faculty: Carnegie Mellon appoints new faculty members.


• In less good news, the weather shifted this weekend. June and July are the hottest months in Doha, but August is more humid. So it's down to around 110, but now with 90% humidity. Residents hit by high humidity. (Check out the accompanying picture if nothing else.)


• So what does Qatar do when it's dissatisfied with its natural environment? Silly question; the answer is always We do exactly what Dubai does: MMAA plans to bring artificial rain to Qatar.


• And, finally, the Peninsula decries the trend of married men entering temporary marriages in order to have a summer fling: Wife for vacation: Qataris marry poor women just for the holidays! I love how the social worker blames temporary marriages on "the mushrooming of TV channels and information explosion." While American TV may be responsible for much evil in this world, it does seem a bit sketchy to blame Western cable for a form of polygamy sanctioned by Islam and outlawed in the West.

Comments

vacation "marriages"

[(Anonymous)]

I posted this in my own blog but just wanted to make one little correction to your take on it:

The form of polygyny referred to in this article is NOT sanctioned in Sunni Islam. Perhaps it fits to the Shi'a doctrine of Muta'ah but that doesn't make it Islamically acceptable.

I didn't get the part about TV influences either... pretty lame imo.

Regards,
PM

[y-pestis.livejournal.com]

The last line of the article on artificial rain:

It would also benefit the agriculture sector,” Al Muraihi said.

The agriculture sector??? Qatar has an agriculture sector? What are they growing, potted cacti? (I'm sure that's a very naive comment to make, and all of you readers living in Qatar can tell me where I'm wrong.)

reading the koran

[(Anonymous)]

reading the koran one will notice- that 1. marrying more than one is not encouraged - because it is terrible difficult to treat justly more than one wife
2. it is allowed to marry more than one - but not for the purpose of joy . it is mentionned in the same koranic vers where someone is encouraged how to treat justly the orphans -so it is allowed to marry widows. i know that the present practice simply does not care about that . but this is the civilised solution in cases there are not enough men for some reasons .
after WW II in germany there were more than 4 million widows . women without support . at that time the protestant youth conference brought up the idea of allowing poligamy for a certain period of time - but the allied forces refused the idae " poligamy is not civilised " . so as a result the american and the brittish soldiers could get a woman for a night paying as little as some milk powder or a bar of chocolate . hey marjorie - have you ever thought of that ?
alma wad