Attention, everyone: The sheikhs of the so-called Al Sahwa Al Mubaraka (I can’t believe I just said that) are coming to campus. Last week, there was a lecture by Mohammed Al Dwaiesh, one of the guys who ruined the discussion panels at the recent book fair. This week, there is a double feature: Mohammed Al Areefi, and Salman Al Awdah, who has a weekly show on MBC and now described as one of the moderate scholars. These lectures are organized by the students committees at College of Sciences, and I have no problem with that, except for the part that our college is flooded with many, many posters for the event in a disturbing manner. I’ve been wondering though: why such events are exclusive for Islamists? Why we never see any lecture by a liberal or by a Shiites scholar, you know, just for a change? Oh, have I said that out loud? Never mind :-|

In a recent interview, Sheikh Ayedh Al Garni supported the calls for an open dialogue between Sunni, Shiaa and Sufi Muslims in Saudi Arabia. “We should meet and refer our differences to the Quran and the Sunna,” he said. I’m all for dialogue, but I don’t really see the point of this one. Instead of looking for our differences – as of these differences are some kind of a problem, how about respecting each other and support freedom for everybody to practices their beliefs?

Just like me, Didi has her own list of unread books.

Flame-wars are coming to the Saudi blogosphere, and they are coming very fast and furiously. Here is a new blog, called Shot of Death, which declared the war from his very first post. “When someone goes too far, and starts to offer his trashy ideas, then he becomes a betrayer to the noble task of blogging,” says the debut post (Arabic).

Apparently, this blogger is going to write posts that attack the current Saudi blogs, one blog at a time. The first victim of these attacks is Ibrahim, who has been taking us with him on a journey to find his wife-to-be. The idea behind the Shot of Death can be good, but right now, there is something that is really, really bad about this blog: The blog attacks the person behind the blog, not the blog itself. In this post he insults Ibrahim, and fires accusation that don’t seem to be based on any solid facts. So, this blog could be fun, and can make a lot of buzz, but don’t expect it to be a major success story here.

However, I think there is one way that this blog can make a huge success. Instead of taking on blogs, this blogger can take on some of the many ridiculous stories that appear in our local newspapers everyday. A good example for what I’m talking about here is Veiled Conceit, which specialize in the Weddings and Celebrations section of the NY Times. But if this new blogger is insisting on working on blogs, than I have one little piece of advice to offer: Criticize your target blogs constructionally, and avoid personal attacks.

I was thinking of telling you what I’m going to do if Saudi Jeans and/or Yawmyat came under attack, but I thought I’d rather ask you about this: What are you going to do if you found your blog featured on Shot of Death?

OurSouq.com is a free-for-all, non-profit classifieds service with the goal to add value to the internet in Gulf region. The idea is nice, but the website lacks to main features: customization and RSS. Now if the could perfect those, this can be huge.

Talal has created a new blog: Enterprise Storage & Disaster Recovery Solutions.

Unbelievable: Jo and Saudi Eve meet in the weirdest way!