I think Chan’ad has made a good point about the long URLs of the blogs hosted on Blog*Spot. So, just like him, I registered the domain saudijeans.tk. Well, I tried to register the shorter domain saudi.tk, but it was already taken. And regarding Chan’ad, it’s not just annoying to tell someone his URL; I find it really hard to remember it!

I don’t have the same problem that Chan’ad is facing, because I don’t need to tell anyone the URL of my blog. I don’t dare to give it to my classmates at the college because it’s not so pro-Saudi, and I don’t know many people around me who read in English. Anyway, just in case YOU needed to tell someone about my blog, you can use the short form saudijeans.tk.

Twenty-one prominent Saudi religious scholars have signed an open statement to the Iraqi people legitimizing their resistance and forbidding any cooperation or dealings with the occupying American forces. In other words, these guys say resistance in Iraq is jihad.

I was going to comment on that, but I found this column by Ahmed Al-Rubiy, in which he almost speaks for me. Mr. Al-Rubiy says this statement is an open invitation to push people to kill themselves.

He thinks that some of those who signed the statement are healthy and rich enough to go to Fallujah and help the Iraqi people in their useless fight against the Americans, instead of just sitting and telling people to go and kill themselves.

WAR MORE YEARS

Ramadan is the favourite season for TV channels around Arab World. People tend to watch more TV than anytime, and therefore, they are watching more ads than anytime. A large number of companies usually try to launch a special ad campaign for Ramadan only.

I love ads. I used to collect the ads I like from papers and magazines in a special file. I don’t do this anymore; however, I still love good ads.

As I’ve been watching some TV lately, I watched plenty of new ads. I watched that weird ad for Viagra, where some men start to jump in the streets with no obvious reason!

I liked MTC Vodafone ads. The music and colors in both ads are great. In contrast, there’s this stupid ad for the Saudi-based Najran mineral waters. It looks like it was made in the 80’s, and they forgot all about it till this year!

Mahmood received an email from some Canadian guy who has just converted to Islam, accusing Mahmood of being “un-Muslim” and trying to tell him how to raise his children!

I thought that this kind of people who consider themselves Muslims and that the rest of the world will go to hell exist only here. Oh God, I was wrong. I was so wrong.

It seems to me that Saudi female writers have been on fire recently. After Reem Al-Saleh and Mody Al-Khalaf, Iman Al-Qahtani is expressing her frustrations about almost everything here in a great article on Elaph. From the “missing freedom” to Islamist psychopaths, Al-Qahtani is taking the advantage of writing for the internet-only newspaper.

This kind of articles will never appear in our local newspapers. I’m just wondering what kind of reaction she would receive if she tried to publish it in a local newspaper. She works for a local newspaper, and I think an article like that could cost her the job.

Mody Al-Khalaf wrote a good column at Arab News. A long column, but good indeed. Here are my favourite parts.

When our religion is not clear on certain issues, we take a stance or a position and vehemently defend it, to the point of declaring others un-Islamic if they do not follow what we believe is right. In our Islamic state, for instance, it seems not to matter that three of four prominent Islamic scholars point out that a woman’s hijab does not entail covering her face. Nonetheless, we insist that every woman cover her face, wear a black abaya and even direct how it should be worn. And we employ men as religious police whose job is to go after women in the street or in any public place and force them to adhere to our version of Islamic hijab. No matter if they are of a different sect or even religion.

In our customized Islamic state, we make our own laws and simply do not enforce those with which we happen to disagree. The best example of this is that woman are prevented from driving. We conveniently overlook that there is no Islamic law stating that woman may not drive. Recently we went one step further: we now forbid Saudi travel agencies from issuing international driver’s licenses to Saudi women. We did that just to make sure that Saudi women cannot legally get behind the wheel of a car anywhere in the world. We are amazingly efficient in closing loopholes when we want to close them, aren’t we?

I put these parts of the article because I think some of you will be too lazy to click the link and read the whole column ;-)