Although this is "news" it's not, it is what now has become an annual event (a better article) in the land of darkness.
Just what kind of a miserated society is it that, by government decree, bans romance?
What a horrible place.
No red roses for Saudi sweetheartsRIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.
"They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying.
It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.
Saudi Arabia imposes an austere form of Sunni Islam which prevents unrelated men and women from mixing, bans women from driving and demands that women wear a headscarf and a cloak.
Relations outside marriage are strictly banned and punishable by law.source
February 2010
ReplyDelete"As Muslims, we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women," Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/red-hearts-chocolate-saudi-arabia-bans-valentine-day-lovebirds-find-ways-celebrate-article-1.197522
Valentine's day is named after a Christian saint martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/one-billion-rising-on-valentine-s-day-campaign-to-end-violence-against-women-330585
ReplyDeleteIt's a start I guess, but no easy task to turn around millennia of inbred misogyny.
ReplyDelete