Susan Al Shahri سوسن الشحري: The ROHM Incident.
Another of those occasions when one reads and thinks “damn… there they go… overacting again”… at least this time they didn’t request anyone’s life as a compensation! And that’s good.
My thought at reading this blog entry was… “C’mon… nobody notices when someone is doing smthg wrong with the best of intentions?”… I remember once that N. Sarkozy travelled to the Gulf and (I think in Bahrain or KSA) he was offered kahwah… and he toasted with the cup before drinking it. People were shocked and started joking abt him for this supposed stupidity, “as if he was drinking wine in a shariah-ruled state”. It was my task to let them know that when we toast, (even if it’s with cola), we express our best wish of good health and prosperity, and that was the main symbolism of that action.
Believe it or not, barely one third of the people I talked with abt the issue changed their minds abt it. The rest had no mercy: Sarkozy was an incult idiot who should have known better the ways and traditions of the place he was visiting.
My counter-attack was obvious.
Here in Spain, when we are presented in an informal way… most invariably women are kissed on the face. Yes, even at first times. If some lady comes to my home, most surely my whole family will shake hand timidly and then kiss on cheks as a proof that she’s one of us…
It was impossible to make them accept the same point of view they had applied to Sarkozy. In this occasion it’s because of a religious rule, they said!
… I guess you can imagine which was my answer… but that’s matter for a new post… some day.
Al-Must'arib (the vocational Mossarab) 