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The Saudi state still teaching hate The claims of the Saudi government that is has ‘modernised’ their state mandated educational system so that it does not encourage violence against non-Muslims is debunked in the Washington Post. The article also includes a few choice translations of current ‘educatiional’ texts, such as:
As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.
How fortunate we are that the Saudis are the West’s allies. Read the whole articles.
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Hmmm. Apes: the most intelligent and socially complex creatures of the animal kingdom. Sounds like the Jews do all right. As for swine, well, for food animals, they’re damn clever … mean sumbitches too, if you cross ’em (or just let ’em get hungry.) So if I were a Christian I wouldn’t complain too much about being compared to swine.
But what about the other religions? They should get animal friends too!
Atheists … goats. Too easy.
Buddhism … I’d say panda (do I even have to explain that one?)
But we can’t forget Islam! Lets see … predatory, vicious, and not all that bright. Often resorts to scavenging behaviour. I’m thinking hyena … sort of like a dog, but less clean, plus they have that weird laugh (which corresponds to the seriously annoying Middle Eastern musical scale.)
I’m an atheist myself.
I think all Muslims are camel f*ckers.
Why am I not suprised!
The Saudi Royal family (our great mates) are totally evil hypocrites.
They enjoy the pleasures of The West and in compensation have sponsered with their gigantic oil revenues a form of Islam which is pre-medieval in outlook as some sort of perverse recompense for their drinkin’, gamblin’ and whorin’. They have sowed the wind and it’s us poor buggers who are reaping the whirlwind.
I live in Manchester so I’m conflicted. Not so long ago BAE systems announced the sale of Typhoons to the Saudis. It keeps the UK in the fighter game and it keeps a lot of talented folk in good jobs… So, it’s good… Except a very sizeable part of me believes that we shouldn’t sell the Saudis a book of matches let alone the second-best air-superioty fighter on the planet.
So bugger them. They might have the One True Faith&trade but they still need the Zionist Crusaders to sell them fighter planes. Oh, and they don’t build their own tanks either, or warships…
Well, exactly, Nick.
The Saudis have played this game for a long time – pursuing a West-friendly foreign policy and vilifying the infidels at home. This arrangement seemed to work just fine until we realised in late 2001 that there were people in Saudi Arabia buying the rhetoric and responding. The al-Sauds are in an unfortunate position – they need the West, but they also need political legitimacy at home. All the petrodollars in the world cannot reconcile their two contradictory masters. An impossible equation to balance if consistency is demanded.
Nick – I wouldn’t worry to much. The other year I was on a course with some ex-BAE people who described how the Saudi Tornado’s were kept going by BAE contractors and sub-contracting companies which brings in some very good money. Likewise the Saudi AWAC’s and F15’s are kept going by American contractors. If they ever turned nasty (well directly nasty) the westerners would return and nothing would fly. Something similar happened to the Iranians in 1979 who found that without the Americans the Tomcats bought by the Shah didn’t work as advertised although they still manage to get one into the air from time to time.
1327,
Yes. Good point. Basically they take to the air because we allow them. We make a lot of money out of the maintaing the birds because (apparently) nobody in Arabia knows how to use a posidrive…
Except the current Typhoon deal is so valuable because it involves training the lokes to look after the planes. It’s not like the earlier deals which were pretty much “we’ll look after your airforce”, this is “we’ll give you the capacity to have an airforce of your own”.
And when the Islamic revoltion happens in Saudi, the buggers will have a pretty classy airforce.
1327 is right Nick.
A friend of mine was teaching english to the shahs airforce pilots in 1978 . Well they were picking it up sooh well! that everytime a jet came overhead he flinched, in case one of his pupils pressed the wrong button and ended up as a greasy spot on some dessert floor.
Talking about the incompetancy of the Iranian Air Force. One of my tutors, was in Iran (working as an archaologist) during the Iran-Iraq War. He told me that he once saw a pilot who was taking off press the bomb release button instead of the button to retract the undercarriage. Blew his own airfield up ;).
Thanks for the info on the training contract Nick. It will be interesting to see if this is in fact possible. The problem is that the Saudi’s don’t seem to have an engineering tradition although I may only think that because I have never come across a Saudi engineer. I expect the Typhoon is one of the most complex aircraft to date yet so BAE will have a job on training staff whose education consisted of rote learning the koran and who in many cases got their job through family connections not ability. My bet is that the BAE teachers will in fact end up doing a lot of the maintenance work themselves.
I would not worry about Saudi military prowess, either. The Middle East has a long history of powerful militaries overthrowing monarchies, thus the al-Sauds keep their military relatively weak – poorly organised and trained. Having said that, the airforce is reputedly far and away the most capable arm of the Saudi armed forces.
Still, I have no doubt they could be dealt with swiftly if circumstances called for such measures. Saddam didn’t even want to use his fancy birds in the first Gulf War, for fear they’d be shot up. He was probably right, though sending his Mirages and MiGs over to Iran probably resulted in the same practical outcome, either way.
That apes and pigs business is a koranic reference to sura 5.60. Now I’m no expert on tafsir but your quote seems to make fairly clear that was Ibn Abass’s gloss on the verse; we’d have to have a bit more context to be sure that interpretation was presented as doctrine. Besides, isn’t it simply a more than usually prickish way of saying “I’m right you’re wrong”, something all monotheisms assert?
Indeed, but this particular monotheism is in complete control of a state enforced educational system.
“And when the Islamic revolution happens in Saudi, the buggers will have a pretty classy airforce.” – Nick
Just one small comment. Having OUR “infidel” Western aircraft is one thing, but maintaining them independently is another. Jet fighter aircraft are notoriously high maintenance machines, and are forever being repaired and need an endless supply of new parts. Without that supply of new parts, those aircraft are worthless and wont fly for long.
I agree with Samsung here. Saudis are notoriously loathe to do their own maintenance or other hard work. That is, after all, what foreign workers are for. I’ll bet that most of the “saudis” being trained under the Tornado contract are primarily foreign workers from other muslim countries. When the islamic revolution comes, the first military assets the islamists seize will be the air force.
There is a similar but different problem with the Saudi Army: they’ve bought first rate tanks, armor, and artillery with their petrobucks, but are loathe to study and practice military tactics that are much beyond the Conan-like practices of their camel riding Bedouin grandpappies.
Probably won’t be too long before Ken Livingstone is enlarging Eurabia by getting cheap Saudi oil for Londoners, like he is from Chavez.
That’s certainly one perspective but I’d disagree with the blanket ‘all Saudis are lazy bastards’ viewpoint. Most Saudis I have met (albeit not a very great number) I have always found to be extremely competent and hard working individuals. They most certainly do have their own very efficient SAAF maintenance units, trained to a very high standard by both corporate and USAF technicians – indeed I might hazard that with the amount of cash they are able to throw at the problem they could very well afford to train up better technicians that the Pentagon can afford to pay for.
As for fighter longevity might I point out that Iran is still flying at least 20 F-14 Tomcats, almost 18 years after a complete embargo was placed upon maintenance and parts supply to that country by the USA.
Julian,
I forget the details but those Iranian F-14s were reverse engineered in a very odd way. Desperate needs and all that…
They had to do it because they had no choice.
My point about supplying the Saudis with Typhoons and the training to keep ’em flying is that the whole situation has changed from one in which we had control to one in which we are handing control to unstable regimes.
We are no longer controlling the situation but as with so many things to do with the Mid East we’re taking the short view that keeping people in jobs is more important than preventing utterly insane Islamonutters from getting their hands on really cool kit.
At some point in the near future the Saudi and the Pakistani governmentsmay well fall to Islamic nut-jobs. When that happens all hell will break out. I’d much prefer all hell to break out without these people having state of the art weaponry.
Aren’t these Typhoons being diverted from the RAF’s delivery, meaning that the RAF will get its full quota later, so the Saudis get the capability earlier?
Well, I suppose we’re quite a safe distance from the future Arabian Revolutionary Islamic Republic. How do the Israelis feel about this deal?
Read this article and know Islam
http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=378