Arabs don't read

40% of arabs cannot read or write

"the percentage of illiterates has decreased from 60% in the 1970s to 40% today"

- Victor Billeh
Director of UNESCO Beirut and Regional Bureau for Education

80% of arabs are functionally illiterate

"In order to explain a complex idea, you need high language, not the language of the souq. You can't express a complicated idea using the language of the souq. If you take young people, let's say eighth-grade Arab children, and their French, or Jewish Israeli, counterparts, you will discover the discrepancy in self-expression. Because he does not know the language of thought, the Arab pupil runs into a big problem. Thus it is in the entire Arab world.

The Arab world does not read. According to various reports, the Arab world is largely illiterate. Illiteracy in the Arab world is not 50% like it says in the reports. I say that it is over 80%. Practically speaking, even those defined as not illiterate because they completed eight years of schooling, I consider illiterate. In this century, anyone who finishes elementary school can't really read.

A book selling 5,000 copies across the Arab world is a rare achievement. The average book published in Israel sells more copies than a successful book in the entire Arab world. This also has to do with the economic situation. Reading books is a privilege for people who have spare time and money. The poverty that sweeps the Arab world leaves the individual struggling for survival his whole life. How is he supposed to read a book? He must bring food for his children, his family."

- Salman Masalha
Arab Literature Department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

arabs have never been big readers

"The total number of translated works to Arabic in the last 10 centuries is the same as the number of books translated in one year to Spanish."

- Abdul Qader Tash
Senior columnist, Arab News, Al Madina newspapers

Iranians hang rape victim as punishment for adultery

If I were a billionaire, I'd produce a "People's Court" style TV show called "Iranian Justice" featuring cases like this:

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5184

Iran to hang teenage girl attacked by rapists
Sat. 07 Jan 2006
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.

She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death.

Last week, a court in the city of Rasht, northern Iran, sentenced Delara Darabi to death by hanging charged with murder when she was 17 years old. Darabi has denied the charges.

In August 2004, Iran’s Islamic penal system sentenced a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, to death after a sham trial, in which she was accused of committing “acts incompatible with chastity”.

The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself and told the religious judge that he should punish those who force women into adultery, not the victims. She was eventually hanged in public in the northern town of Neka.

Islamic morality police stop firemen from rescuing burning schoolgirls

The devil's religious police, staffed by twisted saudi arabian perverts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm


Friday, 15 March, 2002, 12:19 GMT
Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred.

According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam.

One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police - known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them".

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

"Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the newspaper concluded.

Relatives' anger

Families of the victims have been incensed over the deaths.

Most of the victims were crushed in a stampede as they tried to flee the blaze.

The school was locked at the time of the fire - a usual practice to ensure full segregation of the sexes.

The religious police are widely feared in Saudi Arabia. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation, and ensuring prayers are performed on time.

Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.

Here's Your Arab Boat Captain

Here's a story about how an ignorant boat captain ignores an emergency and ends up killing 1000 people. Of course he got himself out of there ASAP and is doing fine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/international/africa/05egypt.html


"Two hours after we left, smoke started coming out," said Nazih Zaki, 27, who was returning home from his job as a cook in Saudi Arabia. "They tried to put it out but it kept going. The crew told us it was nothing, but then they got us life vests to wear. We stayed cruising six hours at sea, and then the boat started to tip."

Water began flooding the ship, and the vessel soon listed, lurched and began to sink, Mr. Zaki said.

"The ship is five stories tall but it took less than 15 minutes for it to go down," he said. "Then there was nothing at all, no rescue, nothing."

...

Other survivors described a tense standoff between the captain and many on the ship, as passengers and even some crew members began demanding the ship be turned around and return to Saudi Arabia as smoke poured out of the lower deck.

"By midnight there was serious fire on the bottom and smoke rising up to the fourth floor, and they kept saying we have control over the situation.," said Nabil Taghyan, 27, who survived by wearing a life jacket and boarding an inflatable raft.

Despite pleas to turn back, the captain insisted it would be better to steam ahead to Safaga, Mr. Taghyan said.

Mr. Taghyan said he ultimately saw the captain and crew flee using the lifeboats, while some passengers in life jackets tried to hang on to the ship and the debris. "The captain took the first speed boat, even though he should go last," Mr. Taghyan said. "There was yelling and screaming and people dying and there were people dead in their life vests, and there were huge waves."