Hi Leo Bloom- You’re totally right that I was remiss in not citing. I’m using Wikipedia as I’ve seen others use it here and its the easiest one to pull up, but let me know if that isn’t a good enough source.
I’m not clear with exactly what you disagreed with in my previous post, so let me know if this doesn’t answer this and I’ll try to find answer more specifically.
This isn’t a citation (nor an attempt to enter into some sort of political argument), but I’m a Jew with a long history of involvement on behalf of Israel who has also studied and Arab and Islamic history and taught it at the high school level, so I feel pretty confident in this area.
Oman is quite welcoming of Jewish visitors, or at least it was when I was last there in 1998 or so. There was actually a group of locals in Orthodox dress in the airport when I was flying in once.
There have been Hindu guest workers in Saudi for decades, and even if such a restriction existed it would have had to be lifted in 2000 for admission to the WTO. Only Muslims can receive permits to enter Mecca; maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
Not my area of expertise, but what I was told was that observant Jews were not supposed to go onto the Temple Mount grounds because it is forbidden for them to enter the Holy of Holies where the Ark was kept; and since the exact location is unknown, wandering that area could possibly lead to a violation of the Law.
I was there recently and nobody was tossing stones over the wall.
If you need an instance of people behaving badly, there have been cases of Moslems throwing stones over into the wailing wall area, there have been instances of Christians trying to hold loud prayer sessions on the Dome of the Rock site, and women trying to pray at the Wailing Wall have been assaulted, egged, water-bombed, and had their lives threatened. It seems religion and ethnic tensions are quite capable of generating nasty behaviour.
But to get back to the OP - Sharia law, and the law of many moslem states (whether strictly observed or not) is that apostasy by muslims - i.e. leaving the religion - is a capital offense. By extension, anyone coming into such country with what appears to be the instruments of prosletising - i.e. too many religious artifacts - will be treated as a criminal trying to sow sedition. This is more likely to happen in a quasi-theocracy like Saudi Arabia than a somewhat more moderate state like the Gulf States. Even excessive demonstration (i.e.public demonstration) of your religion may be regarded as tempting thers. Plus, such behaviour may lead to riots and civil disruption by offended Muslims, so why allow a civil disturbance a chance to start?
Keep in mind no state, not North Korea, not Iran, and not Saudi Arabia, is a monolithic hive-mind. There are always tensions between different regressive and progressive views. I read an article recently about the tweets in Saudi Arabia over the religious police closing a dinosaur exhibi in a shopping mall in a Saudi city (no reason was given, but presumably the same “Holy Book vs. science” issue as fundamentalist Christians have). Some of the tweets about this were pretty insulting - possibly on the thery that troglodytes don’t tweet anyway so they’d never know.
md2000- you’re partially correct. Historically, parts of the temple mount, particularly where the Dome of the Rock currently is were forbidden by rabbinic decree, but observant Jews would go to other parts of the temple mount. In 1967, the State of Israel convinced the Chief Rabbi to issue a blanket decree against going on the Temple Mount, for the reason that the entire area was too holy, like you said. Generally, this decree is viewed as more political than rabbinical, but it did serve to help prevent a lot of friction at the Temple Mount.
Not Dubai, but I was in Bahrain for about three weeks, during the Danish cartoon uproars (2006?) and at the festival of Ashura (a major diff between Suni and Shi’a). They didn’t know I was Jewish (based on my last name, they thought I was German-American). I was generally welcomed, I was teaching in an MBA program, but I was obviously American (which caused some concerns.)
There were a few students that I got close with and told them I was Jewish, and they just shrugged. But I wouldn’t take them as representative of the population (MBA students studying at a US-sponsored school.) They basically said they had no problem with Jews, only with Israelis.
The hotel took my credit cards and cash, and din’t ask questions. But again, I didn’t proclaim my Jewishness. (I did take my tallit and tefillin and davened in my room every morning and evening, but that wasn’t public.)