Bringing a Bible into Saudi Arabia

Great Debates
41

What Qadgop said.

My reaction was mostly based on this fellow’s disrespect for Islam, the local culture and laws. He was arrogant and in many ways an ‘Ugly American.’ His actions reflected poorly upon me and my (Western) coworkers. He made my life a bit more difficult, dangerous and something else that begins with a ‘D.’ (It is morning here and with no coffee my writing suffers.)

He did it because he did not care about the safety of us, only about his religious program. He was an ass.

That being said, let me dig myself a bit deeper as I further discuss my reactions to this kid bringing in the tracts and Bibles.

The law is not especially ‘unjust,’ it is applied as fairly as any other law around here. No one group is singled out.

The law we are discussing is hard to reconcile with Western beliefs. Remarkably, Western beliefs are not always right, and are often not appropriate for all people everywhere all the time. While I am here as an English teacher (and so I am changing local culture) is it always correct to try to remake other countries and people? Are there not moral and common sense limits?

Is it morally right to take a guy who is a perfectly happy Saudi, a Muslim and give him a shave, put him Reboks and spread the Good News of Jesus Christ? He would face the ouster from his family, rejection by his community and even (in rare cases) death by the sword.

What this guy did was reprehensible.

(Time for coffee!)

42

Rather than debating whether or not this person deserved to be jailed, I think this story has a positive side. The Saudi authorities, not known for their tolerance, caught someone doing something which they consider a very serious act. However instead of throwing him in jail, they let him off with a fine. Doesn’t even seem like he was deported.

Sounds to me like quite a level-headed response from the authorities in this case, for which they should be applauded.

43

Paul, what is wrong with disrespecting a culture in which women must cover themselves and can’t drive cars, and where homosexuality is punishable by death? What’s wrong with people being free to hear what people of other religions have to say? What’s wrong with civil disobedience against tyranny?

44

Got to jump in here- the short answer is NOTHING but unfortunately it doesn’t stop at their borders.

45

Liberal: Paul, what is wrong with disrespecting a culture in which women must cover themselves and can’t drive cars, and where homosexuality is punishable by death? What’s wrong with people being free to hear what people of other religions have to say? What’s wrong with civil disobedience against tyranny?

Speaking for myself, I’m all in favor of religious liberalization in radical-fundamentalist Islamic society, and greater religious tolerance there. I would think it was absolutely swell if Saudis decided to use civil disobedience to advocate religious tolerance in their government (although I would be very sorry for their sufferings under the repression they would undoubtedly encounter, at least at first). And I think that other societies and individuals are entitled to do all they usefully can to promote such liberalization, beginning with setting a good example of showing proper respect to other faiths.

However, I have to agree with Paul that when it comes to breaking a country’s laws for the purpose of civil disobedience, there’s a big difference between citizens standing up for their convictions on the one hand, and strangers lying about their intentions in order to get access to the country.

After all, if I’m not mistaken, in most such visa situations outside the developed democracies (and maybe in some of those too), the applicant or his/her employer has to fill out forms including some kind of formal statement that they do not intend to engage in political agitation or proselytizing or whatever. (When I’ve applied for long-term research visas even in comparatively tolerant and multiconfessional India, I’ve had to make similar promises about avoiding certain politically delicate issues and activities.)

Lying about your intentions in that regard in the hope that you can sneak in and start breaking your host country’s laws undetected is not in accord with the tenets of civil disobedience. If you break a law for purposes of conscience, you must be honest about your choice to do so.

That means that Paul’s colleague was ethically obligated to state in his visa application, or at least in communicating with his employer, that he did not intend to abide by the Saudi law against non-Muslim religious promotion. If he wasn’t originally intending to bring in Bibles but later had a change of heart, it was his duty to inform the Saudi government and/or his employer as soon as he had made that choice.

Yes, he would probably have been refused the visa, and/or fired, so fast his head would spin, and never have got a chance to attempt to smuggle in the suitcase of Bibles. But civil disobedience requires you to be honest about your disobedient intentions, and to accept the legal consequences of them. You can’t just sneak around trying to break the law undetected, and then holler “civil disobedience” when you get caught.
(Tangential remark: I am personally pretty disgusted by what seems to me a transparent attempt to spin the Qur’an-desecration scandal as insignificant by emphasizing the religious intolerance of many Muslim countries, as in these PR pieces about Saudis and the Bible. “So what if we did something bad? You guys routinely do lots of stuff that’s much worse, so why should we care if we piss you off?” Another idiotic struggle for possession of the “white hat of the good guys”: i.e., as long as we can make a case that the other guy is worse than we are, then we can think of ourselves as the “good guys”, so whatever we do is by definition okay. Revolting, childish, and deeply stupid.)

46

Yeah, I’ve heard that argument parroted before, that civil disobedience and deception are mutually exclusive. But I’ve not heard a good reason for it. Deception in the defense of rights is no vice, and rights do not come from governments but from God or nature. Henry David Thoreau, a man who championed civil disobedience, wrote, “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Walden, Chapter 1A, “Economy”). If you were to strip away the magic and mysticism from the lines on maps that describe countries, what remains is men with big sticks telling other men how to live their lives.

47

Doesn’t the “civil” in “civil disobedience” imply that it is legitimate only when carried out by actual citizens of the country in question?

48

(Tangential remark: I am personally pretty disgusted by what seems to me a transparent attempt to spin the Qur’an-desecration scandal as insignificant by emphasizing the religious intolerance of many Muslim countries, as in these PR pieces about Saudis and the Bible. “So what if we did something bad? You guys routinely do lots of stuff that’s much worse, so why should we care if we piss you off?” Another idiotic struggle for possession of the “white hat of the good guys”: i.e., as long as we can make a case that the other guy is worse than we are, then we can think of ourselves as the “good guys”, so whatever we do is by definition okay. Revolting, childish, and deeply stupid.)
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I think and it is only my own personal thoughts – people put too much emphasis on religious icons. I don’t know about other faiths but as a “Christian” I may well kneel down before the crucifix and hold the bible in respect but they are only SUMBOLS of the faith I am not worshiping the objects. This is the faith.
Lets face it the Koran is manufactured out of wood from trees, probably endangered, by what – Acme Koran Manufacturing Co with shareholders that want to see dividends at the end of the financial year.
What are all these people doing dying in the streets over a book made of mutilated trees produced by chemical process into what they call the Koran? Have they no jobs to go to no families to care for have they no FAITH???

49

:smack: AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGG!! Sorry my computer doesn’t speak real English only American or Thai :smack:

50

One ordinary meaning of “civil” is “Of or in accordance with organized society” (American Heritage). And from Law, “Relating to the rights of private individuals and legal proceedings concerning these rights as distinguished from criminal, military, or international regulations or proceedings” (Ibid).

51

Although this notion may be alien to the region, I believe that there are some human rights so fundamental that no government may legitimately repress them. Among these rights is the right to worship as one pleases. The Saudi restrictions on bringing in Christian articles are illegitimate. If Saudis expect the right to practice their religion wherever they go, and they do have reason to expect this, then they must afford that same freedom to their visitors. People that bring in Bibles for personal use to Saudi Arabia deserve prosecution no more than the early civil rights activists deserved to be sprayed with fire hoses.

52

Except the Christians. Unless of course there are none in Saudi Arabia.

53

(Frankly we were all surprised too.)

In any case, the guy did what he did knowing that it carried serious consequences. He did it anyway. Heck with him.

If you wish to protest how the Saudis treat women, homosexuals or their other internal arrangements, please feel. I am doing my bit to being a ray of sunshine into this culture. Which method do you think works better?

Not every culture is your culture. Not everything you believe is absolutely right.

What the heck am I supposed to do, rip abayahas off women downtown and toss them the keys to the Daewoo? Women here dress the way they do because that is how they choose to dress.

54

If so, and in keeping with Paul’s morality concerning a guest not respecting the local customs and laws, I can understand the anger and response of Alabamans and Mississippians to outside uppity negros agitating their local population.

55

Excwpt for the fact that the Northern “agitators” were as much citizens of the United States as the Alabamans and Mississippians. The rights of the Republic at large come ahead of the rights of the states - they fought a war about that, remember?

56

Gosh, that was uncomfortably close to a personal attack, Green.

Neither you nor I are omniscient. While my morality may not be yours I work by the poor and glittering light God gave me to see the truth. I do the best I can to serve both man and God.

It is easy to complain from the sidelines.

57

So are you suggesting that we start a war and take over Saudi Arabia to bring rights and freedom to the Saudi population that is oppressed? ** Alessan**?

58

Absolutely not ! I respect anyone’s morality, particularly when it is based on concern for others, as yours obviously is. But please allow me to present a different point of view.

If I understand you correctly you see a country that appears to be relatively peaceful, that is at peace with itself and that is relatively ballanced. Don’t fuck with that you seem to say.

Others see it as a severely oppressive society that needs change to restore human dignity. Bringing bibles into Saudi Arabia may be one mans small way of affecting that change.

I see a parrallel with the situation of the oppressed in the deep south in America who were conditioned to accept their lot and lets say women in Saudi Arabia. History has shown that force and outside agitation has provided a positive outcome in America. I choose to apply those lessons when I hear of your position on Saudi Arabia.

59

Liberal: *[…] I’ve heard […] that civil disobedience and deception are mutually exclusive. But I’ve not heard a good reason for it. Deception in the defense of rights is no vice, and rights do not come from governments but from God or nature. *

Huh?? Classic civil disobedience is pretty much defined as a policy of openly defying and disobeying what one considers an unjust law, and accepting the legal consequences thereof. The whole point of civil disobedience is to call public attention to the injustice of the law and one’s refusal to submit to it. Hiding one’s lawbreaking in order not to get caught, on the other hand, may be considered morally acceptable criminal behavior, but it is certainly not what would be generally called “civil disobedience”.

And I don’t see at all the reasoning behind your claim that “deception in the defense of rights is no vice”. Gandhi, for example, wrote about the satyagraha non-violent civil disobedience movement that

Emphasis added. AFAICT, the great proponents of civil disobedience have always felt that its fundamental power lay in the greater moral strength and conviction of its adherents, as opposed to those who attempt to repress them. Consequently, that moral strength and conviction need to be shown in the disobedients’ honesty and truthfulness, not just in their law-breaking.

I can’t think of any instance where, e.g., Thoreau or Gandhi or Martin Luther King argued that breaking the law secretly was an acceptable form of civil disobedience. (I think perhaps you misinterpret Thoreau if you take his quoted comment about “good” and “bad” behavior as meaning that he thought lying was moral. Thoreau definitely rejected the idea that the good equals the legal, and denied that people are morally bound to obey the law just because it’s the law, but he seems to have regarded truthfulness as an extremely important moral principle.)

You also have to take into account the fact that many people don’t believe in God and don’t believe that nature grants any rights, but rather that human rights are developed and maintained by human societies. So from their point of view, you can’t use any unique God- or nature-given status of rights as a moral special case to excuse deception.

60

Kimstu, it would be impossible to violate this particular law without deception. If you honestly report on your visa application that you intend to bring Bibles into the country, then you don’t get a visa. Is this not correct? So then the only way to bring about the confrontation that civil disobedience requires would be to be deceptive in the visa application and then bring in the Bibles anyway. I see no indication that the man made any effort to conceal the Bibles.

Your last post is essentially an argument from authority. Why should there be strict rules to civil disobedience? Who gets to make those rules? This is an instance of civil disobedience (according to my understanding anyway). The man was disobeying an unjust law, and was doing so in such a way that he must have expected to be caught. In doing so he has effectively called attention to the unjust law. Here we are on a message board discussing it.

I fully understand Paul’s frustration with the man, and to the extent he also deceived his employer, he deserved to be fired. But he did not deserve imprisonment, or even a fine.

And Kimstu, I understand your earlier point about the Administration using these incidents to counteract the Q’uran desecration. It is the spin machine which has helped bring this issue to the fore. Even so, what’s wrong is wrong, and this is wrong. Sometimes, even Bush is right. :wink: