Actually, a couple of corrections on Saudi Arabia, though they do not arise above the level of very minor nitpicks:
1.) It is technically permissable to worship privately any way you like. It is public services that are forbidden.
2.) Distributing bibles is illegal, but not, I believe, owning them.
However these are pretty minor points. Saudi Arabia remains ( now that the Taliban regime seems to be history ) the most religiously repressive nation on the planet.
Rather than citing op-ed pieces, this argument would be helped by drawing from specific statutes. The Isreali Law of Return is one, though it only affects immigration policy. The apartheid-era South Africans had specific statutes defining the races and the restrictions placed on them. What race- or religion-based laws do the Saudis have on their books? Though I agree emotionally with the OP’s premise that Saudi Arabia is one of the worst, a few facts would be nice.
Oh, by the way, I realize the OP was concerned primarily with Saudi Arabia.
For the record, akohl, as I’ve pointed out I think it is an incredibly intolerant nation in many ways. I agree with Sua in that I don’t think that “racist” is necessarily best perjorative to use, even given your clarification. Though my understanding is that there is certainly plenty of real racism in SA, especially towards the immigrant labor pool of various nationalities ( including many Palestinians ).
My deconstruction of that article was more for Omnivore’s sake.
Then let’s argue it. Wrong. Unless you meant “a country wich institutionalizes slavery based one race” then you would still be wrong because of course you know America has laws against slavery. The African slave trade was started about the 14th century by Europeans and still continues today in arab countries. The US became an independant nation in 1776 and outlawed slavery in the 1860’s. That is less than 100 years by my reckoning. While for 200 years Portugal had a virtual trans-atlantic monopoly on the slave trade and did not fully emancipate them until 1888. That is about 500 years by my reckoning.
That is the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It has been noted that the Arab nations had a thriving slave trade with Africa for 600 years prior to the Europeans involvement. Sure you can argue that they also had other slaves besides just Africans. I do not see where that makes them any better. And some would argue differently.
It just aggravates me to no end that every time the slavery issue comes up America gets accused at like we invented the bloody mess.
Which is 30 years after it was outlawed in the British Empire (1833), and a whole century after it was banned in England (1772). Not strictly relevent, but an excuse to wave a Union Jack and get all teary-eyed again…
However, I’d go along with Duck Duck Goose’s suggestion of South Africa having been a much better contender for “Most Racist Society” - there is something very different between slavery when the whole world was backward enough to think it was perfectly acceptable, and Apartheid when the whole world agreed that it was a barbaric practice.
The cite is to Lewis’ work on the trade, not a bad work (hmm newer edition than I read) but inferior to the works of Hunwick and Sundiata.
Islamic world slave holding was rarely racialized, although after “European” sources were closed off there seem to be signs that it was becoming racialized as time went on.
I would say the characterization that slavery continues in Arab countries is prejudicial. It continues in 2 places, Mauretania (which is really despite their pretensions less Hassaniyah Arab than Sanhaja berber.) and Sudan. In the case of Mauretania it’s not really slavery anymore in the proper sense --you’re hard pressed to see it in fact, but semi-casted serfdom. Serfdom is an ugly backward institution, but it’s not quite properly said, slavery. Perhaps quibbling over semantics, but I rather think the word slavery should be reserved for the real thing, and serfdom is hardly a positive thing, indeed its ugly and nasty and deserves efforts to force those insufferable Hassaniyah lords to break it up. (Hate those bastards, fucking pain in the ass they are)
Slavery in the Americas invented a particularly new and odious form of slavery, of that there is little question. I refer you to the most accessible overall review of slave systems, Patterson’s somewhat dated work, Slavery and Social Death which also has the rigor to distinguish between various forms of bondage for analytical clarity.
So you guys outlawed it in your country, but allowed it to happen in the colonies, even though you could have stopped it? Nice double standard
At least in the US, the northern states which banned slavery in 1803 (except for Vermont in 1777 and Pennsylvania in 1780) couldn’t force the southern states to stop.
As far as most racist society goes…are we counting general societal values or only actual legal segregation?
You got to admit that it gets on your nerves when the Vatican allows a Mosque to be constructed near the governing centre of Christendom, and Muslims won’t even let anyone who is not of the Islamic faith even near Mecca, now thats double standards.
But then the Vatican is more tolerant than them at this point.
What actually annoys me more than SA’s medieval attitudes is dopey statements like the above as
(a) Rome has not been the “Governing Center of Christianity” for a rather long time
(b) The Vatican does not rule Italy, it rules… the Vatican.
As such, the statement is profoundly stupid. The point buried in that stupid statement in re greater tolerance in the West versus SA of course is valid.
I think this was pretty standart in european countries. Slavery wasn’t allowed in the country itself but was in the colonies. Actually, there has been laws allowing slavery at the first place. Spain allowed slavery in her colonies at the beginning of the XVI° century, France in the middle of XVII° century. Don’t know for the UK.
Slavery was first abolished by France in 1794, but the law wasn’t actually applied in all french colonies, and Napoleonreintroduced it in 1802. The first country which permanently abolished slavery was Chile in 1823.
Does it mention in my thread that the Vatican rules Italy? NO it doesn’t, and the majority of Christians are Catholics, so I generalised the statement that the Vatican is the Governing center of Christendom. And if the Vatican doesn’t control the majority of the churches, who does then?
But, really, the Vatican didn’t have anything to do with it. The mosque is in Rome outside the jurisdiction of the Vatican. It was the city of Rome that let the mosque be built. And, since there is a Muslim community in Rome, it doesn’t really bother me that they have a place to worship.
It DOES bother me. No open displays of Christianity are allowed in Mecca or Medina. There are no Christian churches in Mecca or Medina. Yet these idiots pile into other countries and demand the right to build what they want where they want.
Reciprocity, at the least, would seem to be an intelligent policy. So long as certain elements of the western world bend-over backwards for Islamists, the encroachment will not end.
