Word: references
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When the deaths of al-Huraisi and al-Bulawi hit the newspapers, Saudis were shocked, yet not entirely surprised. The morality police, whom Saudis sometimes derisively refer to as the "Taliban," are notorious for committing excesses in their fervor for enforcing the Kingdom's puritanical Wahhabi brand of Islam. Typically, squads of mutaween patrol streets and shopping malls, caning shopkeepers who fail to shutter their doors at prayer time, scolding women who allow flesh to show from under their mandatory black gowns, and lecturing adolescent boys caught following or talking to girls. By the commission's reckoning, its members "correct...
Frequently, however, the mutaween have gone further: from barring shops from selling roses and teddy bears on Valentine's Day to verbally abusing, physically assaulting or effectively abducting women deemed to be committing sins. Some Saudis, only half jokingly, refer to the mutaween's behavior as "state-sponsored terrorism," on account of the fear that their combination of religious intolerance and violence inspires...
...also been an open secret for some time now that the hipper members of the nation's affluent business and political classes aren't averse to a discreet puff. Indeed, France's cannabis culture has become so prevalent that the use of the word petard is as likely to refer to a joint as to its more literal meaning, "firecracker." Myriad nicknames for hash and marijuana have passed into the modern lexicon, such as chichon, beuh, teuteu, matos and teuch - the latter being an approximate phonic reversal of the borrowed English word most commonly used for hashish (hint: bulls produce...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, shares Land's conviction that the Bible doesn't mandate Sanctuary participation. She writes that the prooftexts refer to a situation where "there is a terrified, perhaps bleeding, usually hungry person at one's door and one takes him or her in. It has nothing to do with countries or nation states, and once one starts to move to big collectivities it gets much trickier...
...Yunnan have little interest in a certain sporting event that will commence on August 8, 2008. One Yunnan truck driver, when asked about the Olympics, just shook his head in disgust. "So much money is being wasted," he said, the first time I'd heard someone in China refer so negatively to the Summer Games. "It's not going to make my life any better. Why should I care...