Posts Tagged ‘middle east’

Iran mixed football match furore

2009/01/26/1306

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7850931.stm

The leading Iranian football club has apologised for allowing its women’s team and its men’s youth team to play each other.

Esteghlal football club, which was top of the Iranian league, said it had penalised three officials.

This was the first mixed football match since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Associated Press reported.

Mixed sports are strictly forbidden in Iran. Women are not even allowed into football grounds to watch men’s games.

Top Saudi cleric: OK for young girls to wed

2009/01/18/0535

RTFA: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/17/saud…

The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom’s top cleric saying that it’s OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

“It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. “A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she’s too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her.”

“… The judge required the girl’s husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.”

Wow. I grew up a liberal believing everyone should be treated equal, but should this apply to government and religion? Honestly, this is one of America’s ALLIES, how fucked up is the rest of the middle east?

Saboteurs may have cut Mideast telecom cables: UN agency

2008/02/19/1315

RTFA: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=0802181633…

Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday.
“We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago,” the UN agency’s head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.
Five undersea cables were damaged in late January and early February leading to disruption to Internet and telephone services in parts of the Middle East and south Asia.

Oh cra…NO CARRIER