
Saudi Arabia travel guide - lisper
http://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia
======
grej
I'll just copy paste a few things out of this article, regarding your state
that is the brand new head of the UN Human Rights Council (EDIT: Name was
changed from Commission to Council to reflect current nomenclature). Well
done, UN:

* "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"

* "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be denied visas"

* "Drug possession is punishable by death"

* "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging, castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second conviction invariably results in execution."

* "most visitors will be primarily concerned with the code of morality, involving things like women not covering up properly, and not accompanied by a male guardian, not observing prayer or (during Ramadan) fasting times, etc. These rules are enforced by the infamous muttaween - the zealous volunteers of the religious police known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. ... Reports of human rights abuses and even deaths in muttaween custody are still common"

* "against the law to be accompanied anywhere by a man who is not your registered male guardian"

* "A woman may not travel alone. They may not stay alone in hotels, hotels will require the presence of a male guardian"

* "Do NOT take pictures of any government-related building (ministries, airports, military facilities etc) or any building that could possibly be one, or you risk being hauled off to jail for espionage, or accused of terrorist plotting"

* "Playing music in public is also prohibited"

* "Converting or attempting to convert Muslims from Islam to other religions is a felony that can be punished with up to death"

* "Any criticism of the King, the royal family or Saudi Arabia's government in general is not tolerated and risks indefinite imprisonment or execution"

~~~
nashashmi
You are seeing the country from your own lens. That doesn't make sense. The
circumstances that surround this country are very different from they places
we live in.

> * "Saudis prefer not to grant visas to unaccompanied women"

Saudi Arabia has managed to be secure for certain conservative reasons.
Unaccompanied women create too many opportunities for insecurity and the
country's security forces cannot handle this.

> * "Nationals of Israel and those with evidence of visiting Israel will be
> denied visas"

Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in
Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.

> "LGBT activities are illegal in Saudi Arabia and it is one of the least
> homosexual friendly countries in the world. First offenses attract prison
> sentences of several months to life, fines with whipping/flogging,
> castration, torture, vigilante killings and public execution. A second
> conviction invariably results in execution."

So was America for a number of years. So was China. And they will continue to
be the same way for a very long time. America and China have different reasons
for not being this way, and it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or
social freedom.

Think of a country's laws as a reaction to the nature of the people. In the
western world, there are a different set of laws for crowd control. In Saudi
Arabia where illiteracy is high and schooling is decentralized, crowd control
takes on a different soul. Consider Iraq and Egypt and Syria, countries that
have gone through their own transformations. Dictatorship seems to have
returned or is being demanded for the purpose of safety and stability.

~~~
serge2k
> Saudi Arabia has managed to be secure for certain conservative reasons.
> Unaccompanied women create too many opportunities for insecurity and the
> country's security forces cannot handle this.

BS. It's misogynistic crap.

> Israel and Saudi are not exactly on talking terms. Same policies exist in
> Israel for those who visit muslim countries in the Middle East.

Fine, don't really have a problem with that.

> So was America for a number of years.

It was and is wrong. America has a long way to go. They are still well ahead
of Saudi Arabia.

> it has absolutely nothing to do with morality or social freedom.

It exactly does.

Sorry, not going to treat Saudi Arabia as anything other than a backwards
theocracy that hates women and violates human rights whenever. Quite frankly,
it disgusts me that they are an "ally".

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AnotherXen
Sorry, what does this have to do with Startup/Hacker culture?

I suppose someone wanted to make the oft-stated point of how archaic and
backwards Saudi Arabia appears from our cultural perspective. Perhaps
capitalizing on this latest bout of online xenophobia towards "Islamic-
looking" minorities.

Either way, a waste of space on the Hacker News homepage.

~~~
aptwebapps
Submissions do not have to have anything to do with "Startup/Hacker culture",
I wish people wouldn't assume that.

~~~
dang
Me too.

------
jordigh
Wow... how... how do you fix a place like this? How do you move such a
medieval religious society into freedom? This sounds so dystopian.

Is there a simple explanation for why the Christian West moved to relative
secularism a couple centuries ago while Saudi Arabia has remained so medieval,
despite oil-powered industrialisation?

~~~
vinceguidry
> Wow... how... how do you fix a place like this? How do you move such a
> medieval religious society into freedom?

Not a good idea. The Middle East has had a succession of "enlightened" despots
who attempted to rid their countries of Islam. Islam is not just a faith for
these people, it's a way of life, so well entrenched in the social fabric that
all these rulers managed to do was to inflict even worse human rights
violations and galvanize the population against the demon West.

You have to let them find their own way. It may take them a few hundred years,
but eventually their society will slowly pry open. The external threats to
their way of life will have to cease, as long as they feel like they're under
attack by the West, they'll just cocoon off and just not allow any influences
in.

Probably the best thing that could happen in this regard is a permanent
collapse in oil prices, though that would likely cause a lot of people to
starve. Things would get a lot worse for them before they get better. I read
an article recently about how the Saud family is trying their hardest to
prepare for a post-oil world.

> Is there a simple explanation for why the Christian West moved to relative
> secularism a couple centuries ago while Saudi Arabia has remained so
> medieval, despite oil-powered industrialisation?

Because colonialism. Europe brought industry to the rest of the world at the
point of a gun. An excellent book to read on this topic is Fields of Blood by
Karen Armstrong.

[http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-
Violence...](http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-
Violence/dp/0307946967)

~~~
mahyarm
So how did turkey happen?

~~~
mercurial
Turkey happened because of Attarturk, at a time where he had the army with
him, and where the Ottoman empire was disintegrating. Presumably, this made it
very difficult for conservative forces to oppose the radical campaign of
modernization and europeanisation he engaged into.

~~~
aws_ls
Quora has some good answers, which shed light on Ataturk's personality[1].
Wonder, why in that part of the world, there were so few such personalities.
Actually, Iran was denied of it's democratically elected leader, Mohammad
Mosaddegh, by UK and supported by US (TPAJAX project)[2].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country/Was-Mustafa-Kemal-
Atatu...](https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country/Was-Mustafa-Kemal-Ataturk-a-
good-man)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

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nestlequ1k
This travel guide can be summed up with a simple word: "Don't".

------
vishaldpatel
It's interesting to see how old the relationship between the US and Saudi
Arabia really is. We've had a friendly business relationship since 1930!

~~~
jqm
And the British even before that. The British are a large part of the reason
the Saudi family gained exclusive control of the region. They supplied and
aided the Sauds... against rival Arabs and against the Turks. The religious
extremists were the foot soldiers... shoring up the wealth and the trade
routes for the Saud family and for the British. On the occasions the
extremists got out of control and turned on their bosses the British were
there to help again.. with airplanes and machine guns.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sabilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sabilla)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikhwan_Revolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikhwan_Revolt)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power)

This period of history is interesting in light of the rise of groups like ISIS
and makes me question that the same technique is not being attempted again.

------
dandare
Just a reminder that you are not safe in SA just because you are a westerner
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_\(author\))

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wodenokoto
Please use wikivoyage instead of wiki travel.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Because?

~~~
whacker
wikitravel co-opted the community content, and started showing ads. Hence the
community moved to the wikimedia foundation as wikivoyage.org.

Does not make sense to encourage this kind of behaviour.

