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Apple's First Retail Stores in Middle East Open October 29
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As surprising as it may seem to many , it is perfectly legal in many muslim countries.
They are not "encouraging" it. Apple, like any foreign business, has to conform to local rules, regulations, and cultural norms of the country it does business in. It' s not up to a foreign entity to impose different rules or social traditions on the locals. There's another name for that practice : colonialism.
50 years is more than enough time to give the people political freedom, to legalize homosexuality, to let women vote, or to end any of the civil rights abuses that still take place today.
It's kinda hard to "evolve" when your country is under continuous manipulation from foreign governments, who place then displace the leaders according to who will be economically and politically subservient to your own interests, help finance all sorts of military, religious and guerilla troups according to who will better influence the region, create instability because it serves short-term interest, without regards to long term side-effects, etc...
The middle east, as well as parts of central america, has historically been nothing but a giant chessboard game for the west.
You can now all go back to sleep. Sweet innocent dreams to all.
What about if the government itself is just a small group who don't represent the wider society?
Shock-horror! No! That can't be how it is basically everywhere on Earth -_-
I'm sure it is in Malaysia and Indonesia but in the Middle East it is illegal in almost every country - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_by_country.
I don't really think the West or Russia's manipulations would stop countries from making themselves more like the West or Russia.
That's not what the wikipedia page says at all, pretty much the opposite. It's category 3 for the majority of Muslim countries ( wich means, according to the page : Abortion explicitly allowed in order to save a life and for certain other reasons. ) . Even Israel , United Kingdom, Finland, Japan and South Korea are category 3...
And it's 100% illegal ( category 0 ) in many South American ( catholic ) countries...
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It wasn't long ago that the US was punishing people by law for being black or for being gay, and the US was still claiming to be the land of liberty before and during that time.
They may decide to be more tolerant of gay people, they might not. That's their decision. We have no right to judge them.
These countries are coming from an entire different perspective - that's what you don't understand. The idea of gay rights goes right in the face of their religion, which cannot be called in to question. Gay rights itself is a very divisive topic even in the most liberal places on Earth; why do you expect the most conservative places on the planet to suddenly change thousands of years of culture and thinking? That's like going to Nigeria and making them play baseball, then complaining because they aren't very good at it.
Don't judge. They have concerns, and they're entitled to have them. The more the USA chastises them for gay rights, the more they think the whole idea of sexual orientation being beyond your control is an American-led conspiracy to devalue their culture. You need to see it from their perspective, and not just point and laugh and call them backwards.
You need to be patient, you need to engage.
Look at the USA on climate change - the USA refuses to believe it, so the rest of the world patiently continues gathering evidence hoping that one day your thinking will evolve and that the planet won't be burnt to a crisp by then.
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With regards to abortion rights, I agree the Middle East is worse than Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua. However it is far less tolerant than any non-micro countries in Europe except for Ireland - and in Ireland you can get a flight over to the UK if you need one.
In fact looking at the map more carefully, aside from Albania, Bangladesh, Tunisa, Turkey, Qatar and Central Asia where abortion is legal on demand I can't see any other Muslim country where abortion is even available in cases of rape anywhere in the world.
But again, aside from Qatar, none of those countries are in the Middle East. And I wasn't talking about Muslims in general - I was talking about the Middle East.
Point to the passage in the Koran which says gay people cannot be given rights. It'd be good to see the passage in the Koran which says abortion isn't allowed too.
Uh.. we must not be looking at the same page then.... These countries : Algeria, Morroco, Tunisia, and specifically Middle East countries : Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Quatar, Saudi Arabia ( ! yes, even them ) , United Arab Emirates , all of these are classified Category 3, wich is the same classification as countries such as Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom , Finland, Iceland, Monaco, Australia, New Zealand ( all considered "first world" countries )
Category 3 is defined as : Abortion explicitly allowed in order to save a life and for certain other reasons.
Category 3 is just one step behind Category 4 wich is the most liberal ( with countries such as France, Sweden, Canada, US, etc..)
That's not so bad. It may not be Sweden-like, but still...
Only Syria and Lebanon have very restrictive abortion rights ( category 2 and 1), but not totally illegal, unlike some South American countries.
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The Koran , just like the Bible and the Torah, does have passages that forbid homosexuality. I don't think however there are any specific passages that forbid abortion in the Koran.
Most muslim countries have however a sort of "unspoken tolerance" to homosexuality. Basically, as long as you're not coming out publicly or having any public display of it, the religious powers in place look the other way. Some call it hypocrisy, others call it compromise..It depends on the point of view
There were many well known figures that almost everyone knew were gay. The most famous film director in Egypt , Youssef Chahine, was gay, and he never had any problems. He was just very private about it, but everyone knew, and he was still very respected and popular in his country. Other well known artists in various muslim countries were gay and were still very successful and popular , just as long as they didn't talk openly about it, they didn't have any problems.
In some super-ultra-conservative places however like Saudi Arabia, it's an absolute no-no.
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Sure, they're entitled to have concerns. If someone find homosexuality immoral or reprehensible for whatever reason that's ok, I don't care. But killing people for being gay is not a "concern", it's murder. Can we not judge murderers? You talk about how our forefathers committed atrocities, but people today still hold them accountable for it and judge them for horrible things that they've done. What's the difference between them and people who are alive today?
It's funny how if a baker in the USA refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding all these people come out saying that their bigotry should not be tolerated and they should be forced by law to bake cakes for gay weddings or have their businesses shut down. The baker is not hurting anyone, yet a lot of liberals believe that they should be forced by law to not discriminate against gay people. But if it's gay people being killed for being gay on the other side of the world... then it's a different culture, we shouldn't judge them etc etc. Seems like a double standard.
Ok let's look at the following:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_by_country#/media/File:Abortion_Laws.svg which is sourced from http://www.un.org/en/development/de...s2013/WorldAbortionPolicies2013_WallChart.pdf
Muslim countries are clearly weak on abortion rights. And there is no credible way to compare Algerias extremely limited abortion rights and Britains.
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Are we talking about Leviticus? Because that only talks about homosexuality between men and not lesbianism.
Additionally if you have laws against homosexuality, then I trust they are also enforced equivalently against people eating shellfish, pork, wearing mixed fabric clothing and sleeping with their wives around their period.
But we do criticise the parts of the West which are weak on abortion, in America there is constant criticism of the South for being backward. However what isn't ok is to criticise the south for its intolerance but to not criticise the Middle Eastern countries for their far greater intolerance.
I don't think anyone, not even algerians themselves, would compare Algeria's abortions rights to a country like Sweden or the Uk. But people were affirming on this thread that abortion is totaly illegal in the middle east and muslim countries , when it's absolutely not true. The world is not binary : it's not either you're Sweden or you're the Talibans. There a whole range of degrees and nuances between those two. And yes, a country like Tunisia has actually far more extensive abortions rights than some european ones ( ireland). The only reason people would try to deny that is because it hurts their fragile ego. Tunisia may suck on a lot of other aspects, but that's not one of them.
People want to think of the world as clearly divided between Very Nice and Very Evil because it requires less mental effort and it's more comforting.
But it's not , the reality is very complex and ambiguous. Complexity and ambiguity generates anxiety. Well, that's the price to pay if you don't want to bury your head in the sand.
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But here is the thing, we cannot influence the other countries on how they think and act; meanwhile we shall focus on improving our own first.
Ok, but that's assuming it takes women significantly longer than men to learn how to use Apple products. Do you think that is the case?
But in most circumstances unless you live in Ireland, in most circumstances that you might want an abortion in Europe you can get one, whereas in the Middle East one cannot. e.g if you get pregnant where you already have enough children or if the baby has severe defects or you are a teenager, then in Europe or Japan you can get an abortion - whereas in the Middle East you cannot (unless you live in Qatar).
And also in the Middle East migrant workers from places like India are treated appallingly. Look at the vast deaths building the Qatar World Cup stadiums - there were no deaths building the Olympic stadiums in London and only six in Beijing - when Qatar has been richer than the UK since world war 2, so there is no excuse for not following modern health and safety standards.
This is difficult, I think the Chinese and Indian approaches of non-interference have worked well in Africa by building purely commercial relationships. However when places like Syria completely collapse Europe has to help handle the refugees - and places like Turkey have to take a huge burden - and every time there is a disaster - such as the Syria refugee crisis or the Nepalese earthquake then the Western countries donate huge amounts of aid to help. I don't generally hear of the Gulf states making such donations - and they have made no effort at all to help the Syrian refugees.
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