giggles - you need to seperate cultural insecurity from religion - if Saudi was a christian country/jewish/whatever, they would still behave in the same manner. Religion is blurred into culture as they try to establish their own identity in the world.
Saudi (to use as an example again) is a relativley new country, its not even 100 years old. They need to enforce their views etc to make a place for themselves. The same could be said about Sudan - this country used to be part of the British Empire and part of Egypt (I think it is the almalgamtion of two areas) and only came into being in the 50's. So again, they are struggling to create their identity. Unfortunately, they dont have the resources that Saudi has. This doesnt excuse their behaviour of late, in fact it makesit worse.
I would also like to congratulate herbie on a wonderfuly pointless comment as well. How do we expect these 'babrbaric' muslim countries to respect us ect if we are making stupid comments like that? Ridicule like this just breeds lack of respect.
I agree with you - if only everyone in the world seperated religion from thier culture then we wouldnt have a lot of issues around the world we hear about. But being a new country trying to establish its identity is no excuse for having backward laws. there are other countries who have also been only formed recently but a lot of them manage to aviod this by trying to have a secular mixed government - to allow common sence over cultural belief to govern the laws.
I mean one of the most recent thing was about the women who was raped and when she complained - instead of being help was told it was her fault and had to suffer lashes - I mean come on - you get raped and when you compain you get beaten by the law itself - its beyond common sence - which I find a lot of fundamentalist lack. And correct me if i am wrong but this was also in Saudi.
Taking the fact in to account that Saudi may be a new country - there are lots of other old established countries such as Malayasia where even now minorities are being treated unfairly.... so to say that only new countries are having difficulties is not an good argument. Just recently there the minority communities were asking for thier basic human rights and which the Muslim government has refused. And now they are being threatened with life imprisonment for asking to be treated equally - if the same thing happens here - we all all protest saying the government is anti islamist - So now do i hear people saying that Fundamental Islamic states government as anit - Life and anti any other religion???
I think the only way a change will come about is if Islamic scholar preach tollerance instead of hatered everytime someone does something which they believe is wrong. And taken into account the views of other religions and beliefs as well. If they want people to understand them - then they should take active steps in also understanding others. it should be a two way approach.