Re: Awards Ceremony

["Linda B. Merims" <lbm@ici.net>]

Truman Prevatt wrote:
> 
> My experience with several trips over there is just the opposite.  The one
> referred to below, the only thing that saved us was the fact we were traveling
> on diplomatic pastports.  We were there to install a data processing system to
> support the gulf war effort. We were there at the beginning of the build up.
> The three women in our party were not in the military and were not in uniform...

Truman, which country were you in?  Saudi Arabia is far and away the
most
strict about this kind of thing because they are Wahabis (after ibn
Wahab,
an 18th century fundamentalist cleric who allied himself and his
followers
with the ruling Sa'udi family of Riyadh to conquer most of the peninsula
in a fundamentalist jihad.  (Then they lost it again, but renewed the
alliance
and reconquered the peninsula in the first three decades of this
century.)

I could be mistaken but I don't believe the UAE are Wahabi (and it
certainly
*isn't* the state supported species of Islam) and I don't think they are
quite as doctrinaire about the restrictions on women.

And the people of these countries are not as provincial as one might
guess.
The oil revenue is shared by the ruling families and most people lead
at least a middle class existance and many travel extensively in the
west, including a goodly number of them attending college in Britain and
the US.

Linda B. Merims
lbm@ici.net
Massachusetts, USA