Saudi woman talking on Nokia's "panda" phone!
Dear friends,
Of recent, there’s been a big debate going on in Saudi Arabia. What’s causing this furor? It is cell phones with cameras! Although these instruments are officially banned in the Kingdom, every second person you see has a phone has a camera with it. The most popular ones are what is known as “panda” which is the Nokia one- the wide one, with black edges.
From time to time, you would read in the paper about how some people, especially women, were using these cameras to take pictures from their phones and passing it on. Pictures were being taken of women dancing at weddings, where they are not covered in their veils and pictures were also being taken by young men of women in malls and restaurants. One too many times, these pictures got in the wrong hands, and brawls and fights occurred. There were even some marriages that had been called off, simply because the groom’s parents saw pictures of the bride dancing without any veil!
The issue thus became: should the Kingdom ban the cell phone completely, and who is at fault here for the messy situation: the technology or the people?
(1) The banning of the phone is still in place. However, people are still able to bring in phones from places like Dubai. Funnily enough, the mobile phone shops here sell the camera phone as well. One of my friends recently brought the Sony Ericsson phone. She said, all she had to do was ask for it, and the salesman simply took the phone out from under the counter. Did you know that the ban for satellite dish is still in place? (The authorities are simply bad in enforcing the ban since every rooftop has at least one dish now!)
(2) The second issue is bit more sensitive. The moral police in the Kingdom are blaming the technology outright for the ills of the society. They rant on and on about how television, books, media, the Internet and now the mobile phones are corrupting the people here. There is a small minority on the other end of the spectrum who say that it is not technology to be blamed, but rather the people who misuse and abuse it. I tend to agree with the small minority as well. How can one blame technology? There are so many great things, and ultimately it all depends on how you as a person use it.
Lets take the satellite dish. There are people here who will have a satellite so they can watch programs from their home country, watch sitcoms from other stations, news channels to keep updated and documentaries such as Discovery and Animal Planet. These are people who are sensibly making use of technology. However, and sadly enough, there are people who are using this technology to get all the porn channels. You can buy a decoder here illegally, which allows you to access all the free porn channels that are aired from Europe and Russia. Now that’s misusing technology.
Another example, the car. There are people here who use the car to get from one place to another. They don’t drive unnecessarily and use it when they have to. Even when they are out on the roads, they drive sensibly. Now, on the other side, there are these people who have access to great cars and all they do is go round and round checking out people, racing with one another, showing off their cars and making skid-marks on the roads. These people drive as if they own the roads: no indicator lights, breaking red lights, changing lanes abruptly, over speeding and so on. No wonder The Kingdom has one of the highest accident rates in the world.
There was one incident that happened in the Kingdom, after which, the police have decided to deal with the camera phones strictly. Now, they are able to stop you at checkpoint and confiscate your mobile phones, as it happened with a work colleague of mine. Now, they are able to take away your mobile phones at the Customs at the airport. It is sad to see the desperation of the police here in trying to ban the mobile phones, and at the same time, even sadder to see what some people can do with the cell phones.
In my opinion, I feel banning will not do anything. If anything, forbidden items are more appealing to the people, and they will be even more daring to get their hands on those very items. What needs to be done is to educate the population about the benefits of technology, and what should not be done. Those who are caught should be severely punished, to set an example to others, and their faces published in the papers, to make them feel like what it is like to be on the receiving end! Unfortunately, people are continuing to misuse the mobile phones.
But, there is one thing I don’t understand:
Why would you want to ban the mobile phones with cameras, when you can purchase digital cameras, some even smaller than the phones itself, legally in the market and use those for the same purpose?
Here is the website of the incident that sparked this debate and outrage in the Kingdom, and shows the level which the Saudis have stooped to!
http://www.saudigazette.com/ Check for the article called Sex scandal rocks Saudi Arabia by Albawaba
http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/004532.htm
Other news:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=51217&d=9&m=9&y=2004
http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/005233.htm
Take care and be on alert for someone taking pictures of you from their phones! You never know where you might end up!
Mansur
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