This was posted on the BBC world news website earlier this year. It is a good example of the sexual frustrations of young Saudi males who simply cannot just chat up a girl and start courting her. But look at my end note to this story.
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"Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca. The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.
They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The mutaween enforces Saudi Arabia's conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism.
Earlier in the month, the authorities enforced a ban on the sale of red roses and other symbols used in many countries to mark Valentine's Day.
The ban is partly because of the connection with a "pagan Christian holiday", and also because the festival itself is seen as encouraging relations between the sexes outside marriage, punishable by law in the kingdom.
The Prosecution and Investigation Commission said it had received reports of such "bad" behaviour by 57 young men at a number of shopping centres in the holy city of Mecca, the Saudi Gazette said.
The guardians of some of the men defended their actions, however, saying they would regularly get together at the weekend to have fun without ever violating laws governing the segregation of the sexes, it added."
When I used to work in Kuwait, which we all know is dry, we used to go down to Bahrain for the weekend to sink a few pints. We stayed at the Gulf Gate Hotel and, every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night, the two bars were jammed packed with thobe-cladden Saudis drinking and chatting with the girls. They would get utterly rat-arsed and then start chatting up the female Ethiopian bar staff. In fact they were just a pain in the ass. Added to this, the number of gay Saudis arriving in the Western bar after 10:00pm was uncanny to witness!
Is it no wonder then that incidents such as those in Mecca (of all places) happen? In maybe 50 years' time, the Saudis will bring their laws into the 21st century and we can all live happy ever after!
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