Study: Saudi teens’ cell phones chock full o’ porn
posted at 1:36 pm on April 25, 2007 by Allahpundit
We might have a nasty case of selection bias here, though:
Misuse of Bluetooth technology by young men and women is increasing in Saudi Arabia. A recent study found that pornographic material accounted for nearly 70 percent of messages exchanged by teenagers. Abdullah ibn Mohammed Al-Rasheed, associate professor at the College of Dawa and Information in Riyadh, who conducted the study, said 88 percent of girls had been victims of such misuse. Rasheed presented his study at a seminar organized by the King Fahd Security Academy. The study focused on teenage boys detained by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for harassing girls in the Qasim region.
“The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7 percent of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6 percent were related to violence,” said Rasheed. About 99.2 percent of people surveyed, mostly students, military officers and businessmen, used Bluetooth in public gatherings.
Hard to tell if the 70% figure is based on all teenagers or just that demographic of busy-hand boys that the study “focused on.” As written, it sounds like it’s the former, especially since they also surveyed teenaged girls. Speaking of which:
Ninety-nine percent believed that the device had broken the barrier of social taboo and traditions. About 77 percent of girls admitted that they had used Bluetooth, even inside the Grand Mosque in Makkah
Exit question: How useful will technology like this ultimately prove in opening up cloistered societies?
Blowback
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Are 70% of the population gonna be killed and put in town squares?
I think technology is what will have to make it happen. One can only hope that someday muslims are as close followers of their religion as catholics are.
lorien1973 on April 25, 2007 at 1:40 PM
DUH, go figure.
shooter on April 25, 2007 at 1:42 PM
We knew this already.
Mazztek on April 25, 2007 at 1:43 PM
What constitutes ‘pornographic material’ in Saudi Arabia? An exposed ear? Frontal neck nudity?
RedWinged Blackbird on April 25, 2007 at 1:45 PM
All one has to do is observe behaviors of Muslims in the U.S….hanging out at stripclubs, going to discos, nightclubbing, etc, etc, etc.
Apparently Allah doesn’t visit the west to see what is going on with his children.
But let a Saudi girl get caught rolling in the hay with a infidel, and she will be murdered by her brothers.
serenevalley on April 25, 2007 at 1:47 PM
I don’t think technology is the magic bean here. Its more along the lines of freedom of speech and communication. The technology is just the delivery system for the freedom.
Once a cloistered society begins to communicate openly, freedom will follow- but so too will those groups that want to suppress that freedom.
The next great revolutions will be Islamic.
BelchSpeak on April 25, 2007 at 1:47 PM
i was just thinking about that.
think of the irony — porn, of all things, is the stuff that will open young Saudi kids’ minds about the West and build new bridges, making terrorism less appealing.
who woulda thunk it
AlexB on April 25, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Very useful. They simply cannot stop the flow of western technology into their culture. Heh. The article you linked to in the other thread about French fashion incorporating the burqa is really the burqa being Westernized. Jeans worn under long dresses will become jeans worn under long skirts, then sarong like waist wraps then just a lavish belt. Next thing you know, suprise you been assimilated! All technological means of communication will work the same way. Satellite ISP can reach into the most represive of regimes. State run news outlets cannot stem the tide of information. Qutb was right to hate our technology and way of life. His concept of the height of civilization will not last into the next century.
Theworldisnotenough on April 25, 2007 at 1:50 PM
Is it any wonder sucide bombers talk with glee about the 70 black-eyed virgins they plan on getting. A little sump’m sump’m here on earth and blowing oneself up becomes far less appealing. Can’t you see the headline “Hawaiin Tropic Swimsuit Pageant Held in Dubai Jihad Plummets?”
Theworldisnotenough on April 25, 2007 at 1:56 PM
This isn’t news, you should see the porn on American kid’s cell phones. I had a kid who had a girl moaning in orgasmic exctasy for his ring-tone.
Yes I took it, no they didn’t do much.
Tim Burton on April 25, 2007 at 1:59 PM
Censorship, with a healthy dose of cleric eyes on anyone looking at such material that would offend the likes of the ruling religious class.
Next up, the plucking of eyes for watching as punishment and virtual on-line stoning.
Kini on April 25, 2007 at 1:59 PM
The real scandal? Most of the porn was of blonde, blue-eyed Euro-American chicks.
Ali-Bubba on April 25, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Old Arab: “I’m going to blow up an infidel”
New Arab: “I’m going to blow up my plastic girlfriend”
Peace. At last.
fogw on April 25, 2007 at 2:05 PM
0MG PR0N????
Kensington on April 25, 2007 at 2:07 PM
I wonder if there’s an alternate translation to MILF over there, them being Muslims.
Matticus Finch on April 25, 2007 at 2:11 PM
1. Make an entertaining, easily shared video that happens to show Sunni Muslims as apostates that need to be killed. Seed this among Shia youths.
2. Make an entertaining, easily shared video that happens to show Shia Muslims as apostates that need to be killed. Seed this among Sunni youths.
3. Profit
pedestrian on April 25, 2007 at 2:19 PM
Think about this: If porn were used as a weapon to ‘open up ‘ the cloistered societies inside Islam, it’s possible that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of young people would be murdered by the religious Mullahs for being unclean, sinful.
When our society is under attack, we fight back to maintain our society, our civilization. So would the Mullahs.
Doug on April 25, 2007 at 2:38 PM
Kids collecting cell phone porn are not going to be the Adams, the Paine, or the Franklin of Saudi Arabia.
The trappings of American culture are not the same as the fundamental bedrock upon which this society is built. I’ll double check my history, but I don’t think “Musings on the Dirty Sanchez” was the subtitle of Common Sense. To assume that pr0n is somehow a vessel with secretly embedded viral copies of the Constitution– or even to propose that through indulgence will come civics– is to make a fundamental error about the nature of what supports Western civilization.
There is no road to political dignity through the dark corners of the human psyche. To see hope in an army of sad women with oiled buttocks is as superstitious as seeking salvation through the sacrifice of virgins.
If these are your revolutionaries, expect results closer to Robespierre than Washington.
a4g on April 25, 2007 at 2:39 PM
An Army of Women with Oiled Buttocks?
I love that movie.
The sequel is better, though.
Professor Blather on April 25, 2007 at 3:08 PM
Okay, I’m dying to ask. Where exactly do you see US “fighting back to maintain our society?”
I certainly like the sound of it, but I sure don’t see it happening.
Professor Blather on April 25, 2007 at 3:11 PM
Very.
While not so much the porn, but the technology will help. The great firewall of china comes to mind.
Why would China create a firewall unless they were worried about it?
F15Mech on April 25, 2007 at 3:27 PM
After the printing press was invented, the Europeans got busy printing Bibles. However, the real money-maker was dirty books, which sold like hotcakes. That’s what made the presses profitable and propagated more presses.
Up until that time, hand-written books had been as expensive as a Rolls-Royce today. The reason lectures were made was because it was cheaper to pass on information orally than by book. Once books became cheap, people could pursue the truth independently, without the clergy middlemen. That diminished the authority of the clergy and led, ultimately, to the Reformation.
Porn may just be the thin wedge in Saudi society that cracks the door open to ideas that will ultimately overturn their thoroughly rotten, wrong, and evil country and religion.
Tantor on April 25, 2007 at 3:28 PM
You got a link on that? I’m fascinated.
Plus it’ll make good cover for my Elizabethean porn fetish.
Professor Blather on April 25, 2007 at 3:37 PM
This is ridiculous. I lived in Riyadh for a year while working in Security Forces Hospital. As one of the few Westerners there, I got a real inside education regarding what the Saudis are and what they want the world to believe they are. Imagine a female friend and I walking to a local shop one day when a big stretch limo pulls up, the window rolls down and a hand extends holding a wad of cash. What follows are shouts from young boys within inviting us to join them. Saudi men fly to Dubai, they fly to Bahrain, they fly to Morocco, they fly to any other country and do all the nasty things they want, then fly home and become good Muslims again. Here’s a real stretch for you. They don’t recognize the disease AIDS in the country, though it exists. They call it wasting disease. What they project and what they are, two totally different things. They want the world to see them as virtuous or otherwise how could they maintain their moral superiority over non-Muslims. Pfaw on them!
Glynn on April 25, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Dilemma: I agree with this
and I agree with this, also
and what I saw & heard during my time in Saudi aligns with what Glynn saw & heard: an apparently Repressed Society where much of the population can afford to jet to the Surrounding Decadence of other nations ( especially the south of France, but Dubai is cheaper ) and be Total Pagan Hedonists.
But Saudi is a peculiar as well as Dysfunctional society, so who knows? Not me…………….
Janos Hunyadi on April 25, 2007 at 5:00 PM
What’s worse; knowing that, or knowing what you posted before clicking the link?
- The Cat
People, this is just a way to support that fact that communication and the spreading of ideas is EVIL.
MirCat on April 25, 2007 at 5:17 PM
May I recommend my blog for an insight into how Saudis think?
See what Stephen Browne of Norman, Oklahoma thought when he went to Saudi Arabia and boiled it down into a handful of lessons. Click here.
Isaac Schrödinger made a long trip from his identity as a Pakistani-born, ex-Muslim, refugee-claimant living in Saudi Arabia to becoming pro-USA. He describes the journey here.
Isaac’s opinion as an ex-Muslim:
“Our war against the Islamists will be multi-generational. The US has to fight. She has no other choice. We’ve tried leaving the Middle East alone in its soup of hatred, the result of which we witnessed on 9/11. The Islamists do not fully understand the West. They do not comprehend the latent might of the American Republic and they constantly deny the dignity of freedom in Israel. They truly believe that they’ll make us kneel before them. If not today, then twenty years from now. For them it is only a matter of time.
It is up to the US to prove them wrong. We must destroy Al Qaeda, crush Hamas, smash the Iranian regime, and grind the Saudi rulers into powder. We must completely and utterly annihilate Islamism.”
Questions?
Tantor on April 25, 2007 at 5:49 PM
Bingo.
Bob's Kid on April 25, 2007 at 6:17 PM
And to add, today we had a multicultural assembly. It was great, with some wonderful costumes and fantastic dancing (including a Mexican couple doing the tango, whoa!). The MSA had a bunch of kids parading with their flags in native dress, which elicited polite applause. Know what brought the house down, though? When American-born muslims carried over their huge American flag and put up over all the rest of the flags, as in WE ARE ALL AMERICANS. It was deafening.
There is hope, and it’s these kids.
Bob's Kid on April 25, 2007 at 6:21 PM
I am from Norman and am familiar with his comments. I especially agree with this one.
The one point of view he can’t write from is a Western woman in Saudi Arabia, and yes it is indeed an entirely different point of view. All of the freedoms men, from ANY country enjoy, are totally denied women. This gives one an entirely different viewpoint about life on every level in the KSA. When the Marine towers was bombed in May of 1996, my Saudi boss came into our work area and made this statement “I am very sorry for your loss but your government should listen to our people. Chilling.
Glynn on April 25, 2007 at 6:39 PM
Did they ever find his cat?
Freelancer on April 25, 2007 at 10:19 PM
Porn is meaningless as a method of “changing the Mohammedans” since the Muslim Paradise is an eternal bi-sexual whorehouse with a perpetually open bar.
This is just a little more wink-wink, nudge-nudgefor the men, who are living entire lives of wink-wink, nudge nudge, then back to the jihad.
profitsbeard on April 26, 2007 at 2:13 AM
One could also hope that muslims overcome their religious bigotry.
aengus on April 26, 2007 at 8:38 AM
It seems there’s an opportunity for young, goodlooking people who are fluent in Arabic to deliver the Anglo-American teachings on the natural rights, constitutional government, and liberal economics via video files. I’ve always thought that the Federalist Papers would be improved by a hot babe reading it to me naked.
Kralizec on April 26, 2007 at 10:28 AM