Iraq Students Protest Having Saturday Off

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050226/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_no_to_saturday&cid=540&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis are complaining about their first-ever weekend break, and some high-school students even went to class Saturday to protest a decision introducing a second weekly day off that coincides with the Jewish Sabbath.
It's not that the Iraqis do not want time off — they just want the extra day moved to Thursday.


"We don't want Saturday! It's a Jewish holiday!" students chanted as they marched in protest last week to the governor's office in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.


A high-school student pulled out a hand grenade and started waving it, and police fired into the air to disperse the crowd. At least three students reportedly were injured in the ensuing scuffle.


At Baghdad's University of Mustansariyah, a statement issued by a student union believed to be allied with the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr described Saturday as "the Zionist holiday" and said the government order should not be followed.

[w13rd0]

1. They should just omit...

...Saturday from their calendar. Sunday too. Monday thru Friday should be good enough for anyone. I myself live on a Monday-Thursday calendar, and adhere to GMT sidereal time. Granted, the conversions can be troublesome at time, but at least I'm not recognizing the weekly holy days of the mass deluded.






























</sarcasm>

[Bill McBlueState]

33. you kinda sound like an astronomer

the sidereal time part, anyway.

Whoops, alpha Cyg transits in three hours, time to get to work...

[NewHampshireDem]

2. Can't we do one damned thing right in that country?

:shakes head in disbelief:

I'm reminded of Naomi Klein's excellent piece in the Atlantic a couple of months ago about the Green Zone and some of the stupid errors the bureaucrats make.

[Igel]

15. No, we can't do anything right, by definition. If we do it, it's

immediately put in the "wrong" and "anti-Islamic" category.

I propose we require each Sunni Arab or Sadr supporter to eat at the very minimum one meal every 10 days, enforceable by law. Immediately a fatwa would be issued forbidding the eating of even a single meal every 10 days, the Baathists would declare eating more often than once every 10 days un-patriotic and subject to the death penalty. Three weeks later the insurgency would be too weak to lift a fork, much less a suicide belt.

Maybe they've already done it. It would explain why so many bakeries have been shot up recently.

[justy387]

3. wow!

pretty scary. It reminds us just how deep-rooted their hated is of Jews.

[alcuno]

4. These things happen in the middle of a Holy War.

Nothing to be overly concerned about.

[Mr_Spock]

18. LOL - that's a good way to put it

These folks are friggin' angry bigots - no wonder the angry bigoted freepamentalists in this country are so concerned for them - lol

[justy387]

27. I agree.

That article made me so angry and depressed at the millions and millions of ignorant in the world. Too bad Bush is just making it worst by bombing their country.

[Spacejet]

10. How do you know it's hatred?

I don't like having certain things closed (or prohibited) on sunday. It's not because I don't like christianity, it's just that I don't think the government should support a particular religious day. Most of those laws have been repealed (or are no longer enforced), but here in Texas in some counties it's technically illegal to drink on sunday.

[justy387]

16. Because they picked Saturday as part of the weekend

for arbitrary reasons. They did not pick Saturday because it is the Jewish sabbath. These Iraqis have such hatred for Jews in their head that they won't take the day off because they consider Saturday to be a Zionist day.

[alcuno]

25. I can't believe that Muslims think that the US and Israel are in cahoots.

That is shocking.

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. It's also shocking

that they don't appreciate the 'freedom' our invasion has brought them. :eyes:

*sarcasm off*

[RogueTrooper]

32. Except the Jewish Iraqis

They probably do not have such hatred for the Jews.

[Igel]

17. If you protested having Sunday off saying it's

a "Christian holiday" and asserts the Theocrat's attempt to impose their religion on you, "hatred" would be as good a term as any.

Last month a central pharmaceutical warehouse in some Iraqi city burned down. No reasonable excuses were offered. Personal vendetta? Mistake?

But the month before one newspaper had a story about an Iraqi radicalized by a search of his house; his porn collection was outed, he was humiliated, went Salafist, and then depressed. Told his live-in mother to pitch out all foreign-made foodstuffs. His ma then got him some medication; he looked at them and shortly thereafter ordered them thrown at as "Jewish" and "foreign", unfit for Muslims. It's unlikely that he concluded this himself; somebody probably told him.

[Ravenseye]

34. 20+ Years of Enforced Propoganda Does Things To People

Baghdad used to have a thriving jewish population. The people there weren't anti-jewish. After the formation of Israel there was a growing number of anti-israeli and anti-zionist groups, but they still weren't anti-jewish. If you can't wrap your head around that let me know and I'll go into that dichotomy (alot of people can't separate the whole anti-israel is not anti-jew thing)

Anyway that mostly has changed. 20 years of Saddam and his propoganda on one side, and the Shia religious propoganda on the other has twisted people back and forth and now there are a large number of not just anti-israel, but anti-anything to do with the jews..they've been told for 20 years that Israel is behind everything happening to their country and their families via the U.S. or Kuwaitis or whoever, no matter how illogical it was.

Just look at the U.S. and how many people have fallen for the most absurd republican propoganda. Sadly it happens.

Really it's a shame because the Iraqi's before were actually very friendly to jews, mostly because of the huge jewish population in Baghdad. (huge is a relative term but I think there were over a hundred thousand jews there which really....for an arab city that's a ton)

[parsifal_e]

5. a friday-sunday holiday would make sense there.....

Since there is a sizable christian minority.

[Payback Time]

7. Have to honor their feelings

so they don't feel even less in control of their lives, but, it's so sad that it's even an issue. Religion and ethnicity is so divisive (or maybe it's just people).

[leftchick]

19. not anymore there isn't...

more bushco** irony...

POLITICS-IRAQ:
Christians Flee to Safer Ground
Aaron Glantz

AINKAWA, Northern Iraq, Feb 8 (IPS) - Zaid Suleyman, a 34-year-old taxi driver, sits in the administration office of St Joseph's, an Assyrian Christian church in the Kurdish-controlled north of Iraq. He and his wife fled the capital, Baghdad, for the comparative peace of this region in September, and have been renting a room from an elderly church member ever since.

But despite the move, Suleyman has not been able to put the violence of Baghdad behind him.

"I have a sister living in Baghdad still, and two months ago her husband was kidnapped," he says.

Regular trips back to the capital to search for his brother-in-law have proved fruitless: "We have no idea what happened to him, even if he is alive or dead. We searched for him in all the hospitals and the morgues, but we weren't able to find him."

http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27363

[Goldmund]

6. LOL

tools.

[Ellen Forradalom]

8. "A Zionist holiday"?

The observance of Shabat goes back a long, long way--long before there was ever such a thing as "Zionism." Sheesh.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Very strange, since it's in Genesis

"On the seventh day, he rested."

And that book and creation myth are sacred scripture to Moslems, too.

[Spacejet]

11. Yes, because unlike christians

all muslims believe the same and have the same religious interpretations. :eyes:

[realisticphish]

12. well then

that explains why christians celebrate the sabbath on....oh, wait

:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[sonicx]

13. It's a day off! celebrate!

:shrug:

[simcha_6]

14. Great, this they choose to protest

Sunni slaughter Shi'a, the U.S. troops are based have four or so bases, and they choose to protest having a day off because its partially associated with Jews, never mind that its an ordinary day of in plenty of non-Jewish nations as well.

Bigots. I laughed when Bush said an Iraqi democracy would lead to recounciliation between Jews and Arabs. If Judeopathy is popular in a country, democracy would probably undermine security.

[davhill]

20. I believe the weekend in the Islamic countries is Thursday Friday

If it was suddenly switched for no reason by a foreign controlled regime, people would understandably become paranoid.

[Rose Siding]

21. Never On Saturday, Iraqis Say -CBS (anger over new "weekend")

(AP) Iraqis are complaining about their first-ever weekend break, and some high-school students even went to class Saturday to protest a decision introducing a second weekly day off that coincides with the Jewish Sabbath.

It's not that the Iraqis do not want time off — they just want the extra day moved to Thursday.

"We don't want Saturday! It's a Jewish holiday!" students chanted as they marched in protest last week to the governor's office in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

A high-school student pulled out a hand grenade and started waving it, and police fired into the air to disperse the crowd. At least three students reportedly were injured in the ensuing scuffle.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml

[Politicub]

22. "high-school student pulled out a hand grenade and started waving it"

Those Iraqi students don't play!!

[Rex]

23. We've been there what? 2 years now? And we still dont know

shit about their culture. Constantly, constantly, constantly - Bush and crew fuck up on policy (as always). Yet, it seems, the only way to get fired as Prez is to get a blow job from someone besides your wife!

I blame the media whores.

[IndianaGreen]

24. Thank you Bush, PNAC and its fellow travelers

for turning Iraq into an Islamist lunatic asylum.

[kineneb]

26. Thursday/Friday is the normal "weekend"

In most parts of the Islamic world the "weekend" is Thurs/Fri. When I lived in Tehran, even though I went to Tehran American School (1970-71), our days off were Thurs/Fri. Islam has its own calendar which begins around our year 600 CE.

[simcha_6]

29. Cool. I didn't know that

[CindyDale]

30. Who made this decision?

Were they ignorant of the culture? It sounds absolutely bizarre. Imagine if they changed the weekend here in the U.S. to mid-week or something, what the reaction would be.

It doesn't sound as though it would have been an Iraqi decision, and yet we talk about democracy.

[CindyDale]

31. Decision was made by Allawi

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=2990

who is "equally distrusted by everybody" and has ties to the CIA and Saudi Arabia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3757923.stm

Is it possible he knew exactly what he was doing?

Go figure.