So it’s Valentine’s Day. A frilly little holiday where Hallmark, Russell Stover, Harry & David, and various other greeting card/confectionary companies get to cash in while males across the globe are motivated to spend on gifts for their significant others, or face the wrath of Being Called a Jerk.
Except for Saudi Arabia. Where Valentine’s Day is a lustful, scandalous, forbidden holiday! Ye Gods!
Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine’s Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin, local media reported Monday.
“As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, ” Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette, an English-language newspaper.
Every year, officials with the conservative Muslim kingdom’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice clamp down on shops a few days before February 14, instructing them to remove red roses, red wrapping paper, gift boxes and teddy bears. On the eve of the holiday, they raid stores and seize symbols of love.
Okay, I just don’t get how ANYONE would think that some overpriced chocolate and teddy bears would lead immediately to unmarried buttsecks. I mean hell, a lot of marriage proposals tend to happen around Valentines Day. Marriage is moral… right?
Eh, I guess it’s pointless to try to find any reason in a country who also feels that displaying of women’s ankles is also obscene, and thus also leads to the aforementioned unmarried buttsecks.
Yet somehow, we must play nice with these people, because they own all the oil. Ugh.