Saudi women are now tracked via mobile phones

Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements. Since last week, Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together.

Gulf News

Wikileaks 2006: USA plans for Syria

This cable summarizes our assessment of these vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising. These proposals will need to be fleshed out and converted into real actions and we need to be ready to move quickly to take advantage of such opportunities. Many of our suggestions underline using Public Diplomacy and more indirect means to send messages that influence the inner circle.

Wikileaks:06DAMASCUS5399

Malaysia Detains Saudi Over Twitter Posts on Prophet

Mr. Kashgari’s tweets incited outrage in the conservative Islamic country, where many regarded them as blasphemous, and reportedly prompted the king to call for his arrest. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. More than 13,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.” According to The Daily Beast, a friend of Mr. Kashgari, who asked not to be named, accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention. “We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” The Daily Beast quoted the friend as saying. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”

Malaysia Detains Saudi Over Twitter Posts on Prophet

Qatar names its largest mosque after Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab

Qatar has named its largest mosque after Imam Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab, the influential Muslim scholar who lived in the 18th century in today's Saudi Arabia. "The mosque naming directive by the Emir Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani is in honour of the reformer's position and a reflection of Qatar's keenness on the revival of the nation's symbols and civilization values," Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported on Tuesday. Ibn Abdul Wahab (1703-1792) preached a return to "pure Islam" and called for purging Islam of what he considered "impurities and negative innovations." In his teachings, he urged Muslims to uphold only "the original principles of Islam as typified by the Salaf" and to reject "corruptions introduced by bidah (negative innovations and heresy). The scholar emphasized that there could be no intercession between God and worshippers.

Qatar names its largest mosque after Muslim scholar