Assholes

The WaPo reports that:

Officials are considering an unprecedented proposal to ban women from performing the five Muslim prayers in the immediate vicinity of Islam's most sacred shrine in Mecca. Some say women are already being kept away. The issue has raised a storm of protest across the kingdom, with some women saying they fear the move is meant to restrict women's roles in Saudi society even further. I get so tired of the patriarchal bullshit from the Abrahamic religions.

The "explanation" offered for the discrimination is total bullshit: [T]he religious authorities behind the proposal insist its real purpose is to lessen the chronic problem of overcrowding, which has led to deadly riots during pilgrimages at Mecca in the past. So if your issue is overcrowding, you can limit attendance by first-come-first-served, by allocating tickets on any one of a dozen non-discriminatory bases, or you could declare that no men can pray at the shrine.

This kind of crap always reminds of a story I heard about a time when Israel experienced an outbreak of rapes and the government considered imposing a curfew on women. Golda Meir is said to have remarked that it wasn't the women who were raping anyone and that, if a curfew was needed, it should be imposed on the people who did commit rapes -- the men. A new solution was immediately found.

Of course, this discrimination is being imposed by the Bush junta's best friends, the Saudis, so I don't expect to hear any concern about Islamofascist treatment of women from the right-wingers.