Jack_Campin
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Annoying bigots in Saudi Arabia
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-wo...
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John Erlich
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Quote: Originally posted by Jack_Campin  | | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-woman-marriage-ban-music-instrument-religion-islam-qassim-a8566241.html
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Mohammed Abdo is not happy...
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Badra
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LOL John. Scary stuff
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Chris-Stephens
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If anyone can provide any contextual information and insights about this id appreciate any attempt to help me understand what this is all about.
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Badra
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Chris-Stephens, here's the part of the article which I think pretty much explains it: "In parts of the Saudi kingdom, including the woman’s home
state of Qassim – a conservative region north of the capital Riyadh – some believe music is forbidden under Islamic law.
Playing an instrument is deemed an inferior profession and police in the state have previously arrested groups for listening to music."
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al-Halabi
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To elaborate a bit on Badra's post I am copying some comments that I contributed to an older discussion in this forum ( http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=3041#pid199... )
The scholarship on the history of Middle Eastern music from medieval times onward stresses time and again two cultural realities that I think are
relevant here: the negative or ambivalent attitudes of Islam toward music, and the generally low social status accorded to musicians (with the
exception of the rare stars, who enjoyed patronage and prestige). From the early days of Islam there raged a polemic about music and its legitimacy.
The more conservative moralists took the view that music ought to be prohibited as a negative force that diverts attention from religious observance,
promotes sensuality, and is generally harmful to believers and the community. We saw this viewpoint implemented by the Taliban in Afghanistan, who
imposed an outright ban on all music, and also in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which in the first years after the revolution did the same. Recordings
and instruments were destroyed, and musicians were driven underground. Although this extreme approach was historically rare, a certain negative view
of music and musicians remained embedded in the region’s culture and has been reiterated by men of religion over the centuries. Muslims were openly
discouraged from becoming musicians, and it is not an accident that non-Muslims were so prominent in this area, sometimes forming the majority of the
musical profession in some localities. (They were also prominent as instrument makers – the Nahhats, Gamil George, Manol, Karibyan, Ohanyan, to
mention just a few.). And musicians came from lower classes and were considered of lowly social rank, which added another layer of bias. There
certainly were amateur lovers of music from higher classes who played the oud and other instruments, but given the religious objections and social
prejudices they were often careful to enjoy their musical passions discreetly. Learning to play an instrument was definitely not part of a person’s
education in the middle and upper classes of society until later in the nineteenth century, when this practice began to be adopted from Europe. (Many
of these families then acquired pianos for their children.)
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Jack_Campin
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"I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one" goes for musicians in a lot of cultures where there is no theology backing it up.
Sakata's "Music in the Mind" describes a rubab player who used to walk around Herat with his instrument under his clothes. Given how much a rubab
weighs, people must have thought he had a really bad medical problem.
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