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Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice

Are they kidding?  Yes, as you’ve probably heard, Saudi Arabia does have a Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and what’s more, they banned the sale of red roses AND red gifts, according to the Guardian. 

Kind of sounds like the Puritans, doesn’t it? 

But there are a few things that are interesting about this…  First, it was reported in a local newspaper as a normal news item.  That just seems odd to me.  Second, people were defying the ban:

“The crackdown has pushed up the price of the flowers on the black market, with some florists making deliveries in the middle of the night, the paper said.

Couples defying the ban placed orders for red roses weeks before the deadline. Some were sending online Valentine’s cards, and others were planning to celebrate the day in neighbouring countries, such as Bahrain, which has a more liberal approach to Islamic law.”

So I checked to see if there was anything about this on www.aljazeera.net.  Nothing. 

Okay, maybe they don’t think roses on Valentine’s day is a big deal.  And, it shouldn’t be.  So, why go to all the trouble of banning it in the first place?

Seems to be that these religious folks are swimming against the tide – they aren’t going to win this one.  People want to be free to do simple things that the rest of the world takes for granted. 

That’s why I’m optimistic about the future.  Al Qaeda can’t win this one.  Not if Saudi’s are going underground to buy roses for their honeys.

And by the way, that’s also why Huckabee and Brownback and even the briefly uber-conservative Romney didn’t do well in the Prez race.  Americans just don’t want a Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice either.