Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Saudi Arabia crosses out the letter X

Youssef Ibrahim reports in the NY Sun that the House of Saud may soon be banning the letter X from use because
it resembles the mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.

The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The commission's damning of the letter "X" came in response to a Ministry of Trade query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman for a new service carrying the English name "Explorer."
I've got a feeling that one way or another, grammer and education in the House of Saud is going to plummet way out of sight. This is something that few would've thought possible, because the X doesn't really resemble the cross, yet they apparenly think so.

I wonder what they'll ban there next? I'd wonder if comic books like X-Men would be banned for the same reasons too, but then, I'm sure they already are, because the Saudis will not accept anything that promotes acceptance and respect of a movement other than their own.

Via Betsy's Page.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They'll also be unable to teach their kids arithmetic since the + symbol looks even more like a c***s than X.

Jason Pappas said...

It was most likely the X in Xmas that did it for the Saudi clerics ... ;)

Avi Green said...

Those are good points. One can only wonder if they'll try and replace the X's and the plus symbols with some sort of caveman signs!

Anonymous said...

The anti-plus sign Jihad is happening right now as part of the larger educational Jihad. Try Googling with the search terms: muslim cross "plus sign". Here are some samples:
http://cathyyoung.blogspot.com/2005/11/french-riots-racialethnic-unrest-or.html
http://editrixblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/002218.html
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006197.php
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/52b7d0e66142a40e85256dc70072b982/6a686ed09710686a0525680300715d34!OpenDocument
http://www.drudge.com/news/88040/pope-prays-toward-mecca

Apparently, the Jewish religious nuts in Israel have the same problem with the plus sign as the Muslims and forced the government to change the "+" in textbooks to a "T".

Unknown said...

It's completely insane, just wait for someone to figure out that you can protest against + and x with more suicide bombings...

But then again, think about the French fries vs Freedom fries before the Iraq occupation, it's just as insane to me.