NEWS: Many Iraqis Protest Having Saturday off, Associate It With Jewish Day of Rest

Iraqis are complaining about their first ever weekend. They are not happy that the weekend falls on Saturday and Sunday since they associate Saturday with the Jewish Sabbath. Instead of having their weekends as two consecutive days, they would like Thursday off instead. Iraqis protested the new implemented weekend by showing up for school and work and demanding teachers and employers do the same.



Well if they don't want Saturdays and Sundays off, I see no problem with them choosing whatever day of the week they want. Our Gregorian calendar never applied to the Islamic world anyway since they use their own Hijri calendar. Several countries in the Middle East either have 3 day weekends or Thursdays and Friday off. Still it is interesting and fascinating to see the Iraqis lay down their own foundation and not confirm to western ways.

This is the second thing they've protested regarding as Israeli. Do you remember when the U.S. tried to have the Council create a new flag that was eerily similar to the Israeli flag in layout and colors?

it's going to be impossible to overcome stigmas instilled into the Iraqis when it comes to Israel, but they have all right to choose and form their country however they want to, that's what true democracy is anyways.

This just so funny I wonder who is the one that has the brilliant idea of setting the working week for the Iraqis and then giving them the "Sabbath" is just to funny.

I guess it most have been an American Jew. By the way my father does keep the Sabath as the day of rest.

Are we MAKING them take the weekend off? Is that part of "Democracy"?

Oh, brother, this takes the cake.

America will never be safe until we've forced all Muslims to take the weekends off an unwind! I an prepared to send as many people to their deaths as we must, and perhaps level entire cities, if that is what it takes to make sure that Iraqis have two consecutive days to recover from friday-nights drinking binge!

Has anybody ever heard the expression "choose your battles"? No, it's not something George Bush does without consulting the UN (well, maybe that too)... it means you walk away from a fight when its not important and save yourself for the things that have to be changed.

This isn't a huge deal, and it's not an indication that America is trying to convert Muslims or anything like that. It is however an excellent chance to show a little good sense by telling the Iraqis that we apologize for not seeing it from their side and they we will let them do it their way. You'd be amazed what things like that can do for you. I forget where I heard it, but I remember several years ago seeing a videoclip where a somewhat militant Muslim said that he thought Americans were generally better than Europeans about "believing in God" and that he liked us for that. Hey, if we can create that sort of an attitude just by showing them a basic level of cultural understand and respect, lets give it a shot. So what if it doesn't fix everything- better than nothing right?

Actually we may have weekends of Saturday and Sunday in the US but they are working days for most Americans anyway.

Somebody mentioned the flag we proposed so I had to check it out. The flag is a bit scarry- far more so than the weekend thing. We took the colors of Islam out of it (the green and black which appear in just about every flag in the region) as well as the red which symbolizes Arab nationalism.
Of course this is our second attempt- apparently we thought this was somehow more subtle than our initial bid to take "God is Great" off of their flag.
It's the same color as Israels flag- it may as well BE an Israeli flag really, the only difference is the religious symbol. What exactly is the message in a flag like this? Lipservice to your religion while throwing away every other symbolism of your peopl from your flag?

have sunday and monday off instead, problem solved.

thanks,
drfunk

This is an example that the imposed democracy is manipulated by the Bush administration. A democratically elected government should know well what's the will of the nation.

No. It's an example of common sense.
The rest of the world goes to work on Thursday.
If Iraq closes down on a Thursday, their economy will suffer.

Originally posted by WisdomMaster
This is an example that the imposed democracy is manipulated by the Bush administration. A democratically elected government should know well what's the will of the nation.

No Leveller hit the nail on the head on this one. It is common sense and it is ridiculous for one nation to have a different weekend than the rest of the world when you have an international community. I doubt the entire nation agrees with this either.

As for the reasoning why Saturday is objectionable I find this really peculiar. It is only the Sabbath if it is observed as the Sabbath, otherwise it is just another day. I'm just surprised with a mindset like this that they don't object to Sunday too, since that is basically the Sabbath for so many Christians.

Originally posted by Relentless

Originally posted by WisdomMaster
This is an example that the imposed democracy is manipulated by the Bush administration. A democratically elected government should know well what's the will of the nation.

No Leveller hit the nail on the head on this one. It is common sense

And the New York Stock Exchange should stay open all night because that's when the other side of the world does their business.

No opportunity for profit left behind! Go team! Change the world for Christian business!

There is NO place in this world for families with different religious practices. It's only common sense.




[end sarcasm]
.

These things, the proposed days off and the colour of the proposed flag seem pretty innocent and coincidental at first sight, why are they making such a big fuzz about it..????

....but you can bet a panel of american spindoctors and psyoppers has given it a great deal of thought and they must have had pretty heated discussions about it behind closed doors.

Possibly the ultimate objective? slowly but surely dissociate the muslim culture by replacing its symbols etc...

For instance, anything remotely like this flag (saoudi arabia) would be considered plain wrong:



Why, it has the sword (jihad ???) and it is associated with the stupid eye of the stupid storm, the holy places of Mecca/Medina, the spiritual centers of Muhammed and Usama Bin Laden...

If you look at most arab flags, the combination of Red and Green is ubiquitous , hence to dissociate iraq from arab culture red green combo = wrong

Stars are wrong as well, too much common among the nationialist Baath followers etc etc...

Examples:

JORDAN


SYRIA


OLD IRAQI FLAG


IRAN


LEBANON


Notice a pattern ?

I venture to say that if they manage to get the Syrians kicked out of Lebanon they might wanna replace the red rectangles with blue , supposedly symbolising the mediterranean sea or something (they will probably keep the tree green, because, well trees happen to be ehr.. green and its more of a local "Cypress Hill" symbol (Lebanon used to have important wood industry in ancient times and has significant Christian population) than specifically Arab green anyeway...


Here is my proposal for a new iraqi flag, that should symbolise the diversity of iraqi population and promote tolerance between the Kurds, Assyrians, Sunni, Sji'ite, Turkmenes and at least a dozen of other minoriities in iraq..,



Naturally they should follow this up with a cultural blitzkrieg on iraqi television, by contaminating the iraqi youth with series such as "SpongeHaBib" and the Hassan & Stimpy show.


[edit on 27-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

[edit on 27-2-2005 by Countermeasures]