FAMILIES in the Northern Governorate could soon be banned from hanging their underwear out to dry in public. The ban has been proposed by municipal councillors, who say it is offensive to Bahrain’s Islamic traditions.It would only affect residents living on main roads in Budaiya, Saar, Diraz, Shakhura and some parts of Hamad Town.
Councillors have now submitted their proposal to Municipalities and Agriculture Affairs Minister Ali Saleh Al Saleh, who is expected to reply within two weeks.
“Buildings on main roads are being taken over by foreign labourers,” said Northern Municipal Council chairman Majeed Al Sayed.
“This is because Bahrainis prefer moving into the quieter areas inside villages, away from the noise of cars.
“These foreigners are not properly acquainted with our country’s culture, where it is sometimes offensive to do things that might be totally acceptable where they come from.
“We have received numerous complaints from residents regarding the matter of underwear being hung outside these buildings to dry.
“It substantially damages the appearance of our area, especially since the buildings are located on some of the main roads.
“Therefore, we came up with a proposal to ban it.”
The ban would mainly target people who hang out underwear to dry on balconies.
If it is approved, anyone caught hanging their underwear where others can see it will be given a notice.
“If they repeat the act, stricter measures will be taken, which may even include police intervention,” said Mr Al Sayed.
Only those living on main roads would be affected.
Comments
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
quick… i better take my g-string off the washing line !;) B
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Makes sense.
Not like the government has anything better to do than control minutae in people’s lives, yes? 😀
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Absolute nonsense! What religious reason would make seeing underwear offensive? I suppose next they are going to ban the display of underwear in stores? What, have to order out of catalogs? There is a lot more out there to be worried about than this rubbish.
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
[quote]I suppose next they are going to ban the display of underwear in stores?[/quote]
Too late
[url]http://flippingthecoin.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/03/06/only_in_this_part_of_the_world.html[/url]
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Some of the best women’s undergarments I have seen were those in sale in the UAE. Very expensive, for the women and men who can afford it. Doesnt matter for those with money in the Gulf, they will just pick it up on their monthly/bi-annual/yearly trips to Europe and the USA. It will affect those without means to do such travel. Masakeen, dont the middle class deserve nice undies? All joking aside, dont they have something better to do with their time?
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
I suggest they ban underwear all together… all those in favour…
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
I suggest they pass a law banning people from looking at other people’s underwear.
[Modified by: Malik (celticview) on March 11, 2005 10:46 AM]
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Although the overall look will be nicer from the outside, all I say is we need to get rid of those councilors and the nuwabs cause the government is wasting their money on people who simply don’t deliver but jokes.
So what next, what cars do we drive? what colours do we paint our houses? or even better, what names can we have?
[Modified by: Khalid (KhalidSaad) on March 11, 2005 03:49 PM]
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Posted “So what next, what cars do we drive? what colours do we paint our houses? or even better, what names can we have?”
Well, yes, isnt the colour red a bit sensual?
I must say, however, than hanging laundry is illegal in Germany as well, so in mowing your lawn on a Sunday.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
[quote]what colours do we paint our houses [/quote]
I guess you’ve never heard of America’s gated communities and their dumb rules. This “no underwear” law would fit right in.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
I think everyone is jumping the gun here…
If you saw some of the underwear that people hang-up…you’d wonder why they weren’t banned a long time ago…we’re talking about the cheap foreign labourers here that don’t normally wear Victoria’s Secret 🙂 Yes think big, yellow and smelly.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
In Germany such things are banned in the common interest. I see no problem with this as long as religion isnt used to justify such a thing. Make it clear, it is about ugly dirty undies.
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Now having spent a bit if time in Bahrain over the years I can tell you laundry doesn’t take too too long to dry if you put it out on the line to dry. Better dry your jeans “insideout” if you want any color left in them. I think there is a “stark” difference between tossing some things on the line doing what needs to be done than those that will leave the same clothes out on a line for days on end. Who wants their neighborhood to look like Sanford and Son’s front lawn?
In and on the Island of Nantucket, Massachusetts your house must be painted “WHITE” and or Cedar sided,(I can’t remember) unless you can show and prove that the house was another color in the history of the house. The purpose is to maintain supposed classic look and feel of the traditional New England fishing village/whaleing center.
This can sound a bit draconian. BUT that is the LAW and the rules if you wish to live there. That being said the wind and salt air are so brutal that unless you enjoy spending a small fortune painting your home twice a year you are crazy to have any other color but white. Several other towns in New England have similar rules.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
If you read the article, it makes no mention of a religious justification, only that it doesn’t line up with Bahrain’s culture. (We can agrue about the Islamic nature of Bahrain’s culture till the cows come home and head back out again)
Mahmood added the “…we’re Muslim” part. So slap his wrist for that one!
Most western homes WILL have a dryer unit. I don’t think I’ve seen a clothesline in years.
Which brings me to the next point. Who wants to open up a dimestore laundromat in Budaiya? We’ll make good money off those poor hardworking laborers who can no longer do their wash at home!
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Posted “If you read the article, it makes no mention of a religious justification, only that it doesn’t line up with Bahrain’s culture.”
Actually, it does. It says “The ban has been proposed by municipal councillors, who say it is offensive to Bahrain’s Islamic traditions.”
Now how exactly this is offensive to Islamic traditions is beyond me, but that was their claim. I would love to hear the Hadith of verse from The Qur’an that supports this one.
Posted “Mahmood added the “…we’re Muslim” part. So slap his wrist for that one!”
No, Mahmood was right. They indeed said it was offensive to Islamic traditions.
[Modified by: Malik (celticview) on March 11, 2005 02:02 PM]
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Hmmm. Well, the Ukraine had its Orange Revolution and Lebanon is having its Cedar Revolution. I just hope this is not the start of a Big Yellow Smelly Revolution in Bahrain. I don’t want to turn on my TV and see a sea of protestors marching in Manama with their underwear hoisted on their signs.
Steve
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
If you’re waiting for the cows to come home in Bahrain, it strikes me that you have a very long wait.
Steve
Re(1): hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Pretty funny Steve. I have heard the protests in Beirut called “The Goochy Revolution” because of the overwhelming middle and upper class nature of the supporters. Interesting to note that a recent poll taken in Lebanon shows that these people are actually are minority in Lebanon.
The people who support Syria seem to have a majority. I think the Syrians need to leave, but at the same time people must remember that Syria has actually had a positive roll in Lebanon at times.
I heard an interesting interview the other day with an expert in the area. He said that if the sectarian strictures controlling the government in Lebanon were lifted Hizb’Allah would probably garner enough votes in any election to form a majority government. The discussion then went on to talk about what American response to this would be.
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
ah, you’re right.
Fair enough, I’ll take it back.
Re: hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
[removed by admin, off topic, subsequent comments deleted]
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
rediculous…
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Nothing to take wrong bro, speak your mind!
I’m not opposed with a community trying to improve it’s image. More power to them. All I want is that when they do make this a law, that someone creates an alternative for these people. Like the communal laundry facility that Mahmood suggested. Otherwise you’ve forced someone of limited means to make choices about their personal hygiene that they wouldn’t have otherwise have had to make.
Give them incentives to change their behavior in a positive way. And yes, the community ought to foot the bill rather than have big daddy government pay for it or pass the buck down to third world laborers who are scrounging to make a living.
Wait a minute, why are we splitting hairs over this? String up a second clothesline and throw a bedsheet on the “frontline”. Like Mark said, it doesn’t take long to dry clothes in Bahrain, you’d still get the job done without direct exposure to sunlight.
Finding the middle ground, now that’s Islamic tradition!
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Who wants to see any kind of laundry draped on clotheslines on balconies on main highways and roads? No one, it’s just bad for the image of the building and the area. But as not all flats and houses have a clothes dryer, you can’t blame people drying their clothes in this manner… maybe the municipality would suggest to building owners the possibility of installing a communal dryer, even if its use is charged, in a common room in every building this phenomenon would go away – maybe, because it is almost guaranteed that some people would continue to dry their clothes on their balconies.
I remember for instance flying to Hong Kong’s Kai Tac airport a while ago, obviously much before the new airport opened and part of the final leg before landing was almost flying through a corridor of high-rise buildings, and as I was sitting in the jumpseat in the cockpit, I rememeber women out on their balconies putting clothes on lines! The image is still very vivid in my mind… all buildings there almost without exception were filled with drying clothes on clotheslines in their apartments’ balconies.
A few years ago in Scotland in my mother-in-law’s area, if you left specifically underwear on your clothesline overnight, you are guaranteed that they will be stolen! We had a pervert on the rampage then which is quite funny. (S)He was an expert, climb into a garden, swipe the knickers and bras off the clotheslines and vanish. This stopped people leaving their clothes overnight out on the line for sure. I’m not certain that (s)he was ever caught. I’ve got to ask my mother-in-law the next time we call her what’s happened to that moron, if anything!
I personally don’t object to this, although I do have reservations about the phenomenon where I think that laundry shouldn’t be displayed in public regardless of whether the balcony or building was facing a main road. It’s up to the tennent to do whatever he feels is appropriate and governments shouldn’t get involved in this, unless there is a comprehensive understanding between them and the residents in a particular area.
What I do object to however is the municipal councel here is taking it upon itself, one again, to teach us manners, and shrouding thier own prejudices and fears in the cloak of Islam. It would have been much better for them to distance this problem as much as possible from religion, and just portray it for what it is, an eye-sore.
Using Islam in this way, is really using it to their own ends much like a terrorist would. It is a cheap way of getting what they want.
But of course they assume that everyone here is stupid and will just shut up, because they said that this phenomenon was against “Islamic principals.”
This is what I find ridiculous.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Don’t get me wrong for my first post, but although I agree that we don’t need to see underwears in the street, much nicer view in my opinion without them, the way that these councillors and nuwabs have taken is ridiculous and not only does it affect the citizens whom they’re supposed to serve, but also it wastes a lot of money that could be well spent somewhere else.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Where abouts in Scotland is your wife’s family from? I used to spend a lot of time in the Glasgow area. I am a big fan of Celtic FC and used to have season tickets and would drive up from the London area on the weekends for the matches. Scots are lovely people.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
Mahmood writes “Using Islam in this way, is really using it to their own ends much like a terrorist would. It is a cheap way of getting what they want.
But of course they assume that everyone here is stupid and will just shut up, because they said that this phenomenon was against “Islamic principals.”
Indeed, it is utter nonsense.
Mahmood writes “A few years ago in Scotland in my mother-in-law’s area, if you left specifically underwear on your clothesline overnight, you are guaranteed that they will be stolen! We had a pervert on the rampage….”
Reminds me of a Madness song from some years ago that talked about the same sort of person. More likely a person from the local pub, on the piss, being an eejit.
hide your underwear please… we’re Muslim!
soap dodger…