need more information really before i can decide whether or not i should stop shopping at ikea. its not really clear if this was done with ikea's approval.
I don't buy into full blown moral relativism. Human rights are inalienable, and those who deny them to women, or other groups, are worse people. The proof is in the correlation between nations' general level of equality and general human development level.
The firm said "excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the Ikea Group values".
It attributed the gaffe to the fact its Saudi operation is run by a franchisee.
What the world needs is Lesshammad.
So they adapt to the market, whats wrong with that?
The real problem is the country, not IKEA or any other company trying to sell things in a nation with zero tollerance for women.
Human right does not exist. Its not a tangible thing. It is given when it is legislated like in the U.S. constitution. What do you mean by general human development level? Cause, even though Saudi Arab does not have much human rights, it is rich and very developed.
Also, I wonder how do you know human rights are inalienable? Just because our nation told us so, or is it because a paper when respected told us? Human Rights exists because the countries legislated in their constitution or else it would exist one day and gone the next. Something inalinable does not have that property.
thanks for the info. still need to see how they handle the whole debacle though. are they going to allow the saudi version to continue to airbrush women out and just hope the whole thing blows over? will they tell the saudi version they can make their own separate catalogue that will never have any women in it in the first place? we'll see.
I worded it poorly, I probably should have said equal opportunity.
As for human development, check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_index
Keep in mind that SA would be nowhere near where it is without oil, and that Saudis didn't do anything special to get it, they were simply lucky.
What the world needs is Lesshammad.
To quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamza_Kashgari
Saudi women "won't go to hell 'because it's impossible to go there twice."
Oh? Correlation is not causation. If you go back 600 years you'll find that the west was far more barbaric and inequal than the Arabian nations.
Whether or not you buy into moral relativism isn't at issue here. You don't have to think what they're doing is right.
You just don't get to say they should be a certain way. They're still a sovereign nation that we, in the West, have no legal (or even moral) justification for violating.
Please Arabs, tell me more about how I should accept your fucked up culture.
Gotta hand it to someone. Someone in the world is really good a photo shopping women out. I saw their same work when the white house released the President and his group during the Osama Big Ladin raid.
I absolutely do get to tell them what they should do:
1. Get rid of absolute monarchy and let the people decide who they want as their leaders.
2. Ensure everyone living there has the basic set of human rights, which includes freedom to practice whatever religion they want and equality for every person in the eyes of the state and law regardless of gender or other issues.
These are the same things I will tell any nation that does not have these basics. Signing or not signing something, sovereign or not, these are the things that every nation has a moral duty to abide by.
---------- Post added 2012-10-02 at 08:26 AM ----------
That's not true. They are not "just as correct". If they deny freedoms of various kinds to their citizens, they are wrong. It really is as simple as that.
If a woman decides to follow Islam out of her own free will, and interprets it to mean that she cannot drive, that's her right. What is wrong is the people around her making those decisions for her.
Last edited by mmoc2f2ed6329c; 2012-10-02 at 08:27 AM.