Some background story:
First of all, I had to state a fact that it is extremely hard to find a Saudi Arabia made movie. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that does not have movie theaters. There are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia. Initially, I was going to get a movie called “Cinema 500km”, but I wasn’t able to find it through any libraries or even on eBay. That movie would be a perfect fit because it was a “movie about watching movie.” According to the description on IMDB (international movie database), it is about a story that a young movie fan crosses borders for the first time ever so he can watch a movie in a cinema for the first time. The tagline of the movie is “Bring your passport, we are going to Cinema”. I tried to contact the director of the movie, Abdullah Al-Eyaf, who is also an editor for Al-Watan newspaper. He has his own website: http://www.aleyaf.com/ , which is in Arabic. I was able to navigate through the site using Google translator. Even though I did not get any results back, but it was quite an interesting searching process.
So…you mean…he Saudis do not watch movies?
The answer is yes they do. As a matter of fact, they watch various types of movies through the satellite services.

On the left: the typical shape of hookah. I have to say themselves are pieces of art works
On the right: Hookahs in the restaurant are normally placed next to the seats. there are other ways of smoking it, such as laying down

So….what is Hookah?
As you can see from the pictures above,basically, hookah is a tobacco pipe, but with very unique looking.
It is a single or multi-stemmed (often glass-based) instrument for smoking tobacco in which the smoke is cooled and filtered by passing through water. Originally from India, hookah has gained popularity, especially in the Middle East and is gaining popularity in North America, Europe, Australia and Brazil
Here is how hookah works:

I just got to know that according to Muslim’ strict rules, smoking and drinking are forbidden. But some Muslims would argue that Hookah is excluded from the list. My friend is one of them. Hookah is plays an important role generally in Arabic cultures. It is part of social life. I could understand that because, we Chinese normally go to tea house to hangout or talk about businesses, while in the western culture, cafeteria seems to be a great place to get to know each other better. I often heard people hear saying “Let’s go to have a cup of coffee”, the sentence behind it is “let go and have a decent talk”. When it comes to Arabic culture, it became, “hey how about going to the hookah bar…”. Different cultures have their own way of hanging out.

Okay, lets see what did I order there!

I order Turkish coffee for drink

During our conversation, I asked questions like are women allowed to go to public by themselves. The answer is surprising. He said that men are NOT allowed to go to the shopping mall by themselves; they must have a woman as accompany. So whenever he wants to go buy staff in the mall, he has to beg his sister to go with him or female friend.

Eden Garden Café is the Saudi students’ favorite restaurant, but they like to cook at home too. It is totally different when they cook at home. I found that preparing an eating area at home is quite interesting.  First of all they will clean up a large area on the floor and then put plastic wraps to make a square. After that, they will put foils, and fold the edges of the foils up to about 1 inch to make shape of container. The dinner they made is chicken over rice, simplify speaking. They added dry red chill (normally put on the pizza) to the rice and cook it, so the rice absorb the chill flavor and the color. They cooked a whole chicken by putting it into the oven, adding some traditional Saudi ingredients.  After the rice is ready, they pour the rice into the foil container they made earlier and then put the chicken on top of the rice, non-cut. Then everybody gathered together and set down next to this square, using their hands to tear a piece of chicken, mix with the rice and then eat it.  I found the part that they are using the hand quite interesting. I just went back from Sri Lanka this summer. I was pretty used to people eating with their hands. Two cultures that are so distinguished from each other, yet shares the same eating habit.

Another important thing to most of the Saudi students here is praying. On average, they pray 5 times per day at a fixed time. They always set their cellphone timer to make sure they do the prayers on time. Sometimes the prayer happens when we were in the middle of a conversation. One of them just stood up and walked into the bathroom to wash his face and hands, then came outside and pray for about 3 minutes.

1. Wealth

The average income for Saudi Arabia is $18,855, which is ranked

2.Interactions with the outside world.

3.Conflicts

conflicts within the country

conflicts with other countries

I have known Abdullah for two years now.  I met him in one of my computer science class at here, University of La Verne. As many Saudi Arabia students who studies in La Verne, he got the scholarship from the Saudi government and got a chance to come here and study. Saudi Arabia government put lots of efforts on sending students to study all over the world. So far, tens of thousands of Saudi students have already been awarded scholarships through different programs to study in various parts of the globe. Abdullah is one of the students who got benefits from this program.

Abdullah is a common name among Muslims means “Servant of God”. He grew up in a Muslim family.  The name Muslims picked for their children are most likely related to their religion, but there are multiple sources of names as well. The average family size for Saudi Arabia family is about seven: the parents and five children. Abdullah has a comparatively larger family; he has four brothers and four sisters. All of them got into colleges. It used to be very hard for girls to go to school and get educated. But now the government encourages education and offer lots of funding to support higher education, more and more women are going to collages now. “Nobody stays at home do housework” said Abdullah, “all of my sisters went college”.

In Saudi Arabia society, human rights, especially women’ rights are the topics that has been discussed over and over again. Because of the religion, men normally play the dominant role in a family, and the society.  Abdullah’s father, according to him, “has the power in the family”. Girls started to wear Abayahs, the black cloaks that cover women head-to-toe on the day they becoming women (the day they started to have periods). Covering the body is required in Islam. The reason why women have to cover their beauty is that not to arise the desires of men and then blaming them if they violate the moral rules.

The major holidays in Saudi Arabia are Muslim holidays. One is Eid al-Fitr, the marks at the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. Eid in Arabic means “festivity” and Fitr means “breakfast”.  It represents that after the long period of fasting it is time to start eating regularly. During the holy month, Muslims would not drink or eat anything until the sunset. Even studying in U.S., Abdullah still celebrates this holiday and practices the fasting.  He reads Qur’an more often during Ramadan. Qur’an is the central religious verbal text of Islam. It is the words from God. As I researched, Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the verbal book of divine guidance and direction for mankind. Qur’an is equivalently important to Muslims as Bible to Christians. Another important holiday is Eid al-Adha. Muslims celebrated this holiday to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, but instead was able to sacrifice a ram. The festivities last for three days. This holiday is about 70 days after the Ramadan. Besides the celebrating the Islamic holidays, Abdullah goes to the Islamic Center of Inland Empire, which located in the city Rancho Cucamonga.  There he practices the religion freely; it is similar idea as Christians going to churches on Sunday.

American Life

Our school has a large population of students from Saudi Arabia. I looked up online, there are 72 Saudi students on campus. Abdullah said there are more in the ELS programs.  Why did they choose University of La Verne? Abdullah said he got to know La Verne through his friend who went to La Verne before. “La Verne has smaller classes compared to other universities”. Abdullah likes the “openness” of American culture.  He feels being respected as a Muslim, being able to talk about, practice his religion.

There are lots of Arabic communities near La Verne, not as high density as Chinatown, but definitely a big number. The place Abdullah and his friends like to go and hang out is called Eden Garden Cafe, in Glendora. Beside Arabic food, they are open to anything, expect pork dishes. Abdullah said he normally go to Italian restaurant and Chinese food besides Arabic food. “We have all types of food in my country; therefore, food is not an issue when I came here, I adjusted myself pretty quickly to here.” He stated.

Marriage

Abdullah got married this year. His wife is now here in the U.S. In Saudi Arabian’s culture, arranged marriage is very common. The parents would look for girls that are from families with similar background. Even though, Abdullah hadn’t met his wife before, but marriage is more like a family choice. He did make sure that the parents knew what type of girls he likes before they went out looking for one.  This reminds me of a co-worker, who came from India, and had the similar situation as Abdullah. In my co-worker’s case, he even received all candidates’ “resumes” as pdf files from his parents. Arrange marriages are still popular in some of the countries, even in China, the country I came from. To some degree, Chinese families are still involving in choosing the right spouse for the child.

I am glad to have a chance to interview Abdullah for the study. Often times, we like to our own bubbles, even though we had classes together, but the things we know about each other staying in the surfaces, staying within the school works. It is obvious that we are from different cultures, but how different, what are the areas we have different opinions toward, we rarely ask.  We trend to pass our judgments based on assumptions. Submerging into a different culture is a necessary step to take if we want to know each other better.

At the end of the interview, I told Abdullah, if he likes, I will take him to a real Chinese restaurant to have some real Chinese food.

The location of Saudi Arabia, the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, determines about its influences toward Africa, Asia and Europe. The birth place of the Islam, Mecca, determines the unshakable sacred influences toward Muslims over the world. The discovery of oil bared under this land, which is the second largest oil resources found so far, determines Saudi Arabia’s influences to the world.

Saudi Arabia is a country that we have heard over times yet knew so little about its history and culture. In the book, the author pointed out that before 9/11, Saudi Arabia was a distant, alien place shrouded in mystery, after 9/11, the fact that 15 out of 19 hijackers involved were from Saudi Arabia, changed the label from an “ambivalent ally” to an “enemy”.

Birth of a Kingdom

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocratic monarchy.  September, 23, 1932 was the national day for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The flag of the Kingdom represents the two forces that united the country: Islam and armed jihad. An Arabic script is written on the flag: There is no God but God (Allah), Muhammad is His Messenger”. The background is Muhammad’s favorite color green, symbolizes heaven and the verdant paradise awaiting those who lead their lives as good Muslims in the parched temporal world they inhabit.  Even though, this is a new country, but the Islam tradition were passed on and kept so well though the time. Some of the rules they have kept are almost cruel to the people outside of this culture. The government views its vision of Islamic law as the only legal code to which it is answerable. Saudi Arabia does not recognize internationally accepted definitions of human rights, especially women rights. For example, the body-covering garment.  In 2002, the mutawwain prevented girls from fleeting a fire in their school because they were not covered by the abaya garb.  15 girls died because of that. Other examples are women are not allowed to drive; to appear in public without a man’s accompany.  Lets take a look at the religion Islam

Islam Life

Before I read the book, in my narrowed mind, Islam is an extreme religion. Then this book gave me a much deeper understating about the religion and the country formed with it.

Islam is the name of the religion based on the teaching of Muhammad and the Quran, means “submission”. The submission is to Allah, the Supreme Being. Muslim is a name an adherent refers him or herself to. The age of Islam started in the year 571, when Muhammad was born in Mecca. Muhammad accepts Abraham, Moses, Jesus and himself as the four prophets chosen to bring the word of God to the people.  So the foundation of Islam is not isolating other religions but accepting them. Further that that, Muhammad considered Muslims to be brothers of Christians and Jews, as well as Zoroastrians. The five pillars of Islam are Testimony: There is no God but God (Allah), Muhammad is his Massager

Prayer: Muslims pray five times daily. Men and women pray in separate areas.

Alms: The giving of alms is incumbent on all well-off Muslims. Islam mandates that there alms first go to the poor of one’s won clan and then go to others in the community.

Fasting: Ramadan – the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, commemorated Muhammad’s reception of God’s revelation.

Pilgrimage: The pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj, should be made by every Muslim who is able to at least once in his or her lifetime.

From all the pillars stated above, I found Islam do share lots of similarities with other religions in the world. For example, the testimony is similar with Christian. God sent Jesus, as a spoken man of him to pass the messages to the people. I remembered once, my aunt, who is a very strong Christian told me that people are like ants on the ground, if you want to communicate with them, you have to  get into their position, be one of them.  This is the basic theory of why God sent massagers to pass his will. The alms of Islam are similar to the Buddhism’s.  The monks in the temple would go outside door to door to ask for food. It is not beg, but a practice of alms. The idea of Ramadan- fasting can be seen in many other religion. Fasting is a very integral part of the Hindu religion, For Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Christians, fasting is an important spiritual discipline.  Fasting is common in Buddhism as well. Islam is not an extreme religion at least when it was formed. it is the people who practice it made it seem so cruel. The outside world set the “standards” to measure and judges others behaviors made it cruel.

Revised：
My religious view.
Because the way I got educated and the culture I came from, I am an atheist. Most of my friends are atheists as well.
But I do respect people who have a different views on religions. I think people should not be judged by whatever they believe, because we all grew up so differently. There is a reason why we became who we are. I encountered many people from U.S. who think that religion practices are forbidden in China. It is not completely true. My grandparents are Catholic, while my parents are Buddhist. here was a story behind it. When my grandma first came to the city, she started a job at the Catholic church. The priest helped my grandma a lot during her most difficult time. He was the most important influence on my grandma’s religion views.We have Islam Centers, temples, and churches in China. But there is a large number of atheists. The only religion I know that was forbidden by the Chinese government is “Fa Lun Gong”. The government does not recognize it as a religion.

Another issue got brought up a lot is the Oil which I will be taking in my next post.

Okay, Let see what I have got so far!

1. Wikipedia-Saudi Arabia

URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia

As we all known that Wikipedia is not academic approved source, yet give us a pretty good background info. On the Wikipedia site, it addresses the some key issues such as the history, religions, law, human rights, economy and social life. It is a good start point for me to gain some basic understandings.

2. Lonely Planet – Travel in Saudi Arabia

URL: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/saudi-arabia

Lonely Planet is the largest travel  guide book and digital media publisher in the world.  The articles I found on lonely planet are very interesting.  Little things such as their business hours. It is completely diffierent concept to us. As an example, offices and banck are on open from Saturday to Wednesday. To me, it is such a unusual time.  So I searched it, during Ramadan( one of the holy months in the Islamic calendar), some business even move their working hours to night times.

3. CIA(Central Intelligence Agency)- World Factbook Saudi Arabia

URL:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/profileguide.html

As a U.S government site, CIA’s World Factbook collected very accurate info about Saudi Arabia. Such as detailed maps, country profiles, populations and so on form the perspectives of a foreign country.

4. Food By Country -Saudi Arabia

URL:http://www.foodbycountry.com/Kazakhstan-to-South-Africa/Saudi-Arabia.html

This website introduces traditional Saudi Arabia food, including recipes. This will be quite useful since I am going to visit a restaurant as my culture experience.  Known beforehand gives me better idea about what to expect!

5 Islam Today
URL: http://www.islamfortoday.com
An very concept of Saudi Arabia’s culture is religion. This website touches every aspect of religion view from Islam’s perspectives.

6. Economy Watch – Saudi Arabia

URL :http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/saudi_arabia/

On the website it says “Saudi Arabia can be characterized in three ways; as a fiercely independent Arabic country; as the home to the two holiest Muslim sites; and as the largest producer of oil in the world. Economically, it is the oil that has turned this desert nation into one of the richest on earth.” True, Saudi Arabia’s economy is based on oil exports, but how they do businesses with other countries is unique, they have their own way.

7. W.H.O(World Health Organization) – Saudi Arabia

URL: http://www.who.int/countries/sau/en/

Beside health issues, this website focused on statistics studies that have been done in Saudi Arabia. It is little bit more side info in addition   to what I have so far.