Monday, June 04, 2007

Copying the Jews

The Kuwaitis are considering changing their weekend to Friday-Saturday. Currently the weekend is Thursday-Friday. Friday is the Islamic holy day. Other countries in the region have switched to the Fri-Sat weekend to match the business schedules of the rest of the world and so Kuwait is considering the same. Banks here already do it. Early in May the Cabinet was considering the change and just after I arrived the papers announced that the Cabinet had decided to go ahead with the change.

The Parliament however intends to review the idea because there is some opposition. Apparently, according to the two articles I read in the paper, there is concern that Kuwait is compromising its Islamic values. A legitimate concern in my opinion.

Unfortunately any credibility the opposition had was lost when they were quoted as basing their opposition also on not wanting to "copy the Jews."

I wish I had saved the newspaper stories because searching the papers online there is of course no mention of "copying the jews". Imagine if the Boston Globe ever published something like that.

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