Celebratory gunfire at Saudi wedding cuts cable, 23 electrocuted RIYADH (Reuters) - Celebratory gunfire at a wedding party in eastern Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night brought down an electric cable, killing 23 people, a local civil defense official said. "At the wedding, the cable fell on a metal door and the 23 people who died were all electrocuted," Eastern Province official Abdullah Khashman said by phone. A photograph of the aftermath of the accident, published on local newspapers' websites showed a large courtyard strewn with fallen chairs and a pole in the middle supporting cables carrying lightbulbs. All those killed were from the same tribe, Khashman said. Thirty others were injured in the incident near Abqaiq, a center of the Saudi energy industry. Saudi Arabia banned the shooting of firearms at weddings, a popular tradition in tribal areas of the conservative Islamic kingdom, last month. Eastern Province governor Prince Mohammed bin Fahd ordered an investigation into the incident, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
Evidently, many if not most of the dead and injured were women and children....I fail to see that it is much to applaud or gloat about....in the same sense that some nutter going on a rampage in a church in the USA ought not to be anything to applaud or gloat about from a muslim perspective. If we gloat as much at their misfortune as we assume that they may gloat at our misfortune, then on what basis may we adjudge ourselves any better than them, and on what basis may we claim the higher moral ground as a civilised people? If not, then we are barbarians no better than we assume them to be. Sometimes it is easy to be so tied up in one's own prejudices it is easily forgotten that those who died, died not because of their own stupidity ( a prime criterion for winning a Darwin Award). They died because of someone else's stupidity. I am sure that the grief and loss for their own would be no less than the grief and loss that we would feel for our own under comparable circumstances....in that sense we would share something in common: Humanity. 'Celebratory' gunfire at Saudi wedding brings down electricity cable killing 23 women and children | Mail Online
What a shame. It saddens me to see such a joyous celebration struck-down by ill-fate and misfortune. I hope the survivors find some solace, chance has it's way with us all.
Nowhere in the original post / news article does it say anything about the gender or age breakdown. I understand fully that this was not a stag party. This was not some murderous intentional rampage fueled by some slight of ones honor or religion. It was what it was; a stupid display of macho BS bravado in an unsafe manner. It was tradition and not unusual for this to happen. With regard to this wonderful religion of peace, I am not quite sure where to draw the line of innocents and radicals. I will lose no sleep at the loss of any of them regardless in this stupid unsafe incident. Maybe my "lol" was slightly across the line as far as being civil is concerned. . There was absolutely no western outside influence in what happened here. It was completely upon the actions of some of the participants, and not unexpected. The final result was the only thing unexpected. I will paraphrase; there is a line about death or misfortune in the Koran that goes; "by the hand of Allah" and another, "as God (Allah) wills it" . Yes, I ridiculed this a bit. My God will judge me for that. Man in the form of these beligerent sand dwellers can kiss me where they would wipe with their left hand. I have my own reasons for being less than civil with them, and that's my business. . Those that believe in Karma; well maybe karma had a hand in this, and maybe karma will settle with me as well. So be it.
Every word true, and while I laugh not at the suffering and death of the innocent, I do have to chuckle at the often demonstrated idiocy of mankind - supposedly so much superior to the rest of the animal kingdom. I have never gotten used to the Middle Eastern habit of celebratory gunfire (neither do I understand my idiot neighbors who often celebrate New Years in similar fashion). What goes up, with rare exception, must come down. Eons ago in Beirut, we would monitor daily police reports, and the category of information just before the license plates of stolen cars (important, because they often showed back up as car bombs back in those days) was "Mutar Beirut," or "Beirut Rain" - casualties from the numerous bullets fired into the air each and every day. The local police, and the local society at large, was quite aware of the fact that people died every day from the practice of indiscriminately firing bullets into the air, but a wedding just wouldn't be a wedding without copious gunfire. And it wasn't just restricted to weddings. I was in Christian East Beirut for Easter in 1984. I have never experienced so much ordnance expended at one time as I witnessed over an hour long period around midnight. It seemed as though everyone old enough to pull a trigger loaded his automatic weapon with tracers, turned the barrels skyward, and let her rip. For the first few seconds, we were sucking concrete, not realizing that this was a celebration, not a whole new front in the war. Eventually, we sat up and watched the show, but all the while shaking our heads at mankind's folly.
First let me say: A psychopathic church shooting is much different than the event described. There aren't many of us here who, given the opportunity, wouldn't have tried to help the victims of this unfortunate accident. All the while, we may find it humorous in the way that the accident occurred. E.g., a local man on his motorcycle was riding a wheely on the freeway at 100 m.p.h. when he erased his life on the asphalt. After an internal grimace, the disconnected humor of the situation became apparent because of the rider's obvious folly and disregard of safety rules. I can hear my mom telling me, "Don't be a speeder!". I can also hear trainers telling me over and over the rules of firearms safety! We are all prone to human habits that, if not suppressed/controlled, will lead us to a path of destruction and/or death. It doesn't make it any less humorous, especially if someone straps a rocket-booster to their car and disappears into a cloud of smoke on the face of a cliff.
Apparently, this is a Mid-Eastern Cultural thing... I was watching "Lawrence of Arabia" the other day, and there were numerous scenes, where this act was portrayed. From my point of view, it is a waste on ammunition, but apparently this is not much of a criteria, in their culture. So, I put it down as "Couldn't Happen to a nicer bunch of Folks"...... ......
By all means click on Chelloveck's link. Read the whole article. Consider what this threads first post said in total. Now consider that those civilized tea drinkers from across the pond had Chelloveck's link to read, and scroll down and read their comments. My comments were tame by comparison.
What are we missing here? The use of celebratory gun fire is indeed a cultural tradition in this part of the world. The wedding revelers use different colored tracers and it is a beautiful sight to see. I see no satisfaction in the deaths of innocent women and children. What I do see is the results of a society where the recreational use of firearms is prohibited. Ownership is for the most part banned. See how well that worked out? So there is no way for people to get adequate instruction and practice in the safe handling of firearms. This is a tragedy akin to the man who let his son fire a full auto weapon that kicked back and killed the boy. Or the guy whose ricochet killed his wife who was watching. People who are not trained in the safe and proper use of firearms are going to have accidents with them. Anyone who disregards proper safe handling rules, for even an instant, exposes themselves and those around them to potentially deadly misfortune. I see no humor in that.
"Saudi Arabia banned the shooting of firearms at weddings, a popular tradition in tribal areas of the conservative Islamic kingdom, last month".What you are missing, is the fact that the act that caused wide spread death had been outlawed. Because of the known danger. No less stupid than checking the gas level in your car with a match as you peer down the fill pipe. innocent people almost always pay the price when stupid people screw up.
