Re: My thoughts on a recent trip to KSA…
hareem - there are lots of south asians in working class jobs and the restaurants and shops are there to cater to them. contrary to popular belief, not all Saudi’s are wealthy and the lower classes have no reason to have these superiority issues, so they get along with other cultures fine.
Take one example, my father has a lot of dealings with the embassy. Even there normal routine is extremely mediterranean - short working hours, lack of organisation, taking ages to do anything. It’s difficult enough to get them to do anything anyway, if you’re Pakistani (for example) then you can forget it. So my father has his Saudi contacts and when he needs to get something done, he has to ask them for help.
When I went for umrah, I had never heard anything like what is being said in this thread. I thought it was going to be beautiful and perfect. But some of the stuff that happened there made my heart feel heavy because it was like ‘how can these things be happening here?’. You can have all the patience in the world but it doesn’t stop the negative stuff affecting you.
It only reflects the general state of us muslims as an ummah and it’s going to be the same everywhere (or may be worse) regardless of the geographical location or the holy sites.