I’ve always felt that anti-smoking advocates either were effective marketers, or terrific lobbyists. It is amazing to me how smoking has gone from accepted 20 years ago to contemptible today. Consider the recent news from the Gaza Strip where, according to the Associated Press, plain clothes Hamas security officers served restaurant owners with a ban, taking women’s ability to smoke water pipes in cafes away.
WHEN WILL IT STOP! Now what do women have in the middle east that they can enjoy? I’ll bet the water pipe was the final freedom. The reason for the ban is that it, “destroys marriages and sullies the image of the Palestinian people.”
It is so horrible that they are only going to allow men to smoke the water pipes not the women. It’s just too awful.
“While Muslim law does not technically ban women from smoking the traditional tobacco-infused pipes, tradition frowns upon the habit. Hamas frequently mixes its strict interpretation of Islamic law with conservative Gaza tradition, and over the weekend, the two dovetailed to produce the smoking ban.”
“”It is inappropriate for a woman to sit cross-legged and smoke in public. It harms the image of our people,” Ihab Ghussein, Hamas interior ministry spokesman, said in a statement released Sunday.”
WHAT IF THEY SIT WITH CROSSED KNEES? HOW ABOUT NO CROSSINGS AT ALL.
“Many women who smoke in public were divorced when their husbands saw them, or found out about them,” said Hamas police spokesman, Ayman Batneiji, without substantiating his claim.
Source: AP
