Comment by tboyd47 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tboyd47 | Hacker News Reader

Like always, normally reputable news organizations throw all semblance of journalistic principle out of the window when it comes to the Saudis.

The title should read: "Saudi Arabia adopts the Gregorian calendar in paying government employees." According to arabnews.com, this brings the public sector in line with how the private sector is already being paid.

So no, they won't be "running the state" based on the Gregorian calendar. Ramadan will still be observed in the month of Ramadan.

And how is the decision not to award employees 11 extra days' pay because of an administrative change a case of "globalisation favouring rulers at the expense of the ruled?" Just a year ago, when the king awarded all the employees bonuses, wasn't the Economist accusing him of trying to buy his subjects' loyalty? He can't win, it seems.

As for the Wahhabi clerics complaining of a "slippery slope," who are they? And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?" To claim that any official cleric in the Kingdom would speak out openly against the ruling family is, frankly, ridiculous.

All of this article is utter stupidity, as if the author read half of a headline in an Arab paper and extrapolated it to mean the conversion of the entire country to Christianity.

You raise some good points about how the article portrays the issue. Here[1] is another reputable source with some more information that confirms some of what you say.

You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic. It could be directly translated but the idiom would lose its meaning. Regardless, I think the point the article's author is trying to convey is that religious conservatives are wary of the slow creep of Western concepts into their society.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-ar...

> You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic.

That's a good question. I wonder what common idioms have almost exact duplicated in other cultures and languages. Theoretically, "slippery slope" could have a counterpart of the exact same terms, or something similar like "shifting dune". It seems unlikely it would be unchanged, but it also seems like a good candidate for an idiom that may have a fairly direct equivalent.

independent is a reputable source? It has since long fallen to a near tabloid-level of quality.

> You also got me thinking about what "slippery slope" would be in Arabic. It could be directly translated but the idiom would lose its meaning. Regardless, I think the point the article's author is trying to convey is that religious conservatives are wary of the slow creep of Western concepts into their society.

I went to Slippery Slope article on English Wikipedia and then clicked on Arabic. This is a way I often use with languages I regularly use (such as English, Dutch, German, and Spanish) in order to figure what something means in one of those languages. I wanted to describe this process because I believe it can help others in a similar situation. An alternative is Wiktionary, but I find it working less good.

So, the Arabic Wikipedia entry for Slippery Slope is [1]. Using Google Translate, I ended up with it meaning also "Nose of the Camel". This is apparently an Arabian tale.

Quoting: The Camel's Nose In The Tent.

One cold night, as an Arab sat in his tent, a camel gently thrust his nose under the flap and looked in. "Master," he said, "let me put my nose in your tent. It's cold and stormy out here." "By all means," said the Arab, "and welcome" as he turned over and went to sleep.

A little later the Arab awoke to find that the camel had not only put his nose in the tent but his head and neck also. The camel, who had been turning his head from side to side, said, "I will take but little more room if I place my forelegs within the tent. It is difficult standing out here." "Yes, you may put your forelegs within," said the Arab, moving a little to make room, for the tent was small.

Finally, the camel said, "May I not stand wholly inside? I keep the tent open by standing as I do." "Yes, yes," said the Arab. "Come wholly inside. Perhaps it will be better for both of us." So the camel crowded in. The Arab with difficulty in the crowded quarters again went to sleep. When he woke up the next time, he was outside in the cold and the camel had the tent to himself.

Disclaimer: I know practically nothing about the Arabic language.

[1] https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%AD%D8%AF%D8%B1...

[2] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1800611/posts

Good to see that the Free Republic is as rabid as I remember it being.

this is why i come to HN

Newspapers in Arabic are talking about economic reasons and implications. About $4 billion saved for the Kingdom and employees losing the equivalent of half a month of salary annually.

Some sources talk about the birth of the Hijri calendar (Abu Musa, a Government official, complaining to Omar, the Caliph, that they receive instructions dated by month and they don't know if it's this year's or last year's. This prompted the Caliph to introduce the calendar retroactively at 17 Hijri, or 638 AD).

As for the slippery slope.. It's roughly طريق الهاوية. Which means "the road to the fall/cliff" (it's more scary in Arabic. It makes me think of "Rebel without a Cause" "Chicken Game" scene).

>And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?"

I think the closest I can do is that the logic of a slippery slope according to clerics comes from this:

شر الامور محدثاتها، و كل محدثة بدعة، و كل بدعة ضلالة، و كل ضلالة في النار.

The evilest of things are X, and each X is Y, and each Y is Z, and each Z is in Hell.

X: according to clerics, is heresy, something different and new from what the Prophet did to get closer to God (this is important, I'll explain why later).

Y: fad/heresy..

Z: misguidance

So "the evilest of things are heresies, and each heresy is a fad, and each fad is a misguidance, and each misguidance is in Hell".

Why is the definition of heresy important? Because clerics define it as innovation in the way of worship while radicals define it as innovation itself (arbitrarily decided to suit whatever logic they have. Example: using a toothbrush is heresy, but rolling in an SUV is not)...

Agreed. I was there in the 80s/90s and everything operated on western time standards. Calenders arent magic runes. People take constitutional language to seriously. Anyone who thinks this makes any real difference probably also thinks the RCMP literally work for the queen of England or that India isnt actually called India.

Oh no! You see, they work for the queen of CANADA.

Technically, the Crown, which is personified by but not limited to the Queen.

That is actualky a valid concept. Many commwealth nations have slightly different rules for sucession. It would be very possible for Canada and England to recognize different queens. The queen recently sent an amassador to Austrailia specifically to ensure that charles be recognized there after her death.

Haha, interesting!

Cheers mate! As someone who always lived in the "Western World", it's very refreshing to see some reasonable thought about facts and context concerning a "non NATO" country, even if it's rather in the comments instead of the article itself.

In arabic "slippery slope" translates to a similar idiom: انزلاق خطير

Which means literally "a dangerous slip".

There are other close idioms but I can't recall any right now.

Nobody said that Ramadan was moving-- not sure how you got that from the article. Paying government employees using the Gregorian calendar, and scheduling things such as meetings and events using the gregorian calendar, sure seems a lot like "running the state using the Gregorian calendar." If you feel that the characterization is not accurate, you should explain why.

The decision to use the Gregorian calendar seems to be mostly based on the desire to save money. A few other news reports also mention that it is connected with the austerity drive and the desire to slash the public payroll. If I were a public servant, I would probably be upset.

It's interesting to note that the Gregorian dates in the Saudi government were banned only in 2012: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-bans...

> And what is the technical term in Arabic they used that translates to "slippery slope?"

Does Arabic really have no phrase like "house of cards", "fell like dominoes" or "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"?

Great question. I know very little to nothing about Arabic but I would love a more detailed explanation than "It's an Arabic thing, you wouldn't understand".

There isn't a specific idiom that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure the Economist were just summing up a perceived sentiment with the 'slippery-slope' comment. In Arabic, that sentiment would most likely be expressed in the form of saying that it's laying the groundwork for further cultural drift or something similar, without a particular idiomatic shorthand.

Thing is, even though there's probably phrases like that in regional dialects, they wouldn't be quoted since the majority of Arabic media (and therefore anyone preparing to be quoted by a media outlet) is mostly in Modern Standard Arabic.

> "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"

"Camel's nose in the tent"

Though I don't know if that's actual an Arabism or if I just heard it in some Western film.

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