If you love your freedom, don't kiss your mate in public - that's the lesson a British couple learned the hard way in Dubai, where they were sentenced to 1 month in jail for public indecency:
Ayman Najafi, 24, and Charlotte Adams, 25, were sentenced to a month in prison with subsequent deportation and fined about £200 for drinking alcohol.
The pair were arrested in November after a local woman accused them of breaking the country's decency laws by kissing on the mouth in a restaurant.
The initial complaint against them was made by a 38-year-old woman who said she was offended by their behaviour at the Jumeirah Beach Residence, where she was dining with her daughter.
The pair's defence lawyers said the woman - who did not appear in court - had not seen the kiss herself, but had been told by her two-year-old child that the girl had seen them kissing.
If you don't want to land in jail, don't break the local rules. You might not like them, they might seem odd or bizarre, but they're the rules.
I find it highly doubtful that even the local Dubai authorities would find it distasteful if two couples gave simple kisses on the cheek and whatnot, especially if it were a foreign couple.
And it's their country and rules, who are we to judget it.
Since I am not a cultural relativist, though, I cheerfully am free to judge and condemn the harsh and rigid rules, mores, and laws of such morally, culturally, and politically backward places like Dubai. These backwards countries can never really be safely traveled, no matter how careful one may be.
Spend your money in smart, civil, friendly, modern, countries with a real justice system (not based on 2 year old witnesses) and fair penalties for actual crimes not imagined moral issues.
That's why the foreign couple got jailed and why everyone knows about it. To be seen to be doing the right thing.
I live in Oman. I can't kiss my wife on the cheek here either.
What a dumb comparison. Site one reference where that has happened to a tourist in the States.
And we're not talking about a fine - we're talking about a MONTH in jail.
I'm amazed at all the apologists chiming in for these stone age thugs. It's the 21st century folks - catch up.
They are evil and arabs and muslims all need to burn in hell because Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.
Dhubai isn't by far the only "stone-age" country where they arrest people for touching between male and female in public- About the whole of the Muslim world has that.
They on the other hand consider most Western countries completely and fully out of control De-civilized / Degenerated / Sodom and Gomorrah / Babylon / Stone-Age because we accept open drunkennness, open nudity, touching and so on.
They do not think that love is a bad thing- they only have strict ideas on how to behave civilized and not offending others by things as public touching in public.
If you do not want to conform- Just do not visit. It isn't like there's no way to know this in advance.
If you know your friend or your grandma or who-ever does not like you using faul language and taking in dirt into their houses or into the church or whatever- you do the polite thing: You take off your dirty shoes before you enter the house and you mind your tonge. Otherwise you do not pay that visit. And if you by accident make a mistake and they correct you on your mistakes- you will have the desency to apologise and to accept the correction, otherwise you leave.
Anyways. Have fun with your religious "law." Seems to be working out well for those middle east countries. Nothing but masses of blind sheep.
Seriously. Muslims wonder why the world hates them. This is one example of why. Forget terrorism. Lets sort out these rules they apply to foreigners (why aren't we allowed to impose our social rules on muslims in England?) and their whole stoning of rape victims.
Honestly if that country was wiped off the map I wouldn't care, so long as the innocent people who don't want to impose such rules survive elsewhere.
you are retarded man! that's all I want to comment on! n I'm very satisfied!