Annas [Archives:2003/686/Press Review]

10 Nov. 2003
Main headlines:
– Saudi embassy refuses to grant visas to 12 thousand Yemenis to perform Umra
– Hizbut- Tahreer holds caliphate conference in Yemen

Muna Safwan says in her article that the qat is destroying the Yemeni society. We have more than 20 million spoiled hours and annually more than two billion dollars are spent on qat while we are suffering from an economic deterioration, in order to overcome it we need doubling production and increasing working hours. The writer says we work less than required and our work is without a real production. The calamitous image of qat is that it is increasingly demanded by the youth and girls, whether students or employees. The Yemenis have known qat for centuries but they did not consume it ravenousness as is the case in the latest decades. Nowadays the Yemenis are much busy in chewing the qat and chewing the time and unfortunately we find university professors and opinion leaders and journalists are insisting that chewing qat is for deflation. Some say the qat chewing session changes into an intellectual forum in which high level discussion is held but what results do we reach out of those discussions of which the intellectuals find them as a justification for defending chewing qat? The qat is really and actually the cause of our backwardness, the writer maintains. Yemen would not rise up while it is embracing this satanic hour of qat chewing that taught us laziness. We find that defenders of qat are those who are supposed to be defending the society against it.
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