28 - The Prince George Citizen - Thursday, February 4, 1993
RELIGIOUS KUWAITIS	FIGHTJTS GROWING POPULARITY
Satellite dish an ‘instrument of the devil’
KUWAIT (AP) — It took Mohammad al-Misbah three days to convince the father of the woman he wants to marry that he would provide a decent home — even if he does own a satellite dish.
“He told me that if I wanted to marry his daughter, I’d have to sell the dish, because it brings dirty movies into my house,” al-Misbah said.
The 25-year-old karate instructor and his relatives finally convinced his future father-in-law, a mosque preacher, that the dish is not an instrument of the devil.
Many religious Kuwaitis are campaigning against a satellite dish craze in the emirate, part of the liberalization that followed the Persian Gulf War. Fundamentalists fear the spread of what they consider decadent western values.
In neighboring Saudi Arabia, Muslim zealots take potshots at dishes on roofs. In Kuwait, there has been a series of bombings at
Two Kuwaiti men make Inquiries to a salesman about a satellite antenna. Muslim fundamentalists fear the dishes will spread what they consider decadent Western values.
“Beware of setting the AIDS dish on the roof of your home to receive the customs and traditions of the infidels, ” say pamphlets left on doorsteps by Muslim fundamentalists battling Kuwait’s satellite dish craze.
video stores in recent weeks.
Fundamentalists have taken to linking the dishes with AIDS, a tactic clearly designed to frighten potential buyers.
“Beware of setting the AIDS dish on the roof of your home to receive the customs and traditions of the infidels,” say pamphlets left on doorsteps.
Despite the protests, sales of satellite dishes have more than tripled since the emirate was liberated by the U.S.-led allies in February 1991 after seven months of Iraqi occupation.
Before the invasion, Kuwaitis needed an Information Ministry permit to have a dish. That requirement has since been waived, and more than 20 new companies
are competing for the burgeoning dish market. Prices have tumbled and black metal dishes are sprouting on roofs.
Kuwaitis have developed a taste for uncensorcd television news and entertainment, and in the more liberal post-war climate are reluctant to accept government — or Islamic — strictures.
Kuwait’s censors routinely cut out love scenes from foreign movies and TV shows shown on the state-run network, sometimes even situations as innocuous as a father affectionately pecking his daughter on the cheek.
In one recent episode of the U.S. series America’s Funniest People, the censors scissored out a shot of an ape kissing the show’s hostess.
“Our TV programs are dull. Even the children are sick of cartoon reruns,” said Hussein al-Haddad, his eyes flicking from one screen to another in a store that sells dishes for monthly payments of SI30.
“We want entertainment,” said al-Haddad, a 33-year-old civil servant. “We went through enough sorrow during the invasion and the occupation.”
CITY WANTS SEUSS HOUSE REBUILT
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — City officials have sued to force a physician to rebuild a 19th-century house on historic Mulberry Street, which inspired the first children’s book by Dr. Seuss.
City officials said the Greek-re-vival house, built about 1830, was tom down without required approval from the city code-enforce-ment office or the historical commission.
Mulberry Street was immortalized by Springfield native Theodor Geisel, who delighted generations of children with books he wrote under the name Dr. Seuss. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who died in 1991 at age 87, wrote such classics as The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
City officials contend the Dec. 28 demolition leaves a gaping hole in their plans to establish a Seuss museum and walking tours of Mulberry Street historic district.
Geisel’s first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published in 1937, takes place on a fanciful Mulberry Street inspired by »he real one. Its hero is a child v'ho tells tall tales that turn “minnows into whales” about what he saw on Mulberry Street — for instance, a zebra pulling a chariot — on the tree-lined street he knew as a boy.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Hampden Superior Court, names plastic surgeon Philip Stone, who owned the house, and Associated Building Wreckers, which
demolished it.
Stone, who has an office next door to the demolished home, didn’t return a telephone message Tuesday. His lawyer, John Bagley, said only he is preparing a response to the city’s complaint.
Stone said previously he was advised by a real-estate agent and others that the two-storey wooden home was structurally unsound.
Stone never advised the wrecking firm the property was in a protected district, said Francis Merkin, brother and lawyer of Associated Wreckers president Zane Merkin.
Francis Merkin said he is talking with city lawyers about a possible settlement.
“I don’t want to be a Seuss grinch,” he said.
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