Khalaf Al-Harbi, writing for the Arabic daily Okaz (translated here by Arab News), does an excellent job of exposing the contradictions in Saudi attitudes toward women’s driving. He says, aptly, that Saudi society has been laboring with the cart before the horse for so long that it doesn’t know how to set the situation right. He also correctly points out that any Saudi is free to oppose women’s driving, for whatever reason. He is not free to impose his (or, frankly, her) view on the rest of Saudi society. Too many hypothetical ‘problems’ are thrown up in the face of change in the hope of preventing change. That, he says, has to stop.
The way to stop it is for Saudi women to simply get on with life and ‘do it,’ to quote a Nike tagline.
Let women drive … get over your fear of the unknown
KHALAF AL-HARBI | OKAZManal Al-Sharif has been arrested again in the Eastern Province. The charge against her is driving her car. The arrest was easy for police, as she announced her intention in advance as part of the campaign “I will drive my car myself.”
The difficult part is to decide where to send her after the arrest. The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has made it clear that Manal’s act does not fall under its jurisdiction, because she committed a violation of the law. On the other hand, the police stand is that Manal has not committed any security violation, but only a traffic violation, which obviously falls under the authority of the traffic department. However, our traffic department is confused about the issue, as it never handled a woman violator in the past.
Shoura Councilor Najeeb Al-Zamil has summed up the issue of women’s driving as an issue of our own creation with its origin in a fear of the unknown, compounded by hypothetical situations in the event of permitting women to drive. As a result, the Saudi society is left bewildered and unable to see a way out.
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Saudi Gazette, meanwhile, points out that Saudi women are already driving—unopposed by their neighbors and supported by the male members of their families—in Asir as well as in central Saudi Arabia. Life necessitates that they drive. They can’t afford to hire drivers and there are too many compelling reasons for them to take matters into their own, skillful hands. If they had to wait for men to do everything for them, things just wouldn’t get done.
Women behind the wheel in remote Asir areas
SAEED AL-ZAHRANABHA: Women in the east of Asir region have developed driving skills over time in their peaceful remote area, where they drive almost ever day with no harassment.
It was a simple need to drive that motivated them to learn how to do so, not a desire to defy social norms and traffic laws, they said.
The needs of their families would at times compel them to drive beyond the countryside areas, either for shopping at town malls or getting treatment at hospitals, they said.
Rafah Al-Qahtani, a mother of eight, said she had to learn how to drive after her husband’s death and inherited the car from him.
She said she never felt discriminated against or alienated for being behind the wheel.
“Now I can go shopping on my own, trade at the animal stock market and take my kids wherever they need to go,” she said.
“I do what men can do now.”
Al-Qahtani said that if she did not learn how to drive, she would have been begging men for favors.
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I think this is exactly the solution to the conundrum. Don’t take part in organized demonstrations or protests as that runs afoul of other laws. Because the government cannot decide, in all its elements, whether there’s a law forbidding women’s driving, then individually push the issue. Make the government and religious authorities back up their actions, in public and in court. And keep pointing to how law is being applied unequally in different parts of the country. This, I think, is the only way to put an end to this ridiculous bit of Saudi history.
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May:24:2011 - 13:21
Easier said than done. A Saudi friend expressed her concern: no Saudi woman wants to be arrested and risk being taken to some dirty precinct to have men sexually harass them. (She says “what if they make you change your clothes or something?) Then the whole “being sent back to your family” thing has a whole slew of possible negative repercussions. I find the Saudi gov’t's handling of this issue disgraceful: these dirtbags keep sayign “oh, it’s not illegal – it’s up to society to decide.”
Bollocks it’s not illegal! If you get detained for driving it’s illegal whether there’s literally a law on the books or not. And until the gov’t “grows a pair” and officially decriminalizes the practice of women driving women will continue to have the concerns expressed above. Who wants to risk being surrounded by bunch of creepy police officers (or scumbag religious zealots who probably collect porn on their computers) and the gov’t just allows that to happen?
May:24:2011 - 14:10
Khalaf Al-Harbi is a man.
May:24:2011 - 14:21
@Corey: Thanks. Fixed.
May:24:2011 - 14:22
i have some many things that need to come out of me that I am afraid if I let them out I will get into trouble as I may appear brash and uninhibited in my speech and it will surely rub people in all sorts of ways.
Instead I would like to say I agree to one extent with John in that women just got to DO IT, and I totally agree with anon on the other hand in that DO IT and face the consequences thereafter why can’t the SAUDI GOVERNMENT and RELIGIOUS PEOPLE stop being RETARDS. The Saudi Government & Religious establishment have proven themselves to be “A person considered to be foolish or socially inept.” http://www.thefreedictionary.com/retard
So instead of letting out a bunch of F-bombs which I have so many in this regard…I need to shout out in PRAISE to Manal Al Sharif
“KALIFUCKING-A”
If I be possessed by Jinn, I pray they never leave me…
God Bless the women who drive in the K.S.A. may it be the symbolic drive into the future of full recognition of what it means to be a complete Human Being of what it means to be able to get what you need and when you need it without having to wait on a pair of balls to fetch it for you.
May:24:2011 - 15:26
I am not surprised that things are different in Asir Province. Culturally they are more like northern Yemenis. Women have long worked in the fields there without wearing veils. Much different attitude about gender rights and relations than in the lowlands (Asir has the highest mountains in Saudi Arabia, and with reasonable rainfall has real farming not dependent on deep wells dug to entice the Badu to stop wandering).
May:24:2011 - 22:44
@Barkley Rosser
I am surprised to hear how the author of the article paints another picture. The driver he is talking about is an exception. Being in that part of Saudi for several months I never saw women driving….ever.
In fact I never really saw women,(except when buying groceries), as they have even more restrictions placed upon them, in comparison to their muslim sisters in the capital.
It is correct that in the fields they do not wear veils. However, very few women actually work in the fields; every day I would go to the fields and only ever saw one, who was employed by the local sheikh.
This field worker lived in stricken poverty, a no-win sitution. The sheikh’s daughter often use to invite me to their home and when I discovered this poverty stricken unvieled woman was their employer I offered to buy her essential items. However, within a week the field worker was dead.
Life is restricted for women in the KSA, Rafah was an exception, being allowed to drive , or less restricted for the daughters of sheikhs.
May:26:2011 - 14:31
Aunty May,
Well, maybe they were all drastically underpaid workers about to starve to death, but when I was in Asir Province, I saw quite a few women in the fields working and unveiled. However, I never saw any women driving.