Saudi media is preoccupied with the phenomenon (threat?) of women’s driving. Today, we have scattered stories, ranging from Manal Al-Sharief’s withdrawal from the women’s driving protest as she seeks to get out of jail, to an op-ed seeing this movement as ‘Arab Spring Lite’.
This Saudi Gazette story about Manal’s pulling back also reports on a strange allegation carried in the Arabic daily Al-Watan that she was ‘put up to it’ by unnamed women in jail with her. She was in jail before she was detained for driving? If so, that’s a rather important detail to have been neglected. This aspect of the story needs a lot more explaining as from here it looks like an attempt to trash her reputation and to cast the enterprise as the work of ‘foreign agents’, a typical ploy used by cultural conservatives to denigrate anything that suggests change. Manal Al-Sharief denies the allegations.
Al-Sharief to withdraw from driving campaign
KHALID AL-BALAHADIDAMMAM: Manal Al-Sharief, the 32-year-old Saudi woman detained for driving a car in Al-Khobar Saturday, intends to withdraw from the campaign for women to drive, a source at the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said Tuesday. The source said members of the NSHR met with Al-Sharief at Dammam’s Women’s Prison for 90 minutes and described her condition and treatment as “good”.
“Manal wants to be released,” the source said. “She said the investigation had been carried out and that she will withdraw from the campaign calling for women to drive cars.” The source added that the NSHR had contacted the Ministry of Interior requesting Al-Sharief’s release.
…
Arab News has a peculiar op-ed with a headline that baffles me. What ever does Saudi women’s driving have to do with NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, an American racing institution)? While there are few female drivers in NASCAR, I can’t see how there’s any parallel with women’s driving in Saudi Arabia. Still, the piece makes a few points and provides links to the Facebook and Twitter groups growing around the protests.
Will Saudi women drivers make Nascar nervous?
WILLIAM FISHERThis could be the most peaceful variant of The Arab Spring we have seen to date. Or it could turn out to be very painful. And very scary.
The big event will take place in Saudi Arabia. There, from June 17 onward, hundreds of women will be — wait for it — driving their own cars. No male family members. No professional drivers. Just women. Driving.
To pull this off without ending up in the slammer, the women came up with an idea: “What if we set a date where any woman around Saudi who has a driver’s license” can go in public and drive? We are hoping to collect as many supporters as we can, if we succeed of collecting 100s in major cities, and all of them start driving June 17 and forward, it will be so much hectic for authorities and it will force them to look at our issue.”
They explained further: “We are not demonstrating or going out in groups. It will be individual act and we asked all brave women who will participate to video tape themselves and post it on our Facebook page for the rest of the world to see and to prove that we can do it and to encourage those who are afraid to take that step.”
A spokesperson for the group — known as “Women 2 Drive” — said, “We tried and tried to get our voice heard, but we have been faced with ignorance, it’s time we simply take an action until they accept sitting with us on the same table… and listen.
…
Meanwhile, in Buraidah, an archly-conservative city in Qassim province, a woman was detained while driving. After she was hauled off to the local office of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, she had to undergo the ritual humiliation of having her male guardian come in to get her released after she signed an ‘undertaking that she would not drive again.’
The question still remains, though: If there is no law prohibiting women from driving—and we are constantly assured that there is no such law—then under what law, under what authority are these women being arrested? An Arab News article says that Al-Sharief was arrested for breaking ‘general rules’. What, pray tell, are ‘general rules’? They’re not written, so are they simply understood from birth? Are they uniform across all regions? (Clearly not, as the fact of women driving in Asir makes clear.) Or are they simply an authoritarian club, convenient to use whenever someone with a modicum of power feels threatened?
In its coverage of the story, Asharq Alawsat points out that no one can seem to find either religious or civil laws that prohibit women’s driving. It may take, however, an act of government to codify the law, to put it in black and white.
It really is time for the government to clarify the situation. It needs to either write a law proscribing women’s driving or it needs to make it perfectly clear to police, both civil and religious, that these women are within their rights and are not to be prosecuted/persecuted.
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May:25:2011 - 10:54
[...] “The arrest of Manal al-Sherif has brought the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia into the spotlight once again; the issue is an extremely contentious one, causing division between different components of Saudi society. This controversy was raised against the backdrop of the arrest of Manal al-Sherif on Saturday, a day after she posted footage of herself behind the wheel on the video-sharing website YouTube.” ANOTHER WOMAN DETAINED IN QASSIM: “Traffic police here released a Saudi woman Monday after briefly detaining her for driving a vehicle in the outskirts of Al-Ras, a Qassim town about 370 km west of Riyadh, ” the Saudi Gazette reports. HRW DEMANDS RELEASE: “International and local rights groups lashed out Tuesday at the arrest of a Saudi woman for defying the kingdom’s female driving ban, while other Saudi women posted video clips online showing themselves behind the wheel,” Washington Post reports. DRIVE, SHE SAID: Additional coverage and commentary of this issue from John Burgess (Crossroads Arabia). [...]
May:25:2011 - 11:00
[...] “The arrest of Manal al-Sherif has brought the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia into the spotlight once again; the issue is an extremely contentious one, causing division between different components of Saudi society. This controversy was raised against the backdrop of the arrest of Manal al-Sherif on Saturday, a day after she posted footage of herself behind the wheel on the video-sharing website YouTube.” ANOTHER WOMAN DETAINED IN QASSIM: “Traffic police here released a Saudi woman Monday after briefly detaining her for driving a vehicle in the outskirts of Al-Ras, a Qassim town about 370 km west of Riyadh, ” the Saudi Gazette reports. HRW DEMANDS RELEASE: “International and local rights groups lashed out Tuesday at the arrest of a Saudi woman for defying the kingdom’s female driving ban, while other Saudi women posted video clips online showing themselves behind the wheel,” Washington Post reports. DRIVE, SHE SAID: Additional coverage and commentary of this issue from John Burgess (Crossroads Arabia). [...]
May:25:2011 - 11:04
[...] “The arrest of Manal al-Sherif has brought the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia into the spotlight once again; the issue is an extremely contentious one, causing division between different components of Saudi society. This controversy was raised against the backdrop of the arrest of Manal al-Sherif on Saturday, a day after she posted footage of herself behind the wheel on the video-sharing website YouTube.” ANOTHER WOMAN DETAINED IN QASSIM: “Traffic police here released a Saudi woman Monday after briefly detaining her for driving a vehicle in the outskirts of Al-Ras, a Qassim town about 370 km west of Riyadh, ” the Saudi Gazette reports. HRW DEMANDS RELEASE: “International and local rights groups lashed out Tuesday at the arrest of a Saudi woman for defying the kingdom’s female driving ban, while other Saudi women posted video clips online showing themselves behind the wheel,” Washington Post reports. DRIVE, SHE SAID: Additional coverage and commentary of this issue from John Burgess (Crossroads Arabia). [...]
May:25:2011 - 12:55
[...] John Burgess at the Crossroads Arabia blog provides an excellent round-up of the issue of women’s right to drive automobiles in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has gained a lot of traction in recent weeks as several females have been arrested driving around as a protest to the rule. [...]
May:26:2011 - 04:32
Ah, But we Brits have the best approach…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU Women, know your limits !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qdhbkTko4&feature=related
“It’s got twenty years happy motoring ahead of it. But look, a woman!”
May:26:2011 - 10:37
[...] “The arrest of Manal al-Sherif has brought the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia into the spotlight once again; the issue is an extremely contentious one, causing division between different components of Saudi society. This controversy was raised against the backdrop of the arrest of Manal al-Sherif on Saturday, a day after she posted footage of herself behind the wheel on the video-sharing website YouTube.” ANOTHER WOMAN DETAINED IN QASSIM: “Traffic police here released a Saudi woman Monday after briefly detaining her for driving a vehicle in the outskirts of Al-Ras, a Qassim town about 370 km west of Riyadh, ” the Saudi Gazette reports. HRW DEMANDS RELEASE: “International and local rights groups lashed out Tuesday at the arrest of a Saudi woman for defying the kingdom’s female driving ban, while other Saudi women posted video clips online showing themselves behind the wheel,” Washington Post reports. DRIVE, SHE SAID: Additional coverage and commentary of this issue from John Burgess (Crossroads Arabia). [...]
May:26:2011 - 15:19
I read on a French site that men are encouraged to beat the women they see driving cars; as they are supposed to use an “iqal” to beat them, the site says there is a shortage of “iqal(s)” in the shops; has anybody heard about that ?
May:27:2011 - 02:59
I have gotten permission from my husband to drive. Here is what happened.
Me: “I need to remove my mustache and beard. Please go to the pharmacy.”
Him: “I’m tired right now and want to watch t.v. Can’t it wait until tomorrow.”
Me: “It’s really driving me crazy every time I run my fingers through it.”
Him: “I will get it tomorrow”
Him: next day via text “What is your preferred product for removing your beard and mustache.”
Me: “LOL oh Veet or Nads”
Him: two days later on a Thursay after running me and three kids to different functions “Am I am a driver?”
Me: “I want ice-cream.”
Him: “I want to go home. I will it tomorrow.”
Me: “Do you realize I may not want it tomorrow. i want it now. I’m sure when you want ice-cream you just go get it no one tells you to wait.”
Him: argument ensues and he doesn’t want to waste his precious time yet sees someone he knows and talks to him for 10 minutes AFTER getting my ice cream and i’m thinking yeah right.
Me: “Those balls are small. What size did you get?”
Him: again argument ensues over the days events and driving. “Why don’t you lead the change and drive then?!” “Please just stop saying the F word! Do you think it gives you power?”
Me: “No it just makes me feel better.”
Him: “You got your beard, mustache and are always showing me your muscles what else do you need?”
Me: “To grow a penis so I can drive”
End of conversation and permission officially granted!
May:27:2011 - 03:34
Bedd there may be some truth in that first clip in that “education leads to beard growth!” HAHAHAHAHA
May:27:2011 - 17:18
Don’t forget your pepper spray, Sparky!
May:28:2011 - 02:02
Dakota. Thanks for the advice.
The way the authorities make it sound an AK-47 would be more appropriate for all the Saudi animals who would attack me.