CDHR’s Analysis: The most offensive new charade to justify barring women from driving was recently issued by the religious wing of the Saudi ruling regime. It stated that, “Within 10 years of the ban being lifted… there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom." To augment its tradition of denigrating Saudi women, the religious establishment’s report went on to say that allowing women to drive will "provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce." This accusatory and repugnant declaration by the Saudi government’s religious establishment is designed to debase Saudi women, maintain men’s domination over every aspect of their lives and turn people against each other as they do in turning the majority Sunni Muslims against their brothers and sisters, the Shi’a minority. All is done because God and Islam demand it, according to the Saudi High Religious Council.
Prior to and during the early days of the establishment of Islam some 15 centuries ago, women in the vast and inhospitable Arabian deserts were free to travel, work with men on farms, herd and graze animals, harvest and sell their goods in communal markets and most of them barely covered most of their bodies. Incomprehensibly, 15 centuries later Saudi women are not allowed to travel, seek jobs, go to schools, obtain life-saving medication or give birth to babies in hospitals without male (male-guardian) permission. They are prohibited from mingling with men (publicly or in the work place), they cannot choose their spouses, practice law in courts or vote in the nation's cosmetic municipal elections. They are the only people on this planet that are barred from driving despite the fact that many Saudi women are doctors, scientists, brain surgeons, professors, businesswomen and pilots. However, there are limits to how much any people can endure.
Saudi women are fighting back on all fronts, especially for their most basic right: freedom of movement. In recent years, many Saudi women have been challenging the system’s nebulous policies and futile reasoning for denying them the right to drive. Their demands to drive draw domestic and international attention and support, and consequently severe reprisal by their insecure government, including imprisonments, intimidation and threats to some of them, their families and their supporters. The regime, through its religious establishment, is resorting to the most abhorrent and insulting reasons to perpetuate its repression of women as the articles below indicates.
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