There was a time when I firmly believed the endless debate about Saudi women banned from driving cars was trivial. It distracted Saudis from the real problems of the denial of women's rights: employment, education, guardianship abuses, inheritance, and fair and equitable treatment in the Saudi judicial system.
The arrest and imprisonment of Manal Al-Sherif, 32, after driving a car in Khobar, has changed all that. The driving ban is no longer a distraction to Saudi women's quest for their rights, but could very well be the centerpiece of our struggle to obtain rights long denied us.
My change of heart comes from the fact that it's obvious that well into the 21st century, Saudis are unable and apparently unwilling to solve minor issues like a woman's right to drive an automobile. So what makes me think that we can solve the weightier problems of guardianship and justice in the courts?
Well, we can't. The path Saudi Arabia is taking towards judicial reform and granting women better employment opportunities is questionable. It's a questionable because Manal broke no laws, yet she was arrested in the dead of night on a vague allegation of "violating the public order." She is accused of "violating the rules and the system by driving her car, roaming the streets of the province" and "inciting public opinion" by posting a video of her driving on YouTube.
Clearly it's the Khobar municipal police and the Commission for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue that have violated the public order. Manal was performing basic tasks as a woman in charge of her household. If that means driving a car to perform those tasks, so be it. By arresting Manal for exercising her rights to perform these chores, the police and commission violated the public order. The public order was further violated because the arrest caused anger among Saudi women who empathize with Manal's attempts shed light on her plight to get around town to take care of her family.
The facts as we know them are that Manal, who possesses an international driver's license as required by Saudi authorities, drove her car. She was wearing a seatbelt, obeyed all traffic laws, wore the hijab and had her brother in the car with her. There is nothing in the Saudi traffic codes about women not permitted to drive. There is nothing un-Islamic about her behavior. Sheikh Ahmed bin Baz, and long before him, Sheikh Al Al-Bani, said there is no Islamic reason to deny women the right to drive.
By arresting Manal Al-Sherif, Saudi authorities elevated the once trivial debate on women driving to a major issue. King Abdullah in an interview with Barbara Walters, and virtually every Saudi minister from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, unequivocally said that women driving is a societal issue. King Abdullah said that only Saudi society could determine the appropriate time when women can drive cars. He said he believed that time was soon.
I gather in this case Saudi society comprises of the religious conservatives who continue to object to this simple right, although there is no religious foundation to prevent women from driving. Manal's brother, the woman who sat in the passenger seat of Manal's car and Manal's family apparently do not qualify as members of Saudi society. Nor does the woman arrested with her two female relatives the other day for driving in the rural province of Al-Ras. And perhaps the Al-Ras arrests are even more troubling than Manal's detention.
For decades, Saudi women living in rural areas have driven cars and trucks to keep food on the table, take children to school and to make sure the family business runs smoothly. It strikes me as odd that the Saudi government gives rural women a free pass, but denies Manal a trip to a Khobar supermarket to put food on her table.
Saudis, however, have no one to blame but themselves. And I wonder whether they even understand the significance of Manal's case. A Saudi male colleague wrote to me the other day that his father's "neighbor refuses every single young man who comes asking for the hand of one of his three daughters in marriage... They should go to court and complain against him but they did not. Isn't (marriage) a more important issue than driving? Why do you, women, insist on driving and forget your other more basic rights?"
Clearly, the right to marry whom one pleases is more important than driving. Yet we have no hope of solving this more significant problem if we can't even agree on the less important ones.
Frankly, I'm ashamed of what happened to Manal. Saudis hold themselves up to ridicule from the global community. Saudi Arabia singed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as long as it doesn't conflict with Sharia. Women driving cars does not conflict with Sharia. In addition, Saudi Arabia has earned a seat on the United Nations' new women's rights agency, UN Women. It was my hope that the CEDAW ratification and the membership to UN Women would bring Saudi Arabia into the global community's embrace of universal women's rights.
It appears we are not even close to that goal.
Follow Sabria Jawhar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/saudiwriter
I would love to see oil become obsolete and a real revolution begin by throwing the clerics out of power.
That's the main reason it's such a big issue.
Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus, adding to a national debate about U.S. civil rights. Equality didn't arrive overnight (and really hasn't yet). One step at a time.
Equality for Saudi women, as you know too well, will be a long, hard journey. Continue the debate, Sista!
Take off the burqua and the head scarf.....stand on your own 2 feet and demand your rights.
It IS THEIR DECISION, NOT YOURS.
Hence the invention of the supernatural. God.
Was it bad that the British outlawed the burning of widows if their husbands died in India? Was it wrong that the practice of crippling young girls in China by binding their feet was outlawed in spite of cultural ramifications? I can make a judgement call about those issues any time I want and I don't care if they try to mask their cruelty under the phony cloak oc "Cultural behavior".
Excuse, Ms. Jawhar, I disagree. This "step-by-step" approach has taken you nowhere
Remember, American women didn't even get the right to vote until the 1920's, years after black men were granted the vote. American women were routinely denied admission to public universities and colleges, and denied admission and/or discouraged from entering professional training and graduate schools such as medicine and law until the 1950''s, and in the South, into the 1960's and 70's. There is still pervasive gender discrimination in pay and promotion, and very few societal, public, or private infrastructural support for family issues, which men are allowed to abdicate largely to women . And women still have lots of trouble being taken seriously as candidates for public office.
Though women's rights might be loudly championed by many in America when it comes to pointing the finger at others, we have long ceded that high ground to other more enlightened countries like Norway and Sweden.
Initially set up to provide moral leadership, promote human progress, peace and the rule of law, the "United" (they are anything but!) Nations Organization has now morphed into a gang dominated by the most backward dictatorships. It cannot be relied upon to provide rules of ethical conduct, let alone international law.
Let me make myself clear: I am not calling for disbanding it. While dictators still exist (not for long, I hope), it provides a forum for the necessary (if unpleasant) dialogue with them. But there's where its usefulness ends. We urgently need a League of Democratic Nations to provide the moral leadership that the UNO has long ceased to.
Banning women from driving simply because they are women is no less serious an infringement on basic civil and human rights than was banning blacks from sitting in the front of a public bus in the U.S.
Neither are direct life or death issues, but both directly affect a person's daily quality of life and ability to move about freely. For both groups, they were/are daily reminders of second-class citizenship and subjugation. As in, "Just in case you forget your "place", girly girl, remember that you are so incompetent and worthless you can't even drive a car".
So, if not for religious reasons and if not for legal reasons, why do men ban women from driving in Saudi Arabia?
Because they are afraid. Afraid they'll be shown up by women. Afraid if the playing field is more level, women will out-perform them.
After all...insurance actuaries show that all things equal, in general, women are better drivers than men.
How many other people protested before Ms. Parks? They were no less courageous, but we've never heard of them.