Women ask King to keep ban on driving

Nearly 1,000 Saudi women have launched a counter-campaign to press for keeping a long-standing ban on driving cars by women, saying those who are pressing for an end to the ban are a “weird” minority, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The women said they had signed a statement to be presented to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, appealing for him not to lift the ban on female driving in the conservative Moslem Gulf Kingdom.

Sharq Arabic language daily published text of the statement, which said any move by the government to lift the ban would hurt the Islamic religion and destabilize the country.

The statement branded women pressing for an end to the ban as “weird” and said their campaigns to lift the ban and defiant driving by some women are more serious than protests.

Sharq said the statement was in response to a campaign launched by women on Facebook to defy a ban on female driving. The campaign has already drawn a backlash from men, who threatened to use their headgears to confront women driving cars.

“The 1,000 women said they intend to present the letter signed by them to the Monarch to express their objection to women driving cars…they affirmed that the recent demands and flagrant defiant actions by some women represent only a minority of the country’s women and that millions of women are opposed to lifting the ban.”

Following is part of the text of the statement carried by Shaq newspaper and signed by 1,000 Saudi women.

“Allowing women to drive cars will hurt the Islamic religion, give rise to harassment of women and result in removing the face veil by Saudi women….setting a deadline for their driving on June 17 is a flagrant challenge to Islamic values and this challenge could open the door to every one having a deviant idea to take to the street without any consideration or respect to the state and the law…this will only contribute to destabilizing the country.

“Allowing the women to drive cars constitutes a violation of a fatwa (Islamic edict) by the supreme scholars committee in the Kingdom which strictly banned women from driving cars…we call for severe punishment of all those who dare call for offending the system as such acts are more dangerous than demonstrations.

“The benefits resulting from allowing women to drive cars will be limited and the problem can be tackled in another way…we believe that those who will benefit are a weird minority.

“Finally, permitting women to drive cars will have serious social repercussions in the Kingdom.

The statement was referring to the women’s campaign launched on Facebook last week under the slogan “I will drive starting June 17,” which itself has already triggered a backlash from men threatening to use their headgears as whips against women driving cars.

More than 11,500 women and men in Saudi Arabia have joined the female drive while around 1,400 have so far joined the men’s counter-campaign. “We warn women against adopting Western attitudes and concepts and against a large increase in road accidents in case women are allowed to drive cars,” the men said in their statement on Facebook and Twitter.

The warning was met by a similar threat from women, who said on the page that they could use “bladed weapons in case they are intercepted by any one while they are driving.”

The women’s June 17 drive follows growing calls to end a long-standing ban on driving cars by women in Saudi Arabia.

Many women have already been reported to have defied the ban over the past few months. On Saturday, police arrested female driving activist Manal Al Shareef and jailed her for five days. She was reported on Wednesday as saying she had quit the campaign.

In addition to being banned from driving, Saudi women cannot travel abroad without authorization from their male guardians, and are also not allowed to vote in the municipal elections, the only public polls in the absolute monarchy.

When in public, they are obliged to cover from head to toe.

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