The campaign to lift the ban on Saudi women drivers may have been given an extra push by the arrest of Loujain Al Hathloul recently, when she took her car to the Saudi border, driving all the way from the United Arab Emirates.
The fact that she was arrested and taken for interrogation with her friend Saudi journalist Maysaa Al Amoudi maybe a Godsend because media all around the world covered the arrest. They also reported that Hathloul’s passport was confiscated and she was forced to spend the night on her own in her car, while the Saudi border authorities decided what to do with her.
The news went viral as she live tweeted the event on social media website Twitter.
She was under the media spotlight tweeting “The Customs [Directorate] have no right to prevent me from entering [Saudi Arabia] even if in their opinion I am ‘a violator’ because I am a Saudi.”
In another tweet, she said her licence “is valid in all GCC countries”, including Saudi Arabia. And one final tweet was “I would have died from the cold last night and my phone switched off. I am almost 20 hours at the border.” These tweets were going out to more than 200,000 followers of hers.
Hathloul wanted to do her bit to further the cause of lifting of the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world that does not allow them to drive. This ban has been enforced since 1957, but the move to get it lifted started in 1990 — when 47 women got behind the wheel in Riyadh in a symbolic show of force. Many of these women were professionals accompanied by their husbands who just switched seats as they drove their cars. The impetus for their action as claimed was the fact that they saw American women soldiers driving on Saudi soil as part of the American effort to get Saddam and Iraq out of Kuwait.
The driving spark
The women were arrested and fired from their jobs, but this was the first spark. Although it took nearly two decades after that for the campaign to lift the ban to gather pace, there were sporadic attempts by women activists to petition King Abdullah after he became monarch in 2005.
Today, the movement is again crystallising with vocal voices such as Wajeha Al Huwaider, an activist and a writer. She believed it was time to allow women to drive. In 2007, she and her friend Fawzia Al Uyyouni collected 1,100 signatures and handed them to the King.
However, the process has been slow with the authorities — the Ministry of Interior and the Saudi police. They are still unyielding, stating women driving on roads was unacceptable and against regulations.
However, many point out there is no actually Islamic text that bans women from driving and that it is only outdated customs and traditions. Although there are no reliable surveys, many men believe “banning women from driving is very inconvenient because [men] end up doing all the chores,” a resident from Madina, who preferred anonymity, told this author.
Women began to use new tactics, understanding they were not revolutionaries but housewives, many educated and with top jobs. To emphasise their point they used social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. They would be filmed while driving and post the videos on YouTube as a way to publicise their cause.
“Their [Saudi women activists] primary tactic is to film themselves driving in Saudi Arabia, post the videos on YouTube, and promote their driving campaign using Twitter. They periodically organise mass driving days, encouraging women across the Kingdom to get behind the wheel and film themselves. The current incident involving Al Hathloul is just the latest attempt,” Adam Google, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, said.
Starting in 2011, the driving campaign has become more sustainable. Many Saudi women took to the streets in different towns and cities of the country. In June 2011, 40 women got behind the wheel, drove and then posted their videos online.
One woman driver was arrested and another was handed a punishment of 15 lashes, but this was later overturned by the king. It was the start of a continuous campaign called “Women2Drive” and led by long-time Saudi activist Manal Al Sharif who was filmed driving by Al Huwaider. She was one of those arrested, but then released on the condition she would not speak to the media.
One of the other conditions for their release was women had to sign a pledge they will not do it again. If they are caught a second time, they need to sign a second pledge and their male relatives have to sign a pledge saying they will not let them drive.
Conservative elements are pressuring the government to maintain the ban. Some clerics have claimed it damages their ovaries and leads to clinical problems as stated by Sheikh Saleh Al Lohaidan. However, others believe that such views are designed to stop time and are a check against development, adding the sheikh’s views are in the minority.
One activist in Qatif in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia, said back in 2011 that things were changing. “Public attitudes are changing and the women drive campaign is openly talked about in Saudi Arabia and women’s rights are no longer a taboo subject,” Naseema Al Sada said.
But it is still a long haul filled with trepidation. After 2011, women continued to publicise their campaign by doing exactly what they did before. In 2013, there was the October 26 campaign, where women again hit the roads in the country, followed by more this year. More people from the top echelons of society are making their name heard.
Princess Ameerah, a former wife of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, told the “Mail Online” recently women in the kingdom must have the right to drive a car and referring to the authorities said they “can make it happen overnight,” adding “among those who are leading the way is Prince Turki Bin Abdullah Al Saud who is also the Governor of Riyadh.”
Echoing the views of many
It is no doubt Princess Ameerah is echoing the views of many which have been splashed across Saudi newspapers such as “Al Hayat Daily”, especially this year and whose appeal to the public has taken a different slant.
Writing in the daily, activist Dr Hala Al Dosari said a woman has the right to drive and achieve her independence, a right that exists in all countries and if this doesn’t happen the authorities must justify why they are refusing to grant such a right, stressing the fact “there is no written law that bans women from driving and the Saudi law emphasises that all citizens should have a licence inside the country, but this licence is not given to women which creates obstacles for them.”
Another activist from Al Khobar in the east of the Kingdom is Dr Aesha Al Maneh, who drove along with her husband and later posted the video on Youtube and talked about it on Twitter. The businesswoman, the first Saudi female to gain a doctorate and now a director of a group of companies, took to the road in the middle of the year during the Gulf Driving Week.
“The ban on women drivers is damaging and all Muslims should lift the damage,” she wrote, adding although I don’t need to drive “I am taking part in this campaign to lift the driving ban on other women who can’t afford to have chauffeurs,” referring to the high cost of having a “stay-in” driver in the house.
The door has been flung open since the beginning of the year with many academics continuing to make their voice heard. In a seminar about the subject this year at the Nora bint Abdulrahman University major academics such as Nora Al Eid, who specialises in Hadith (Quranic verse) and Dr Amal Al Hazimi spoke of the need for women to drive as a source of mobility and protection.
“I wish I was like my Indonesian Muslim colleagues, driving my car and taking the children by myself rather than having a driver living in my house, spending on him, and I am also alone with him in the car,” she was quoted as saying.
One final issue may eventually tip the balance in favour of women driving, although there continues to be stiff resistance from the establishment.
“National Geographic” published a story as retold by the daughter of a women living in a residential compound in Jeddah looking for a male driver to take her to hospital because her brother was sick on a Friday.
With nobody around, the doctor not answering the phone and her husband away, she became frantic and suddenly the woman thrust the keys into her daughter’s hand and told her to drive. Fortunately, as they turned the corner, the women spotted a neighbour’s car coming and sought their help.
This is how Saudi women could eventually get the ban on driving lifted by highlighting the problems they face by not being allowed to drive.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a Phd in Political Science from Leeds University in the United Kingdom.
