Tel-Chai Nation

Saudi women are challenging the ban on driving in one of the worst sharia regimes on the globe:

Mai Alswayan's family spent an anxious few minutes on Saturday worrying about whether she would make it home.

Her crime was to leave their apartment without a male chaperone, get in the family car and drive to the small supermarket near their home. This could have landed her in prison, for Mrs Alswayan lives in Saudi Arabia - the only country in the world which forbids women from driving.

I'm not sure that's still so. In Syria, Islamofascists enforced a ban on women's driving, refuting the notion only Saudi Arabia is guilty of this.

About 60 women deliberately defied the law by getting behind the wheel and driving down the street in various cities across the kingdom. Aziza Youssef, the campaigner who organised the protest, said she had received 13 videos and another 50 phone messages from women claiming to have joined in.

If so, this would be the biggest breach of Saudi Arabia's ban on female driving. There were no reports of any arrests, suggesting that the authorities might have quietly decided to turn a blind eye.

Then that leaves at least two more bans to defy: the ones that say they cannot leave home without male escorts, and the one that says they cannot go around without wearing an abaya.

Labels: House of Saud, islam, misogyny