October 27, 2013 8:44 AM

Women in Saudi Arabia: Making history at 60 MPH

Brushing off threats from the government, more than 60 Saudi women got behind the wheel on Saturday in a bold protest of the nation’s de facto ban on women driving. Sara Hussein, a Saudi woman involved in the effort, drew parallels to the U.S. civil rights movement: “Think back in history — Rosa Parks was the only person who sat down on the bus, wasn’t she? And then it started to happen gradually. It does have to start with the few brave people who are willing to risk whatever there is to risk.”…. Many women documented the act of civil disobedience on social media, even posting videos to YouTube. The most popular video, which has already been viewed nearly 100,000 times, was posted by May al-Sawyan, a 32-year-old economics researcher. She drove to the grocery store[.]

If you study history, it doesn’t take long to realize that it isn’t necessarily made with sledgehammer blows or grandiose, sweeping gestures. In fact, history is more often than not made by those engaging in small, mundane, everyday activities. Rosa Parks refusing to move from her bus seat. African-American sitting at a lunch counter. Gandhi walking to the Indian Ocean and making salt. Gays and lesbians exchanging wedding vows. So it with Saudi women, many of whom are protesting the Kingdom’s ban on women driving by simply getting behind the wheel.

The ultraConservative clerics who control the everyday lives of Saudis have no intention of granting women the right to drive- or any other rights. They’ve gone to absurd lengths to justify their misogyny and repression, including claiming that allowing women to drive will damages ovaries and result in birth defects. In the end, of course, it has nothing to do with religion. As with the American Taliban, it’s about power and control, in this case about relegating women to a life consisting solely of existing for the pleasure and convenience of men. The Wahhabi sect of Islam that rules Saudi Arabia, like most of the rest of the Islamic world, is terrified of women. Perhaps they’re afraid that women will discover that the men in their lives are uneducated, self-centered, spineless cowards who’d flounder if they couldn’t force women to tend to their every need. Or that they’re cursed with tiny penises and/or no clue about how to have a truly mutually satisfying relationship with a woman.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to recognize how barbaric and misogynistic the ban on driving is. And this isn’t really about Islam. If it was, the Wahhabis would understand that women aren’t property. They deserve the same rights and concomitant responsibilities that Saudi men assume to be their birthright. That something as simple as women getting behind the wheel of a car can demonstrate how morally bankrupt Saudi Arabia is, then I applaud those women brave enough to drive.

Rosa Parks would be proud….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on October 27, 2013 8:44 AM.

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