Have Saudi Women Traded Civil Rights for Driving Rights?

Arguing against the driving ban but within Islamic law can be an effective strategy

By Shikha Dalmia @shikhadalmiaOct. 30, 20131 Comment

Saudi women have ramped up their struggle to end their countrys ban on female
drivers recently. This battle is decades old, but whats surprising is that these women
are increasingly defending their right to drive not by referring to any Western
conception of liberty or equality. Rather, they are arguing that allowing women
behind the wheel is more consistent with sharia the same Islamic law that instructs
men that women are their property, just like gold, silver, branded beautiful horses,
cattle and well-tilled land. No less than three female members of the shura, the
kings advisory council, an all-male body until recently, have argued that the ban is
not ordained by sharia but the countrys tribal Bedouin traditions that are at odds
with the true teachings of the Quran. By forcing women to depend on hired male
drivers (most of whom are foreigners) the ban itself violates sharias strictures
proscribing women from being alone in the company of unrelated men. And while
this seems contradictory, arguing from the texts of a religion whose oppressive yoke
theyre seeking to cast off is an effective strategy that requires no needless martyring
to ones cause.

(MORE: Forbidden to Drive: A Saudi Woman on Life Inside the Kingdom)

Saudi Arabia is the only country that bars women from driving. It also requires
women to obtain permission from their male guardians to conduct any official
business buy property, get married, have elective surgery or travel. The Saudi
government hasnt quite figured out how to deliver mail to homes, yet last year it
managed to successfully implement a state-of-the-art electronic tracking system that
texts husbands if their wives leave the country without them. No matter how long
you live, you remain a minor in the eyes of the government, one woman lamented.

Instead of taking such indignities head-on, Saudi activists have chosen a cautious
path. The organizers of the recent campaign even advised women to scrupulously
observe clerical diktats and wear a hijab and have a male relative in tow when they
went cruising. This might seem counterproductive to Western observers, suggesting
that the driving ban is bad not because it restricts womens movements, but because
it offends their modesty. But arguments that are regressive in one context are
progressive in another. There are universal rights, but not a universally valid
playbook for achieving them. Western freedoms too were won by precisely such
piecemeal, ad hominem arguments.

John Locke, the English 17th Century political theorist credited with launching the
Enlightenment, argued for the separation of church and state the centerpiece of
liberal democracy not by a frontal assault on Christianity. Rather, he used the New
Testaments own central teaching that faith when forced brings no salvation to
stop the state from imposing one official religion. He persuaded the rulers to get out
of the business of religion not for the sake of a more secular society but a more
authentically Christian one.

1
Locke couldnt have attempted a more radical confrontation with religious orthodoxy
in pre-modern Europe any more than Saudi women could with their Islamic
theocrats today. Doing so would have meant certain death for him and a likely public
whipping for Saudi firebrands. More crucially, it would have justified a draconian
crackdown, quashing their movements in infancy. By contrast, advocating reforms
based on a systems own terms often makes it easier to win over moderates and build
a critical mass of supporters. Such tactics also allow the internal contradictions in
oppressive systems to build overtime, generating change peacefully without the social
disruptions produced by revolutionary movements launched in the name of abstract
principles of justice and rights.

Before launching the campaign to lift the driving ban, for example, Saudi women had
persuaded the king that the social rights granted to them by Islam means that they
should be able to vote and run for office. But this means that when these rights go
into effect in 2015, elected women will be able to control the reins of power but not a
steering wheel to drive to the state capitol. This will make the ban not just unfair but
absurd. When it inevitably dies, itll snowball into other reforms, weakening
patriarchy from the inside.

In the past, Saudi Arabias morality police has gotten away with harassing and
humiliating women because it has positioned itself as the guardian of countrys
Islamic values. The new sharia-based argument against the driving ban wrests this
moral high ground and hoists the guardians on their own petard. Thats why it is
more likely to succeed than invocation of Western notions of rights and justice

Read more: Have Saudi Women Traded Civil Rights for Driving Rights? | TIME.com
http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/30/have-saudi-women-traded-civil-rights-for-driving-
rights/#ixzz2k1czIyWF