NOVANEWS |
Najla Hariri is taking to the roads in Jeddah. After driving in Egypt, Lebanon and Europe she found it too ridiculous not to be able to go anywhere with two cars but her husband and eldest son away. Although she does not want to be at the vanguard of change she feels she has no choice. She has the full support of her husband.
Najla Hariri says she was inspired by the protests taking place elsewhere in the Middle East.
“Enough is enough”, she told the BBC as she drove around the city. “I have the right to [drive].”
Ms Hariri holds a driving licence from both Egypt and Lebanon from her time living abroad, and also has an international licence that she uses when she drives in Europe.
”In this society I am a little bit brave – I am not scared. There is no law against women driving. It’s society’s [convention] that says women are not allowed to drive.”
Opponents of women driving argue that it’s safer for females to have a male in the car with them, and that they are honoring their women by sparing them the strain of driving.
“They are lying to themselves,” replies Ms Hariri forcefully. “It is safer for women to drive themselves. We have four million foreign drivers [in the country] and we’d like to get rid of them and drive ourselves.”
Ms Hariri admits she did not want to be at the vanguard of efforts to give women more freedoms.
She returned to Saudi Arabia two years ago and was tempted to start driving immediately.
She found herself stuck at home with two cars but no driver, as her husband and eldest son were both away. “But I waited for the right time; I waited for other ladies to [go first],” she says. As no-one stepped forward, she has decided that now is the moment.
“Before in Saudi, you never heard about protests,” she says. “[But] after what has happened in the Middle East, we started to accept a group of people going outside and saying what they want in a loud voice, and this has had an impact on me.”
A Facebook page is encouraging women to come out and drive on 17 June. Manal al-Sherif and a group of other women started a Facebook page called “Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself,” which urges authorities to lift the driving ban. Other women are pushing for the right to vote in municipal elections scheduled for September, while there are also calls for women to get permission to sign legal documents.
Aalia, a 19-year-old university student, is co-ordinating some of the online reform efforts.
“We are focusing on spreading the word, raising public awareness,” she says. “Women here don’t know their rights.”
Naturally there is a backlash to the fact that Saudi Women want to drive their own cars.
Sheikh Mohammed al-Nujaimi, a Saudi cleric, dismissed the campaign, saying statements he makes about religious issues that are posted on websites have received more than 24,000 page views in a day.
The plan is “against the law, and the women who drive should be punished according to the law,” al-Nujaimi said in a telephone interview. Driving causes “more harm than good” to women, because they risk mixing with men they aren’t related to, such as mechanics and gas-station attendants, he added.
“Women will also get used to leaving their homes at will,” al-Nujaimi said.
Over the years clerics have put forward the reasons why women should not be allowed to drive. These are:
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removal of hijab (face veil)
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loss of modesty in women
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women leaving their homes, driving around because they enjoy driving
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women rebelling, they may go out of the house and drive to place where they can find peace. As young men do, but young men are able to put up with more than women.
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driving is a cause for fitnah, immoral men will take advantage of her when she is in need of help
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When women drive it leads to overcrowding in the streets, or it deprives some young men of the opportunity to drive cars when they are more deserving of that.
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it will cause the fitnah to flourish, because women will buy a new car because it’s a new model or because they will be the first one to drive it.
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