It's probably now only a matter of time before women are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Today's Arab News reports on a TV debate of the issue, broadcast on the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya channel.

Although the question of women driving in the kingdom has been much discussed over the years, the article sheds some interesting new light on how change might come about.

Politically, the main obstacle is a fatwa issued by the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars following a protest in November 1990 when a group of women drove cars through the streets of Riyadh. That resulted in a formal prohibition from the interior ministry in order to "preserve sanctities and to prevent portents of evil", such as exposing women to "temptation". Up to that point, the exclusion of women from driving had been merely custom and practice.

It appears that nothing can be done to change the rules unless the ulema's 20-year-old fatwa is superseded by another fatwa or over-ruled by a royal decree. However, this is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

In the TV programme, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz, son of the late Grand Mufti, argued that the circumstances surrounding the original fatwa no longer apply. It was issued "in a particular context in the early 1990s, a time when there was much upheaval in the region, including the Gulf War, Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and the arrival of US forces, something that some conservatives described as an American invasion".

The Gulf War may seem an odd reason to have banned women from driving, but there was a lot of agitation about the presence of foreign troops in the kingdom at the time and religious leaders saw the driving protest as another manifestation of "foreign threats" to the Saudi way of life. Leaflets were circulated denouncing the female protesters as communists, secularists and American agents.

Such arguments are less likely to be taken seriously today.
However, there is still the religious issue of sadd al-dharai("blocking the means to evil") – based on the idea that if women were allowed to drive they could be exposed to sexual harassment. But accepting that argument, Bin Baz says, indicates that “we do not trust our education system which teaches a sense of right and wrong that is derived from Islamic teaching.”

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 16 May 2010.