Saudi women lobbying for 'stolen' right to drive

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia - A group of women in the only country that bans female drivers has formed a committee to lobby for the right to get behind the wheel, and the women plan to petition King Abdullah in the next few days.

The government is unlikely to respond because the issue remains so divisive. But committee members say their petition will at least highlight what many Saudis - both men and women - consider a "stolen" right.

"We would like to remind officials that this is, as many have said, a social and not a religious or political issue," said Fowziyyah al-Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars. "And since it's a social issue, we have the right to lobby for it."

Committee members want to deliver their petition to the king by Sunday, Saudi Arabia's national day.

The driving ban applies to all women, Saudi and foreign, and forces families to hire live-in drivers. Women whose families cannot afford $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, stores or a doctor.

Two years ago, Mohammed al-Zulfa, a member of the unelected Consultative Council, asked his colleagues to think about studying the possibility of allowing women over age 35 or 40 to drive - unchaperoned on city streets but accompanied by a male guardian on highways.

That suggestion touched off calls for Zulfa's removal from the council and for stripping him of Saudi citizenship, as well as accusations he was encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men.

The uproar underscored the divisions in Saudi society between the guardians of its strict Islamic codes of behavior and those who want to usher in more liberal attitudes.

Conservatives, who believe that women should be shielded from male strangers, say women in the driver's seat will be free to leave home alone and go when and where they please. The women also will unduly expose their eyes while driving and interact with male strangers, such as traffic police and mechanics, the critics say.

But supporters of female drivers say the prohibition exists neither in law nor in Islam, but is based on fatwas, or edicts, by senior clerics who say that women at the wheel create situations for sinful temptation.

Women tried to defy the ban once and paid heavily for it. In November 1990, when U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, about 50 women got behind the wheel and drove family cars. They were jailed for one day, their passports were confiscated, and they lost their jobs.