JEDDAH, 2 June 2005 — Interior Minister Prince Naif downplayed the ongoing controversy on women driving in Saudi Arabia and said it was a social issue and must be decided by the Saudi society. “I believe that this is a controversy which has no meaning because it is a social matter to be decided by society. It looks like some people want to make it an issue but it’s not,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying.
Prince Naif was talking to reporters in Riyadh on Tuesday after attending a consultative meeting of GCC interior ministers. The GCC meeting called for effective regional and international cooperation to fight terrorism.
Prince Naif also said that women should have IDs if they want to have their own passports. According to press reports, women IDs would be made mandatory within four months for security reasons.
There has been a heated debate on the issue of women driving in the Saudi press after Mohammad Al-Zulfa, a Shoura Council member, tried to take up the matter at the 150-member consultative body.
Zulfa introduced his proposal tactfully as part of an uncontroversial debate on road safety. He argued that lifting the ban on women drivers could resolve what he considers to be a serious social problem — the presence of some one million foreign drivers needed to enable Saudi women to move around.
Zulfa said the obligation to hire a driver represented a financial burden for families with limited income, and cost the country more than SR12 billion ($3.2 billion) a year.
He also argued that women and young girls spend long hours in the company of foreign drivers. “This is against Islam, for a woman to be with a stranger. It’s forbidden,” he said. On the other hand, “there is nothing in the Qur’an that says women do not have the right to drive,” he added.
Dr. Suhaila Hammad, a senior member of the National Society of Human Rights, said Prince Naif’s words confirm that our leaders are not against women driving. “Our religious leaders also said that there is no religious prohibition of women driving and our traffic laws do not state that women can’t have a driving license or drive,” she said.
“Many husbands would like their wives to drive because of the problems associated with foreign drivers,” she said, adding that by allowing women to drive does not mean that they all have to, it is a matter of choice.
“Two other factors further the case for women driving, first the financial burden on the family and second, we don’t have reliable public transportation for women,” said Hammad.
“Society can accept women drivers if a political decision was taken,” she said. “Driving should be a personal choice for women. Our government has signed international treaties on non-discrimination between genders as long as these rights do not conflict with Islam and driving does not,” she said. She explained that society can gradually accept women driving if we impose strict laws, provide road assistance and maybe limit the times when women can drive.
Sana K., a popular dawa worker in Jeddah, is against women driving. “There is no separation of religious and social issues. Even social issues stem from religious teachings,” she said, while adding that the authorities are the ones who tackled it as a religious issue from the beginning.
— With input from Maha Akeel and Somayya Jabarti.
