Saudi set to reject woman’s plea to drive car

According to Emirates 24/7, Sheikh Mutraf Al Bashar will be hearing the complaint filed by Manal al-Sharif and Samar Badawi about women driving in Saudi Arabia. A link to the story is here, and it's also pasted in below. Interestingly, the headline is a bit misleading because the judge says that there are no administrative reasons for denying women the right to drive. Stay tuned!

Judge says accepting case does not mean agreeing to woman’s plea

By Staff - Published Thursday, February 09, 2012

Sheikh Mutraf Al Bashar (SUPPLIED)

A Saudi judge indicated on Thursday he would reject a plea by a local female activist demanding that women in the conservative Muslim Gulf kingdom are allowed to drive a car despite a long-standing social ban.

Sheikh Mutraf Al Bashar, who heads an administrative court, better known as grievances court, said the case filed by Manal Al Sharif is against a government department since women are denied driving licences by the traffic police.

“Agreeing to hear the case does not mean that I accept her demand to allow women in Saudi Arabia to drive cars,” he told Saqb newspaper.

“Such cases are not accepted by normal courts but grievances courts since it is against a government department.…these women base their case on the fact that the traffic police law does not discriminate between men and women…but we should also take into account the general trend in the society…this fact will determine whether women have the right to drive or not.”

He said his court remains “controlled” by certain social norms, adding that the Saudi society could still be not prepared to accept such things.“In such a case, we need to work to prepare the society to accept these things and should also devise a new legal system that will define punishment of those who will harass or abuse women who drive cars.”

Bahar said he saw no difference between males and females in the traffic law “from the administrative point of view” but added that a final approval is needed from the Monarch even if the society accepts that women drive cars.

Al Sharif, who hit headlines last year for spearheading a female campaign to allow women to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, filed the case at the administrative court in the eastern region, demanding a decision to force the country’s traffic police to allow women to have driving licence.It was the first case of its kind in the largest Arab economy and follows intensifying calls by women on Saudi authorities to end the ban.“The court has accepted the case filed by Manal al Sharif on the grounds there is no law in Saudi Arabia stipulating a ban on driving licences for women by the traffic police,” her lawyer Abdul Rahman Al Lahim said last week.
“It is the first case in Saudi Arabia..…we have based our argument in this case on the fact that the kingdom’s constitution calls for equal treatment between men and women and an international agreement signed by Saudi Arabia ending any discrimination against women.”

Lahim said he hoped the court would issue a positive sentence, adding that this would support women’s rights.He said the court had not yet fixed a date for hearings and expected it to issue a sentence that would end the ban on giving driving licences to women.

Wall Street Journal - Saudi Women Sue for Right to Drive

This report from the Wall Street Journal (via Fox News) states that a court has agreed to hear the arguments in the law suit about Saudi women driving, and that a new government commission has been established to consider issues like this. Link to the story is here and the text is pasted below.
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Published February 07, 2012 | The Wall Street JournalinShare

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  AP2011
  June 17, 2011: A Saudi Arabian woman drives a car as part of a campaign to defy Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A court in Saudi Arabia agreed to hear the first lawsuits by Saudi women challenging the kingdom's de facto ban on women driving, a lawyer for one of the women said.

The legal push is a shift by activists after years of simply appealing to Saudi leaders for permission to drive and, more rarely, taking to the roads in small numbers to test enforcement.

Since mid-2011, the limited push to win women the right to drive has been one of the few fronts in a country largely bypassed by the Arab Spring activist movements of the past year.

The lawsuits, one of them by Manal al Sharif, who founded a small movement last year called Women2Drive, risk a backlash from the public and officials in the conservative kingdom.

But with no breakthroughs in a campaign for the right to drive begun by Saudi women during the first Gulf war in the early 1990s, it was time to change tactics, said Sharif, a 32-year-old Saudi computer consultant. "It's 22 years now," she said. "We have to just finish it."

Government officials contacted about the case did not respond to requests for comment.

No written law bans women from driving in Saudi Arabia, and King Abdullah has said he sees nothing wrong with women driving. But in a country founded by followers of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, women are uniformly denied driver's licenses and risk sentences of fines, jail or floggings for driving.

Advocates of a ban say it is in line with stringent interpretations of the Koran that discourage the mixing of unrelated women and men. A report prepared by a Saudi academic in December for an advisory body to the king said allowing women the freedom to drive would lead to widespread loss of virginity among unmarried Saudi women.

Advocates of the right to drive call the de facto ban a crippling and costly restriction on millions of Saudi women, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars a year for a driver, depend on male relatives for rides, or simply stay at home.

Sharif started her campaign last year, the same day a Saudi court jailed her for more than a week for driving and having herself videotaped driving.

Sharif's lawyer, AbdulRahman Allahim, said Monday that a court that hears citizen complaints against the government, the Board of Grievances, had agreed to hear the case. Prosecution of women drivers is typically handled elsewhere, in religious courts.

In a possible shift that could improve the chances of women seeking the right to drive, among other issues, a local newspaper reported on Saturday that Saudi authorities would create a new commission to handle social issues such as women driving.

While the government has not confirmed the report, the suggestion that cases of women driving might be moved out of religious courts electrified both sides of the debate.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/07/saudi-women-sue-for-right-to-drive/#ixzz1ljWEnlGp

Saudi activists sue government over driving ban

This from Agence France Press today: Text below, and link is here

RIYADH — (February 4, 2012) Two Saudi female activists have filed law suits against the government for refusing to issue them driver's licences and banning them from driving a car, they told AFP on Saturday.

Manal al-Sherif, the icon of an Internet campaign launched last year urging Saudi women to defy a ban on driving, and human rights activist Samar Badawi filed their suits against the interior ministry.

Sherif, who was arrested in May 2011 and detained for 10 days after posting on YouTube a video of herself driving, said she decided to file the lawsuit after having been denied a driver's licence.

"There is no actual law that states woman can't drive" in Saudi Arabia and therefore "no justification for preventing them from issuing a licence," said Sherif, one of the activists behind a "My Right, My Dignity" campaign aimed at ending discrimination against women in Saudi Arabia.

Badawi said the grievance board at the interior ministry had informed her to "follow-up in a week" to confirm a court appointment for her lawsuit.

Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are not allowed to drive. However, they sit behind the wheel in desert regions away from the capital.

Women in the kingdom who have the financial means hire drivers while others must depend on the goodwill of male relatives.

They also have to be veiled in public and cannot travel unless accompanied by their husbands or a close male relative.