Everybody wins
Manal al-Sharif, age 32, drives a car. Manal al-Sharif goes to jail. Manal al-Sharif is released from jail upon signing an undertaking never to do such an outrageous thing again.
“Concerning the topic of women’s driving, I will leave it up to our leader in whose discretion I entirely trust, to weigh the pros and cons and reach a decision that will take into consideration the best interests of the people, while also being pleasing to Allah, and in line with divine law,” she said, according to a translation of her statement.
“On this happy occasion, I would also like to affirm that never in my life had I been anything beside a Muslim, Saudi woman who aspires to remain in God’s good graces and to safeguard the reputation of our beloved country.”
Well there you go. If their leader decides, in his infinite wisdom, that women not driving cars is pleasing to Allah, then it is only right for them to obey. If their leader decides that Allah is a petty bullying shit who can’t stand to see women have the most ordinary kind of freedom, then that’s what Allah is, and all that’s left for Manal al-Sharif to do is to promise to try to remain in the shit’s good graces.
perhaps the alternative she was offered was a public flogging. It was Saudi Arabia, that gem of rationality in a world gone wild!
Yay for the religion of peace – peace for god-fearin’ lads who just want their damn womenfolk to shut their yaps, fer crissakes, or cop a dozen rocks to their pretty faces.
Maybe if the car itself could be covered in a burka……..
Charles, I’m assuming you’re riffing off of this piece
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQ29po1Y2M
On a more serious tip, I find this heartbreaking. I appreciate Manal al-Sharif so much for trying to make a difference. She may not have succeeded, but the word is out there in the world now.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/We-are-supporting-Manal-Alsharif/229788737035282?sk=wall
What do the Saudi political and religious authorities fear? Could it be that they fear the consequences of allow women greater self-determination? Could it be that once women have the means to determine their own lives that they fear that women will want to diminish the authority of those who have been oppressing them and have them removed from their position of power?
Peter
That was quick! Welcome back Ophelia! What an absurd story. Woman drives car. Woman is imprisoned. Woman promises not to do such an evil thing again. Everyone is happy. The madness of religion knows no boundaries. If it is silly enough, some religion will have believed it. Religions seem unable to see, and are certainly unwilling to concede, that religious authority is purely human, so when they are claiming to establish society on the basis of God’s laws, it a dominant group of men (almost always) that claim to speak for God. There’s no other access. Why cannot they see this? Madness to surrender to religious authority.
Because it is really, and has always been, about power and control. And if they give women equality it is the end of that power and control. They do see that.
someone read this : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392454/Muslim-girl-Katya-Koren-19-stoned-death-beauty-contest-Ukraine.html#ixzz1NrmjPyKb
Oh come on, the car was asking for it! Traipsing around like that with its fuel efficient engine half bare for everyone to see, swinging that tailpipe like a horny little Porsche just begging to be taken for a drive… and strutting around like that in front of a bunch of driving-deprived women, what did the car would expect would happen!
Um, ah… wait a minute… sorry, the binding is worn on my Misogynist’s Handbook and the pages seem to have come all jumbled… I’m not sure I got this one right. Hold on…
Brings up some thoughts about obligation to obey laws, especially laws that are seen as unfair.
How about those who say “the law is the law, whether you like it or not”. How about laws that ban (even ‘medical’) pot? How about states that say a 16 year old can’t drive (even though they can elsewhere)? Or who can drink? Or laws that you can’t sell your stock in a company because you learned something ‘inappropriately’? Or laws that make your basement poker game a crime?
This is not a defense of the idiocy in SA, but laws are ridiculously arbitrary all over the place. And a lot of them are absurdly unfair.
Rosa Parks challenged the law, but she had the Constitution on her side. Most places do not have that luxury.
Sorry about the incoherence of this post, but it stirs up a lot of questions. I defend the rights of that woman, but to be consistent I defend the rights of a lot of other ‘lawbreakers’ too, even if I don’t agree with them.
Funny you should mention the Daily Mail piece on the girl killed apparently because she entered a beauty contest. I was trying to find a more reputable source for that story when the bug flew in – I think via the Daily Mirror.
In the examples you give, people are legally entitled to campaign for a change in the law. Saudi Arabia is little different from a slave state, so breaking the law in this context is more like a demand for rights, which by its nature may have to overstep the boundaries. But you have to start somewhere. Driving a car, sitting on a bus, it may be illegal, but the point does have to be made.
I gather the king is showing signs of wishing to grant women greater personal freedom, but I imagine that there isn’t a great deal he can do, at least, not all at once.
When I was visiting medical schools in Saudi in 1981, I asked the Dean in Riyadh about this. He called me to the window, saying: ‘Look at that traffic down there! Every Bedouin around here drives his Toyota truck paid for by the king into the city, can’t read the signs, doesn’t care about that. If he saw a woman driving, he’d probably drive into her, intentionally!’ Faisal’s wife, an educated Turk, tried very hard to change things for women in the kingdom. She succeeded with education for girls – today more than half of Saudi medical graduates are women – but failed with the driving bit. Had Faisal not been assassinated by a conservative nephew, in 1975, Saudi women might be much better off today. Faisal was much too liberal for the Wahabi fanatics, and had to go. Women do drive in Yemen, right next door, and in the Emirates, I hear.
I can only hope that al-Sharif does not mean a word she’s saying and is paying lip service to this ridiculous law to lull the authorities into a false sense of security and flatter their egos. Saudi seems to me like an abusive relationship writ large and sometimes it makes practical (i.e. survival) sense to sweet-talk one’s abuser in order to make them think they’re still in control and they have ‘won’, for now. Also, how much of a difference can she make while in prison? Of course it might be that she really does believe what she’s saying and has had a big change of heart, in which case I feel very sorry for her – and I hope her public statement does not demoralise too many other women. But if she had the guts to do this in the first place, she must have believed in women’s freedom very passionately, so would she really change her mind so quickly?
I don’t think the women’s driving campaign is over yet, and we’ve probably not seen the last of al-Sharif. But she’ll perhaps use less direct methods next time.
Either that or I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale too many times.
What you say is true, but as we are always told in school: “driving is not a right it’s a privilege”. Is the denial of a license to a 16 year old, or an undocumented alien here functionally different?
What determines what ‘oversteps’ the boundaries?
Jay, the women being denied driving licenses in Saudi are adults – who have no difference in potential ability to drive than the adult men of the country. I can’t comment on US immigration policy but the comparison of adult women with children of 16 (or younger) is a tad insulting to say the least.
To state the obvious, there is a reason why children are not allowed to do certain things that adults can do, quite often to do with maturity, education, life experience and so on. As a human being develops, the boundary of legal behaviour must be drawn somewhere. If you would give a 16 year old a driving license, then how about a 14 year old? A 10 year old?
You cannot treat an adult human being as though they were a child whose brain is still developing. (Of course this doesn’t stop the Saudi regime from treating women in just such a way.)
Jay, I don’t know whether we are dealing with an actual law or with a religion-based custom that is so taken for granted by the male half of the population as to have the force of law, but clearly the boundary is drawn at whatever the law or virtual law states. So “crossing the boundary” is another way of saying “breaking the law”. The issue here is nothing to do with a distinction between rights and privileges but with an assertion of rights per se. In other words, it’s a conflict between local law and morality. Women are claiming the moral right to be accorded a privilege granted only to men. Given the nature of the law in question, to assert a moral right is simultaneously to break the law. As women in Saudi have no political means to demand redress there is no option in this case, and probably in the case of most of their other moral claims. This kind of action is a rebellion, and I sincerely hope that women will unite and will have the courage and determination to win their fight.
Given the nature of the law in question.
This needs amplification. In any totalitarian regime the boundary between legal and illegal is drawn well before the actual observable act. This is very clear in the case of theocracy, because theocratic law is equated with the law of God (by being derived from it), who sees into all hearts. Even to think of doing something contrary to law is itself a crime, which is to say, “sin” (defined as whatever is contrary to God, to the humble acceptance of God in the heart, etc.). It follows that there is no moral distinction to be drawn between questioning the justice of a law and breaking it in practice. And as moral principles cannot be distinguished from legal ones, even to request a change in the law is a criminal act.
Saudi is also a slave state, in which women are defined as the possessions of men, and exist only to fulfil the requirements of men in accordance with the will of Allah. They are not full persons (i.e. persons “in their own right”). Oppression of half the population can only be maintained by the techniques of isolation (restricted movement, continual male presence outside the home), violent forms of intimidation (which is why the violence is always excessive in comparison with the nature of the perceived misdemeanour), and thought reform (religious indoctrination). Also, cynical advantage is taken of the peculiar position of women in regard to their biological and related psychological needs (which is why even the accompaniment of a little boy is deemed sufficient to restrict a woman’s activities when she is out of the house).
The following is from the petition letter to Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (you can find it on http://www.change.org/ ).
Given the situation with which Saudi women are confronted every day of their lives, even to put forward so merely reasonable a request is an act of singular courage.
The reason I used that is because in some state 16 year olds CAN legally drive so it cannot be argued that this is an absurd proposition. And yes I DO support that wonan’s position. But there are wide-reaching implications
My point was to view it in the larger context of disobeying a plain law that one or may feels is unfair. What differentiates this from other situations? paying a tax that is unfair, laws about marijuana that many feel are unfair, immigration laws that many feel are unfair. Or, looking at the other side of the coin. there probably are millions who feel that the housing antidiscrimination when applied to sexual orientation are unfair and perhaps they choose to disobey these laws.
Recently there has been some cases in the news; a Catholic group got out of the adoption business rather than adopt children to gay people, a couple was denied children because they would have taught the child that ‘being gay is wrong’. From their position, are they not doing pretty much the same thing? Are they not standing up against a law that they feel (I am certain they sincerely feel this) is repugnant and wrong? If you tell them shut up and obey the law because that is the law are you now more like the Saudi government?
Sometimes one’s principles demand defiance of the law, subversion is sometimes required and that is by definition a criminal act. But being a criminal is not always a bad thing but it does weaken the argument that others should blindly obey the laws you agree with.
In an imperfect world it is not easy, perhaps not possible, to have the luxury of answering all possible ethical objections before making a stand on principle. The question of making the case for obedience to the law has to be taken in the context of people’s actions in response to their needs. Much must depend also on the nature of a given law, for example a Christian’s asserted right to indoctrinate children in an idea inimical to the rights of other members of society as opposed to a law which is established for the very purpose of protecting the rights of those members.
The question becomes not “whether it is justified to break the law” but “when it is justified to break the law”, and this can only be decided on moral, not legal, grounds. If it can be shown that a law must of necessity be broken in order to establish a moral right, then the law fails and must be repealed and replaced. If, on the other hand, any such moral right is denied, then the law stands.
In the present case, part of what the women of Saudi Arabia have to contest is the actual moral underpinning of the law. The question of action in response to needs is to be understood in context: are those needs accepted by society as both real and a valid moral claim? The whole question of rebellion against oppression has to address not only the question of rights versus law but the whole social mindset which sees the complainants as intrinsically underprivileged.
I was going to say something else, but to keep it short, I will only add that “sitting on a bus” is entirely relevant to this issue.
jay – it’s not a law. It’s certainly not a “plain law.” It’s a custom. Is it ok to rebel against a (profoundly unjust and absurd) custom? Yes.
Thanks for that clarification, Ophelia. I’d like to point out that it’s a custom which seems to empower the police to arrest people.
Sorry if that comes out a bit blunt. All I mean is that in a theocracy the clear distinction between law and custom is not always very easy to perceive. The police presumably thought they had legal grounds for preferring charges.
You bet; Saudi is like that. The religious police arrest people any way they like. (There’s a transliterated word for them, but the guy who is translating Does God Hate Women? into Kurdish [whom I met in Stockholm] told me yesterday that we spelled it wrong in the book…I’m thinking it’s more that we just used one of several possible transliterations, but since I don’t know which one is preferred, I’m not using any at the moment.)
Oh, and now that I check the book, I see that it’s actually not our spelling anyway, it’s in a quoted passage.
Anyway – right – Wikipedia says there are variant spellings – mutaween, mutawwain, muttawa, mutawallees, mutawa’ah, mutawi’, mutawwa’.
Anyway – those guys.
Kurdish! Brilliant. As to transliteration, I think I can truthfully say that I don’t really know how to spell any Arabic word. For example, that berk… word. I do not know how many spellings I’ve seen but it seems an awful lot.
I like the spelling that begins mutt.
Yes, it is brilliant about Kurdish. I met him at Sara Mohammed’s office. It was so exciting meeting all those people. If the Middle Eastern Spring keeps going, some of them might even be able to go home some day.
I hope that something of spring is coming to Saudi. I hope this doesn’t end badly.
Thinking all round this issue, I’m glad you mentioned Sara Mohammed because it brought to mind something of hers I found and kept:
It seems to go to the heart of how women are not seen as persons in their own right, even by their own fathers and brothers. There is an awful gulf here between seeing a person as what she is and seeing her as who she is. I don’t know how it can be bridged. It’s still not bridged in the civilised world, let alone the barbarian East.