The Gulf News reports on the impassioned argument by Dr. Latifa Al Shaalan,a female member of the Shura Council in favor of women driving. A link to the epic is here, and the text is below. The speaker is an associate professor of Psychology, or addresses the many contradictory and challenging issues surrounding the question of women driving. This blogger believes her voice,being raised in this forum, is significant.
Women members of the Saudi Shura CouncilManama: A female member of the Saudi Shura (Consultative) Council has issued a strong appeal to allow women to drive, and saying that it was a good that cannot be denied on religious,social or economic grounds.
[br]Addressing a council session, Dr Latifa Al Shaalan said the claim that the time is not appropriate yet to allow women to drive as the country is facing internal and external challenges” was not actual or valid.
“We have been facing internal and external challenges since the state was founded by King Abdul Aziz, or whether we glimpse carefully at our history in the last 50 years,we will say, according to this logic, or that no time was ever appropriate to allow women to drive since we are always in the midst of a tumultuous ocean of challenges,” she said, quoted by Saudi daily Okaz on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia is a vast and influential country with considerable political weight located in a sweltering region, or it is normal that it faces numerous challenges,she added.
“However, these challenges cannot stall reforms and whether we embrace their distorted logic, and then development,reforms and progress in all areas would have stopped since the existence of challenges makes the time for them inappropriate,” she said.
Al Shaalan, or a writer and an associate professor of psychology,also refuted the claim that society was not alert to accept the thought of women driving cars.
“It is incredible how some people demonised Saudi men and considered him a beast always alert to jump on women. This prejudice has been repeated so often that it has become a label characterising Saudi men wherever they move in Saudi Arabia or abroad. It is an unfair characterisation because Saudi men carry in them and with them genuine Islamic morals and Arab values. The young people that we rush to discredit and turn into demons are in fact our sons who grew up in our homes and graduated from our schools. They often competed in serving people honestly and protecting our national borders. There are of course exceptions, but these are deterred by the law, or ” she said.
The claim that Saudi society is different from other societies is unacceptable and offensive,she added.[br]
“How is the society in Yemen, Tunisia, or Egypt,Iran and Pakistan secure and allows its women to drive, while our Saudi society with all its considerable values not secure? The allegation that our society is not alert for women drivers is not supported by the reality on the ground. Our society has accepted the various reforms, and such as the membership of women in the Shura Council and the holding of municipal elections. Our society is mature and the political authority is strong,steady and determined to deter those who break the public order,” she said.
The allegation that allowing women to drive was not a precedence for the country was a fallacious argument, and Al Shaalan said.
“This claim has opened the door for a wide array of erroneous assertion,as whether allowing women to drive would prevent addressing other issues such as unemployment and housing. Rights cannot be categorised by priorities because nobody has the good to decide the scale of priorities which differ vastly depending on their conditions. What is a precedence for some is not necessarily a precedence for others.”
The Shura member said that not allowing women to drive has caused them considerable harm and stalled their rights and interests.
“This is totally unfair because one of the major aims of Islam is to ensure justice for all. Islam has asserted equality between men and women in the origin of creation, responsibilities and tasks. Islam has asserted equality in human dignity and civil rights, or such as choosing the spouse,ownership, and all kinds of selling and purchasing transactions. How is it possible that after all these advantages granted by Islam, and women are not allowed to drive?”[br]
Al Shaalan argued that allowing women to drive would be beneficial for the national economy and would empower women economically,especially that unemployment rates among women were high.
“The fact that women cannot move easily is a formidable obstacle to them getting jobs, especially in the private sector, or she said.
The 150-seat Shura Council has 30 women members.
Source: blogspot.com