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Saudi King Commutes Lashing Sentence For Woman Driver

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on October 2, 2011.

Saudi women driving (by Christopher Rose/khowagal, Flickr, Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-2.0)

On Wednesday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia overruled the cleric court and commuted the lashing sentence they had handed down for Sheima Jastaniah for driving a car in the city of Jeddah last July.

Princess Amira al-Taweel, wife of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, told The Express Tribune, “Thank God, the lashing of Sheima is cancelled. Thanks to our beloved King. I’m sure all Saudi women will be so happy. I know I am.” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is the King’s nephew, second son of his half brother Prince Talal, and the 26^th richest man in the world. Among his many assets is a 7% share in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (worth $3 billion) and he was a major contributor to the Park51 project. Princess Amira, like many of the royal Saudi women, has traveled extensively outside the country and is very aware of the limitations imposed on her countrywomen.

The sentence for Sheima Jastaniah had been handed down on September 26, immediately prompting a campaign on Change.org, calling on Saudi officials to drop the charges. Driving is not illegal for women in the civil laws of Saudi Arabia, but it forbidden in the severe Sharia law that the Wahabi Sunni clerics enforce. It has been very hard for the King, trying to thread a path between the desire for modernity among Saudis, who have been allowed to become educated beyond the jobs they are allowed to hold, and the clerics who have been traditionally deferred to by the monarchs who are called the “Guardian of the Two Mosques” – Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites in Islam.

On September 25, King Abdullah had announced that in the next round of municipal elections, in four years, women would finally be allowed to stand for office and vote. King Abdullah is fighting to keep the protests of the Arab Spring out of Saudi Arabia with massive public projects, raises for public servants and more hand-outs for the population of what many view as the biggest welfare state in the world. Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers have flooded Saudi Arabia for decades, while the native population is handed checks and denied jobs.

It is a rare move for the King to defy the clerics, and one that he must exercise cautiously to avoid the kind of Islamic revolution that removed the Shah of Iran.