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Cleric Says Saudi Women Will Lose Virginity If They Drive Cars

This one would be too funny if the Saudi government weren’t seriously listening to it.

The back story is simple. Saudi women want to be able to legally drive cars. While it is not technically illegal for them to do so, it falls under the heading of clerical control of society, something that is outside the secular aspects of Saudi government. For months now, Saudi women have been holding driving protests, risking arrest, imprisonment and lashes for their actions. The Saudi monarchy, in the person of King Abdullah, is trying to institute reforms in his country to counter the inspiration of the Arab Spring.

The latest “report” is probably the dumbest to be issued in this debate. Respected cleric and academic Kamal Subhi has written a report that says that allowing women to drive will increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, and divorce and cost women their much-prized virginity. Apparently, they will lose it on the stick shifts.

Let’s see, no one can pin a date on the first case of prostitution, but it is called “the oldest profession.” There is extensive pornography in the ruins of Pompeii, which was destroyed by that volcano in 79 C.E. The signs for brothels, carved in the street stones, are a hoot. The rules for divorce are outlined in the Old Testament. Homosexuality? Well, we’re pretty sure that’s as old as senient life. Gee whiz – all this stuff existed long before a Frenchman named Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot figured out how to use steam to propel a road vehicle in 1769. 

There is a massive disconnect between the facts of The Prophet’s life and his writings about women and the way women are treated in some parts of the Muslim world. Mohammed’s wives worked. He advocated education for all – male and female, rich and poor. His last wife led armies in his name and the Shia trace their branch of Islam to Mohammed’s daughter Fatima. Islam honors the Virgin Mary as much as Catholicism does and far more than Protestantism does. The Prophet’s injunctions about dressing modestly and behaving modestly were aimed at men as well as women, but they have been twisted into the burqa and a face veil that is culturally older than Islam and not specifically called for in the Qur’an. The veil is a hold-over from medieval times just as the old nuns’ habits were, not something that is truly part of the faith. The Prophet expected women to be educated and to work. Without the incomes of his wives, The Prophet would not have been free to be The Prophet. In many ways, Mohammed was way before his time on the subject of women’s rights.

Saudi activists have countered Subhi’s report by saying that the practice of having women driven everywhere by men actually increases their danger of being sexually assaulted. Nice answer to a stupid position. One of the first things we teach our daughters is safety in numbers – don’t go anywhere alone. The Saudi driving rules put women at risk of being alone with men in a moving vehicle and totally at the mercy of those men. Turnabout’s fair play in this debate. Too often, in religious debates, women are held to be not just the weaker sex but the morally deficient sex. The clerics never take the position that men should not be left alone with a woman, but constantly insist that women be left alone with men, relatives and hired drivers and servants.

There really is only one argument against the misogynism of fundamentalist Islam – the words of the Qur’an and the lives of The Prophet, his wives and his daughter.

Related articles

• Saudis fear there will be ‘no more virgins’ and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted (counterjihadreport.com)
• Saudi Clerics Warn of Impending End of Virginity and Rise of Homosexuality (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Saudi Arabia to run out of virgins within 10 years (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• Saudi report: Women driving spurs premarital sex (seattletimes.nwsource.com)