Dons, others speak on Saudi Arabia’s U-turn on rule against driving by women

THE media have been awash with news of the decision of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to allow women to sit in the driver’s seat by issuing them, like their male counterparts, driving licence by June 2018.

The development has stimulated anticipation among womenfolk in not only the Gulf country but across the world.
In accordance with a royal decree signed by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a high-level committee of ministers has been set up to examine the arrangements for the enforcement of the reversal of the longstanding rule.
The decree says that women will be allowed to drive “in accordance with the Islamic laws”.

Al Jazeera quoted analysts as saying that the announcement followed a gender-mixed celebration of Saudi National Day over the weekend, the first of its kind, which aimed to spotlight the kingdom’s reform push despite a backlash from religious conservatives.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world which does not allow women to drive.
While there have been restrictions imposed on women drivers, some female activists have defied the ban, leading to their arrests.

Nigerians are not left out in the excitement that has greeted the new development in Saudi Arabia with some Muslim university teachers and other stakeholders in the affairs of the Muslim world sharing their opinions with the Nigerian Tribune.

A professor of Middle Eastern, North African and Cultural Studies, Afis Oladosu, said there was the need to recognise the right of Saudi authorities to legislate on all matters that they consider critical to the promotion of the security and welfare of the citizens of that country. He said “the law that prohibited driving by women was supposedly put in place to further that important goal.”

However, Professor Oladosu, who is a former Head of Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Ibadan, hastened to say that the law had no precedent in Islamic history. “In other words, I do not know of an instance in the annals of Islam when Muslim women were forbidden from riding camels or horses at a time those animals were the main means of transportation.

“I equally would argue that the ban in question was predicated on the slippery assumption that by taking women away from driver’s seat, sanity and dignity would be guaranteed for the Saudi society.
“For me these assumptions are unsustainable. I don’t want to say that they are arcane. I guess the lifting of the ban was informed by the realisation that it serves no useful purpose, particularly in our world today.”
Also, the Chief Imam of the University of Abuja, Professor Taofiq Abdul Azeez, said the ban, in the first place, was unfortunate because it had no basis in the Sharia.

“I believe that the absurdity was sustained by two unfortunate realities. We are generally ignorant. Our ignorance is pandemic and so nobody interrogates absurdity because virtually everybody is ignorant. The second is slave mentality which makes us feel that whatever Saudi Arabia does is correct and in line with the Sharia,” the professor of English said.

The don added that “it is clear that the Kingdom was wrong in the first place because women rode, even horses, during the time of the Prophet and beyond.”

He said he was not aware of any part of the Sharia that the move [of Saudi Arabia] complied with.
In his own reaction, Professor Is-haq Akintola of the Lagos State University described the decision to allow women in Saudi Arabia to drive as a welcome development.
The director of Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) reasoned that this meant that Saudi Arabia “is relaxing some of its Draconian rules.”

According to him, “Saudi is coming out of its conservative enclave. Yet Islamic scholars must commend Saudi for resisting Western imperialist carrot which was eagerly bitten by Muslim countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia where Muslim women are struggling against ban on hijab and men are forbidden from taking second wives. Those are places where things made compulsory by Allah are forbidden.”

On the propriety or otherwise of Saudi banning driving by women in the first place, Professor Akintola expressed the conviction that every country has the right to determine how to shape its own life and every country has its own idiosyncrasies.

“We have no right to sit down in judgement over other countries. We have to consider other correlates which may not be at our disposal. Can we ask if Western countries are right to have legislated gay marriage? Can we question some Western countries which have permitted adultery? So, the issue is not about judging other countries. Saudi should simply be lauded for deeming it right to liberalise in some areas of its social life regarding restrictions on women.

“It is interesting to note that Saudi also appointed a woman as its spokesperson in its embassy in Washington. That was a bold step. But it also points strategically to the fact that Saudi itself has started a process of self-assessment. My take is that we should expect more in the very near future,” the don said.

Akintola noted that “there is no clear scriptural evidence for either a ban or a permission. Every government seeks to moderate the lives of its citizens as suitable for its environment or its culture.”
The National Missioner of Ansar-Ud-Deen Society of Nigeria, Shaykh Abdur-Rahman Ahmad, also spoke on the development, which he said he considered as “a stand-alone issue.” He, however, described it as a welcome development and a step in the right direction.

“You will, of course, recall that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the Islamic world and the world at large where women are not allowed to drive. And if they are unbanning driving by women now and are considering it very seriously, then it is a very welcome development.
“However, if it goes beyond returning to what is truly Islamic, what can be truly supported from the scriptures to what they call liberalisation and would affect the letter and spirit of the Shari’ah, then, I would be the first to be opposed to it.

“Mark you, Islam enhances human dignity and the dignity of women and provides for the welfare of all. So, when Islam is properly practised, you find welfarism, you find realism, you find progress, you find development. I am not looking at Islam from the cultural perspective but from the perspective of religion and the totality of Islam, untainted by bias, untainted by intellectual laziness and untainted by hypocrisy of all forms.

“If banning women from driving is a fundamental principle of Islam, then it would have been all over the Muslim world. We would have direct references to that in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. My opinion is that there is perhaps nothing wrong in banning women driving in the first place. Perhaps it is more cultural than religious. So, the unbanning, I would say, is a step in the right direction,” Shaykh Ahmad said.

In his own view, Dr Ismail Yusuf of Crescent University, Abeokuta, said: “The Muftis [interpreter of Islamic law] of Saudi Arabia have not said women cannot drive but the underlying idea of the principle of not granting them driving licence is to prevent what they deem the concomitant evils. They have never presented any evidence from the Qur’an or the Sunnah to justify the ban. And, indeed, there is nothing in the Qur’an or the Sunnah that says women cannot drive.

“The authorities of that country are only trying to prevent the unwholesome developments that might attend granting them such licence. Perhaps one of the by-products of granting them the licence is that Saudi women, especially those from privileged families, would be going out at will and in the process have unwanted contacts with men, and Saudi is such a society that abhors unnecessary, uncontrolled intermingling between the opposite sexes. It is unlike our own society where men and women board the same vehicles and even ride on the same motorcycles together.”

You May Also Like:

NAHCON to take over Makkah accommodation of pilgrims in 2018