Saudis still oppress women

Caution is needed about Saudi King Salman’s announcement of a royal decree allowing women to drive cars for the first time from June next year. The anachronistic driving ban has long been a symbol of the oppression of women under sharia law in a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim kingdom that is the fountainhead of much of the Islamist extremism across the world. The change of heart is being presented by the Saudis as an event of immense historical significance, and in some ways it is. Linking the announcement to reforms that have allowed women, for the first time, to enter football stadiums, dance in the streets on Saudi Arabia’s national day and attend an open air concert, the editor-in-chief of the Jeddah-based Arab News has written of the royal proclamation as “a landmark, positive moment in the kingdom’s history” and a “courageous decision”.

Welcome as these changes may be, King Salman and his Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman — the driving force behind the reforms — need to realise that they serve only to open a window on the obscurantist society Saudi Arabia remains, and how far it still has to go.

Even the “revolutionary” lifting of the driving ban is hedged with grossly discriminatory qualifications: women won’t get licences without the approval of a male guardian until police have been educated in how to deal with females and only women over 30 will get licences and be allowed on the roads from 7am to 8pm. Islamist opponents have cited “licentiousness” and “facilitating prostitution” as concerns.

One particularly wacky Saudi cleric warned women should not be allowed to drive “because their brains shrink to a quarter the size of men’s when they go shopping”. Another said driving would damage their ovaries and babies.

Saudi women still cannot obtain a passport or travel abroad without a male relative’s permission. Crown Prince Mohammed, with his zeal to bring the kingdom into the modern world, must do much more. Putting a stop to Saudi Arabia’s funding of the extremist Salafist madrassas and mosques across the world that fuel Islamist extremism is long over due.