Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Saudi woman to be lashed for driving car
A Saudi woman has been sentenced to to 10 lashes for challenging a ban on women driving.
Sheima Jastaniah was sentenced on Monday by a court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, where she was caught driving in July.
There is no law banning women from driving, but there is a law requiring citizens to use locally issued licences while in the country. Such licences are not issued to women, making it effectively illegal for them to drive.
IMO: I have every sympathy for the Saudi administration for trying to enforce their own views in the 21st century, but it is quite difficult to avoid absurd and even harmful anachronisms and the like. One feels in the difficult present day situation it is rather easy to compare disparagingly the Saudi behaviour of a woman apparently trying to obey the Koran in terms she believed best, and the Saudis apparently avoiding real problems like the connivance of the Chinese and Pakistani authorities not just to spread nuclear terror, but to attempt to force the Uighur people to breach Islamic law. Surely the Saudis could be a lttle more responsive to world conditions without any real loss.
Sheima Jastaniah was sentenced on Monday by a court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, where she was caught driving in July.
There is no law banning women from driving, but there is a law requiring citizens to use locally issued licences while in the country. Such licences are not issued to women, making it effectively illegal for them to drive.
IMO: I have every sympathy for the Saudi administration for trying to enforce their own views in the 21st century, but it is quite difficult to avoid absurd and even harmful anachronisms and the like. One feels in the difficult present day situation it is rather easy to compare disparagingly the Saudi behaviour of a woman apparently trying to obey the Koran in terms she believed best, and the Saudis apparently avoiding real problems like the connivance of the Chinese and Pakistani authorities not just to spread nuclear terror, but to attempt to force the Uighur people to breach Islamic law. Surely the Saudis could be a lttle more responsive to world conditions without any real loss.
# posted by uv : 5:51 PM
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