Women in Saudi Arabia got behind the steering wheels of their cars today to challenge the world’s only ban on driving by females.
Several Saudi women boldly got behind the wheel today, seeking to ignite a road rebellion against the male-only driving rules in the ultraconservative kingdom.
Activists, inspired in part by the uprisings around the Arab world, have not appealed for mass protests in any specific sites. But they urged Saudi women to begin a growing mutiny against the driving restrictions that are supported by clerics backing austere interpretations of Islam and enforced by powerful morality squads.
One woman reportedly managed a 45-minute trip through the capital Riyadh as encouragement poured in via the internet.
The defiance could bring difficult choices for the Western-backed Saudi authorities, who have escaped major unrest from the Middle East turmoil. Officials could either launch a crackdown on the women and face international pressure, or give way to the demands and angering traditional-minded clerics and other groups opposing reforms.
It also could encourage wider reform bids by Saudi women, who have not been allowed to vote and must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel or take a job.
In the early hours of the protest, security forces mostly held back from challenging the women drivers, activists said. Some reported that women drove directly in front of police patrols.
"We want women from today to begin exercising their rights," said Wajeha al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women's rights activist who posted internet clips of herself driving in 2008. "Today on the roads is just the opening in a long campaign. We will not go back."
The plan, she said, is for women who have obtained driving licences abroad to begin doing their daily errands and commuting on their own. "We'll keep it up until we get a royal decree removing the ban," she said.
The campaign's official start follows the 10-day detention last month of a 32-year-old woman, Manal al-Sherif, after she posted video of herself driving. She was released after reportedly signing a pledge that she would not drive again or speak publicly.
Her case, however, sparked an outcry from international rights groups and brought direct appeals to Saudi's rulers to lift the driving ban on women - the only such countrywide rule in the world.
Protest supporter Benjamin Joffe-Walt said there were confirmed reports of at least several woman in the driver's seat in the capital, Riyadh.
One of them was Maha al-Qahtani, a computer specialist at Saudi's Ministry of Education, who said she drove for 45 minutes around the city with her husband in the passenger seat. "I wanted to make a point," she said in a telephone interview. "I took it directly to the streets of the capital."
Web message boards set up on Twitter and other social media carried unconfirmed reports that some women also got behind the wheel in the eastern city of Dammam and elsewhere. Mr Joffe-Walt said some Saudi men claimed they drove around dressed in the traditional black coverings for women in an attempt to confuse security forces.
But conservative forces also counterattacked on the web. One video, denouncing the "revolution of corruption," featured patriotic songs and a sinister-looking black hand with red fingernails reaching for the Saudi flag. One Facebook, a hard-line group had the message for Saudi women seeking the right to drive: "Dream on".
No arrests or violence were reported.
Saudi Arabia has no written law barring women from driving - only fatwas, or religious edicts, by senior clerics following a strict brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. They claim the driving ban protects against the spread of vice and temptation because women drivers would be free to leave home alone and interact with male strangers. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers or rely on male relatives to drive, although some drive when they’re in desert areas away from cities.
Saudi King Abdullah has promised some social reforms, but he depends on the clerics to support his ruling family and is unlikely to take steps that would bring backlash from the religious establishment.
“Saudi Arabian authorities must stop treating women as second-class citizens and open the kingdom’s roads to women drivers,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “Saudi Arabian authorities must not arrest licensed women who choose to drive, and must grant them the same driving privileges as men."
The last time a group of women publicly defied the driving ban was on November 6th, 1990, when US troops massed in Saudi Arabia to prepare for a war that would expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The Saudi women were spurred by images of female US soldiers driving in the desert and stories of Kuwaiti women driving their children to safety, and they were counting on the presence of the international media to ensure their story would reach the world and lessen the repercussions.