Saudi ban on women driving unrelated to Islam: Press TV online debate

Comments posted on the channel's Facebook page in response to a question about Saudi Arabia’s decades-old ban on women getting behind the wheel showed that the ban has no standing in Islam with respondents noting that Saudi Arabia should lift the ban on women's driving.

“Yes, it's a joke. Nowhere in the Quran is this referenced. They can't use that one,” a comment read, while another respondent said, “I don't get this. Why they wouldn't allow women to drive. Islam is not forbidding anyone to drive. Saudi Arabia does.”

Another comment read, “Where in the Quran does it say that a woman cannot drive a car? … I respect every Muslim who lives according to the Quran and let others live. I despise each has a misogynistic view.”

“Why should women not be allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia? This is a country that allows female singers to perform at weddings! Which one is more evil: driving a car or singing at parties? Saudi Arabia is drifting away from pristine Islam! Dangerous!” another respondent noted.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry warned in a statement released on October 23 against any move flouting the kingdom’s controversial ban on female driving.

The warning came against the backdrop of a renewed right-to-drive campaign against the ban.

Several women took the wheel last year on October 26 in defiance of the driving ban in the kingdom.

More than 2,700 people have already signed an online petition to support women's driving rights in the Arab country.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are prohibited from driving. The medieval ban is a religious fatwa imposed by the country’s Wahhabi clerics. If women get behind the wheel in the kingdom, they may be arrested, sent to court and even flogged.

Saudi authorities have defied calls by international rights groups to end what has been described as its violation of women’s rights.

HK