One estimate suggests that the next elections in Saudi Arabia will be held in four years. There was no time for women to participate in this week’s elections, which will only be the second elections held in Saudi Arabia since 1963. L. S. Carbonell – lezgetreal.com One estimate suggests that the next elections in Saudi Arabia will be held in four years. There was no time for women to participate in this week’s elections, which will only be the second elections held in Saudi Arabia since 1963. The celebrations for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia lasted a whole 48 hours. On Tuesday, a woman was sentenced to flogging for driving a car. She will receive 10 lashes with a whip. Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director, Philip Luther, told the press “Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances, but it beggers belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car. Belatedly allowing women to vote in council elections is all well and good, but if they are still going to face being flogged for trying to exercise their right to freedom of movement, then the King’s much-trumpeted ‘reforms’ actually amount to ver little.” Especially since it’s not illegal for women to drive. Saudi Arabia has two distinct legal systems – the civil law of the kingdom and the Sharia law that is enforced by the clerics. Under the version of Sharia in the nation that is the birthplace of Islam, a guardianship system is imposed on women and they must have the permission of their guardians to work in businesses not inappropriate for women, leave the house, travel abroad, open a bank account, obtain a passport, go to school or engage in just about any activitiy. They must be accompanied everywhere by a male guardian. A woman’s testimony in court is worth only half the testimony of a man and if a woman is a rape victim, she is as guilty as the rapist because she must have engaged in a “mixing of the genders.” This is, after all, a country in which a princess of the royal family was beheaded for adultery. In the most fundamentalist variations of Islam, the passages in the Qur’an about women have been interpreted as a religious obligation to “protect” women to the point of oppression. On Sunday, King Abdullah announced that women will be allowed to vote and run for public office at the municipal level. The only national level offices available are on an appointed Shura Council which acts as advisors to the king. He promised to appoint women to the Shura Council. One estimate suggests that the next elections in Saudi Arabia will be held in four years. There was no time for women to participate in this week’s elections, which will only be the second elections held in Saudi Arabia since 1963. Women2Drive is the activist group behind the periodic protest drives in Saudi Arabia. They said in a statement that the woman who was sentenced to 10 lashes is appealing her sentence, and also requested anonymity during this process, for her own safety. Maha Al-Qahtani, a member of Women2Drive said, “After the euphoria of the announcement on voting, we are saddened and shocked to hear the news today.” The sentence was handed down by a court in Jeddah. Two other women are being prosecuted, in Jeddah and al-Khobar. On Tuesday, activist Madeah Alajroush was pulled over by the police for driving in Riyadh. She was questioned and released after signing a pledge not to drive again and calling a cab. Activist Manal al Sharif was stopped on May 21 and spent a week in jail. Women’s rights are going to be a central issue as the reforms and revolutions of the Arab Spring progress. Egyptian and Turkish women have long enjoyed more freedom than Muslim women in other Middle Eastern and North African countries. Women in Egypt participated in the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak and they are refusing to be pushed to the back of the agenda now as the country writes and new constitution and holds new elections. Because of the newsworthiness of everything going on in Egypt these days, it is becoming almost as impossible for the example of Egyptian women’s rights to be repressed and hidden from other women as it is for the men of Egypt to slow women’s progress.
