Saudi Arabia: Campaign to let women drive


As a campaign calling for Saudi women to defy the ban on driving with a protest drive on 26 October gathers steam, Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh Bin Saad Al-Lohaidan has produced yet another absurd rationale for the ban. In an interview published on 27 September by an online newspaper and widely reported, Al-Lohaidan – who, according to Reuters, is a judicial adviser to an association of Gulf psychologists – claimed that getting behind the wheel of a car could physiologically affect a woman’s ovaries and pelvis, and affect any children she might have.