TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112690/1126004.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 46

SAUDI ARABIA

Life in the Slow Lane


By formally banning Saudi women from driving cars, conservatives
hope to brake any further efforts at liberalization

By WILLIAM DOWELL/RIYADH


    It may be axiomatic to say that Saudi Arabia is deeply
influenced by religious conservatives, but the specifics are
often surprising. When the Sunday Times of London recently
published excerpts of Ronald Reagan's memoirs, for example,
Saudi censors gathered all the copies that reached the kingdom
and methodically blacked out a half-page photograph. The
offending scene: Reagan bussing his wife on the lips.

    With hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed in
the country, both U.S. and Saudi officials have been nervously
watching for signs of a culture clash. So far, the tensions
have been minimal. But the growing Western presence has
emboldened a clutch of Saudi women to test the mood for change.
At first authorities downplayed the challenge, but last week
Riyadh switched signals and made clear that even mild protests
would not be tolerated.

    The controversy centers on a seemingly minor issue: Should
Saudi women be allowed to drive their own cars? Two weeks ago,
47 women, most of whom had obtained a driver's license while
living abroad, gathered in a supermarket parking lot, dismissed
their chauffeurs and then drove themselves in an orderly
procession through downtown Riyadh.

    When the police arrived to arrest the women, they first had
to step in to protect them from furious members of the
mutawain, the country's religious police, who demanded that the
women be jailed immediately. King Fahd deftly defused the
dispute by declaring that a committee of religious scholars
should investigate before any action was taken. The governor
of Riyadh, Prince Salman Bin Abdel-Aziz, assembled a commission
that rapidly decided that the women hadn't actually committed
a crime. The committee found there was no specific prohibition
in the Koran on driving. In fact, during the time of the
Prophet, women regularly led camels across the desert. Even
now, Bedouin women have regularly been permitted to drive cars
and trucks in isolated parts of the kingdom. The committee
nevertheless gently advised against repeating the experiment.

    The favorable ruling provided only momentary respite. Six
of the women found themselves suspended from their jobs as
professors at King Saud University in Riyadh after organized
bands of students staged angry protests. "Not one of my
students understood what I was trying to accomplish," said a
stunned victim. Leaflets passed out at mosques during Friday
prayers accused the women of undermining Saudi morality and,
worst of all, showing signs of "American secularism." The
women's names, phone numbers and addresses were printed and
distributed. Menacing telephone calls followed. Says a friend
of one of the women: "They are afraid that they are going to
end up like Salman Rushdie."

    As the fury increased, the government reversed itself. The
Ministry of Interior issued a statement last week declaring
that "driving by women contradicts the Islamic traditions
followed by Saudi citizens." The careful wording took into
account the fact that Saudi Arabia is the only country to hold
that Islam bars women from sitting behind the steering wheel.

    The religious protests were led by Sheik Abdul Aziz ibn Baz,
chief of the Presidency of Islamic Research, Ruling, Call and
Guidance, an organization that rules on questions of dogma. Ibn
Baz earned a certain notoriety in the 1960s by insisting that
the sun revolved around the earth. He subsequently modified
that view after a Saudi astronaut flew in a space shuttle and
broadcast back TV images providing evidence to the contrary.

    Although the pronouncements of Ibn Baz may be relatively
unknown in the West, they are taken seriously in Saudi Arabia,
and his denunciation of women drivers amounted to a declaration
of war. "There is a growing concern by religious conservatives
that modern, foreign-educated technocrats will try to use the
gulf crisis to push ahead with social reforms," says a Western
diplomat in Riyadh. "They see the issue of women's driving as
the first step in that direction."

    The tensions between Western-educated Saudis and religious
conservatives are certain to increase. An estimated 60,000
Saudis, for example, have attended U.S. universities. "On the
one hand, they represent a sizable block that is just beginning
to come into power," explains the diplomat. "But on the other
hand, they still account for only 1% of the population." At the
same time, Western analysts warn that many people in their 20s
and early 30s who have been educated at Saudi universities are
more religiously conservative than their Western-schooled
elders.

    This rise in conservatism among the new generation reflects
in part the recent campaign to educate more Saudi youth at
home, where they would be taught by Arab teachers, rather than
sending them to school in the U.S. and Europe. Saudi officials
were so concerned by the surge in conservatism that Saudi
universities were finally excluded from the campaign. Students
are still sent abroad for postgraduate work in order to ensure
that educated Saudis get at least some exposure outside the
country.

    Some of the women who tried to break the ban on driving had
petitioned Riyadh's governor, Prince Salman, in advance. The
women were advised to cancel the idea or at least wait a few
months. "I agree with what they tried to do," says a highly
placed Saudi, "but their timing was terrible." Now it appears
that the timing for any major social changes may not be right
for years.