The woman who defied Saudi's driving ban and put it on YouTube

[seabeyond]

"They had been telling us that music was Satan's flute -- was a path to adultery," she said in a recent presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a human rights conference in Norway. "This song sounded so pure, so beautiful, so angelic. It can be anything but evil to me. And that day I realized how lonely I was in the world I isolated myself in." Al-Sharif, now 33, gained international attention last summer after she uploaded a YouTube video of herself driving in a country where women are banned from doing so. Now she is the face of Saudi Arabia's Women2Drive movement, which plans to hold demonstrations on June 17 calling for women in that Middle Eastern country to be able to do something that's downright banal everywhere else in the world: drive themselves around town in an automobile.

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The divorced mother of one says she likes to make yearly challenges to herself around her birthday, April 25. One year, she went sky diving. In 2011, she wanted to drive. So in May last year, an acquaintance filmed al-Sharif while she drove through the streets of Khobar wearing a black headscarf and sunglasses but not hiding her face. "We want to change the country," she said in the video, according to a translation posted on YouTube. "A woman, during an emergency, what's she going to do? God forbid her husband's with her and he has a heart attack. ..." "Not all of us live luxurious lives -- are spoiled like queens and have drivers," she said, in reference to the fact that many women have to pay for drivers to get around town.

Al-Sharif's act of defiance did not go unnoticed. The next day, police detained her. She was held for nine days without being charged, she said, and then released after considerable international pressure, much of it coming from the Twitter hashtag #Women2Drive and corresponding pages on Facebook. The next month, on June 17, dozens of women in Saudi Arabia got behind the wheel and drove to protest the ban, according to news reports.

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Another change occurred after her divorce, which she said happened without her consent. "I didn't even know," she said. "He just went and divorced me. That's it." After that, she said, she stopped deferring to the men in her life, including her father, who is her current guardian. Instead of "begging" them to allow her to take a job or drive a car, she said she politely tells them that this is the way things will be. "I reached a point in my life where I'd had enough of men controlling me," she said. "I stopped asking for permission. ... If you change (a Saudi woman's) mind-set -- (if) she's not weak, she doesn't need permission -- the people around her will change."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/10/world/meast/sharif-saudi-women-drive/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

[Violet_Crumble]

1. She's an incredible woman, imo. Everyone should get behind her and support her...

She's fighting the real fight, not the #firstworldproblems stuff I see some angsting over like it's something of equal importance...

fyi, the women in Saudi Arabia who are treated the worst of all are foreign workers. They're treated like slaves, and if I get some time later on I'll dig up some info about them...

[seabeyond]

2. this is the second article i have read on the saudi women.

i hear what you are saying. but, i also like what i am seeing from these women. and possibly an acknowledgment from the king.... so, it appears (and it is always in appearance) as if there may be a shift in this country.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. I've been hearing about there being a shift for nearly ten years now...

And there's been little to nothing change. I don't hold out any hope that things are going to change any time soon....

[seabeyond]

5. that is discouraging.

i had read the one about women entrepreneur and was kinda feeling good about it.

thanks for the info.

[Gregorian]

4. Saudi Arabia's Rosa Parks?

I don't know.