Saudi Arabia has taken a step towards modernity which, it is said, may harbinger an Arab spring. A measure of personal liberty has been introduced into society in that country. And secondly, punishment for an assertion of female liberty has been revoked which raises hopes about women’s emancipation in that rabid Islamic kingdom. Saudi King Abdullah announced recently that women would be allowed to exercise their franchise for the first time in the municipal elections in 2015. This seems to be a vastly delayed culmination of the suffragette movement launched by Mrs. Pankhurst in the UK in the 19th century. But the day after the announcement, a 30 years old woman in Jeddah was found guilty of driving without permission and sentenced to ten lashes. But the Saudi King has pardoned the offending woman. Women are not allowed to drive in that country bedevilled by Islamic orthodoxy. Women wearing a veil are however known to have said that driving by women is often done there.
Princess Amira-al-Taweed, wife of the Saudi prince Ahmed Bin Talal has tweeted, “Thank God, the lashing is cancelled.Thanks to our beloved King.” Of course, it is a roundabout way of doing things. A woman is punished for a minor offence and has to receive a royal pardon to be let off. Maybe, some distinction is made between male and women drivers even in advanced countries. The royal pardon does not however revoke the law in Saudi Arabia. But it is a good sign and the rising of secularism in Egypt and Libya may give a momentum to the movement in Arab countries. But the dominance of clerics in Saudi Arabia may snuff out the stirrings of women’s lib. The Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic zealots in Pakistan owe allegiance to the Shariat which reduces women to abject degradation.