Barely three months ago, the world’s attention was drawn to the unprecedented public campaign led by Saudi women activists to be allowed to drive in their own country. This weekend, the octogenarian King Abdullah instead made a concession to women in a different area: they are now to acquire the right to vote, as well as being allowed (by 2015) to stand as candidates in municipal elections.
This still means that the nationwide local elections to be held this week will not see the involvement of women candidates or voters. But at least Thursday’s male-only elections, which have been delayed since 2009, appear to be going ahead – this will be only the second time anyone has voted since local elections were introduced in 2005.
Things may move slowly in Saudi Arabia, but support for managed change and transition appears to be an issue close to many Saudi hearts. Not for them the street protests seen across the rest of the Arab world this year; instead, they have delivered an accelerated series of online petitions addressed respectfully to the King, punctuated by the occasional arrest of a cleric, blogger or intellectual deemed to have overstepped the mark.
Even the campaign to promote the issuing of driving licences to women – which constitutes the main impediment to their legal right to drive – has, with a few notable exceptions, been conducted within certain norms. Most of the women to have taken charge of the steering wheel this year have been veiled and accompanied by a male guardian, as required by culturally enforced tradition, if not the full force of law.
In principle, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia are governed by the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam and Islamic law (sharia), named after its 18th-century founder, Ibn Abdul Al-Wahhab. For over two centuries, he and his followers supported the ascendancy of the Ibn Saud dynasty as the temporal rulers of what eventually, through conquest, became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Read on and comment » | Claire Spencer | Monday, September 26, 2011
Claire Spencer is head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House
