Saudi Arabia’s Shoura Council challenges driving ban

Women members of Saudi Arabia’s influential Shoura Council which advises King Abdullah have proposed allowing women to drive, challenging a tradition upheld by the deeply conservative clerical establishment. The council is the nearest the kingdom has to a parliament, though its members are not elected but appointed by the king and cannot make laws but only issue recommendations. However, these recommendations have often in the past prefigured Saudi reforms. Conservative Saudis say letting women drive would encourage the sexes to mix in public unchaperoned and thus threaten public morality, but it is an important demand of…

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Saudi Arabia’s Shoura Council challenges driving ban