Are you a lady driver? Careful of your ovaries in Saudi Arabia
WOMEN drivers come in for a lot of flack, mainly because they accidentally inspired that awful Sheila’s Wheels advert. However, someone more deserving of the mockery is Saudi cleric, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaydan.
He’s warned, with a completely straight face, that driving will affect women’s ovaries and bring “clinical disorders” upon their poor unfortunate children.
Yes, you read that correctly.
This warning came ahead of an initiative to defy a longstanding driving ban on women in Saudi Arabia and Saleh al-Luhaydan says that “physiological science” has found that driving “automatically affects the ovaries and pushes up the pelvis”.
“This is why we find that children born to most women who continuously drive suffer from clinical disorders of varying degrees,” he added, while everyone who didn’t know the Sheikh tried not to fall about laughing.
Luhaydan, a member of the senior Ulema Commission and former head of the Supreme Judicial Council, said that “evidence from the Quran and Sunna completely prohibit (women’s driving) on moral and social background.”
Saudis took to Twitter to voice their dissent.
“What a mentality we have. People went to space and you still ban women from driving. Idiots,” said one comment. “When idiocy marries dogma in the chapel of medieval traditions, this is their prodigal child,” wrote a female tweeter.
This is all because of an online petition titled “Oct 26th, driving for women” which has garnered around 12,000 signatures. Of course, this week, access to it was blocked in the kingdom.
Can we get a slow handclap?
Photo: Danica Patrick blends in in Saudi.
Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
