Islamic thinker and former Minister of Information Dr. Mohammed Abdo Yamani has said that women should be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. In an interview with Al-Watan Arabic daily Wednesday Yamani “appeals to the Grand Mufti, the Board of Senior Ulema' and the Shoura Council to resolve the issue and relieve Saudi women of this injustice”. “What is best?” Yamani asked in the interview, “that we let women drive cars in safety or that we sit them next to male foreign drivers who might harm them?” “How can a person stop his wife and daughters driving a car without a Shariah text to support him, and then go and permit them to get in a car with a foreign man?” “Driving has become a necessity for Saudi women,” Al-Luhaiden said. “It is their right to drive – at least in cities and safe areas.” Yamani told Al-Watan that there needed to be some adaptation to the requirements of the age, “as has happened in other cases”, and further wondered why there are no taxi firms run solely by and for women.
