14 DAY TRIAL // A Saudi religious leader is speaking out against a women's movement trying to reverse a ban on driving.
Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan explains that, if women are allowed to drive, it will affect their chance of carrying healthy babies to term. He claims that driving has a negative toll on their ovaries.
“[It] could have a reverse physiological impact,” he says, as relayed by Al Arabiya. He cites unspecified studies.
“Physiological science and functional medicine studied this side [and found] that it automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis,” he details.
He also blames women's repeated driving for giving birth to children with congenital diseases.
“This is why we find for women who continuously drive cars their children are born with clinical disorders of varying degrees,” he stresses.
He urges women to be realistic about the effects that driving will have on their capacity to bear children.
“[Follow] the mind before the heart and emotion and look at this issue with a realistic eye. The result of this is bad and they should wait and consider the negativities,” he advises.
The statement responds to a petition that will be reviewed by country leaders, through which women ask to be allowed to drive. It has been signed by more than 11,000 women so far.
“Since there are no clear justifications for the state to ban adult, capable women from driving. We call for enabling women to have driving tests and for issuing licenses for those who pass,” it reads.
The document also states that the “sharia,” or moral code of conduct in the Islamic community, has no mention of a ban on women's driving,
“Islamic sharia does not have a text forbidding women driving,” the head of the country's religious police, Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh, has said last week.