Hillary Clinton has lent her support to women in Saudi Arabia protesting against the ban on female drivers, her first public comments on an issue complicating relations between Washington and Riyadh.

A day after the US state department said it was handling the issue through "quiet diplomacy" and not public pronouncements, Clinton praised the protesters, but stressed they were acting on their own behalf, not at the behest of outsiders such as herself.

"What these women are doing is brave and what they are seeking is right, but the effort belongs to them," said Clinton. "I am moved by it and I support them, but I want to underscore the fact that this is not coming from outside of their country. This is the women themselves, seeking to be recognised."

The protests have put the Obama administration, and Clinton in particular, in a difficult position. While she and many other top US officials personally oppose the Saudi ban on female drivers, the administration is increasingly reliant on Saudi authorities to provide stability and continuity in the Middle East and Gulf amid uprisings taking place across the Arab world.

Thus, some officials have been reluctant to antagonise the Saudis.

On Monday, a coalition of Saudi activists urged Clinton to support publicly the campaign to end male-only driving in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.

Clinton said on Tuesday that she and other US officials had raised the matter "at the highest level of the Saudi government".

"We have made clear our views that women everywhere, including women in the kingdom, have the right to make decisions about their lives and their futures," she said. "They have the right to contribute to society and provide for their children and their families, and mobility, such as provided by the freedom to drive, provides access to economic opportunity, including jobs, which does fuel growth and stability.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/21/hillary-clinton-saudi-female-drivers

Pakistan is failing to live up to one of the tenets of Islam which guarantees rights to all women, according to Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative party co-chairman and minister without portfolio, who is the first Muslim to sit as a full member of the cabinet.

In a sign of Britain's impatience with Pakistan, Lady Warsi said the world's first Islamic republic is denying rights granted 1,400 years ago in the Qur'an.

As she prepares to become the first British minister to address the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) next week, Warsi said in a Guardian interview that, in a "nutshell", Pakistan is not living up to the ideals of its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Warsi says she is able to deliver a tough message to Pakistan because she is unencumbered by "colonial baggage". She said she had raised the issue of women's rights last July in Rawalpindi, in a speech in Urdu at the Fatima Jinnah University, named after the younger sister of the founder of Pakistan. "Why is it that today you're being denied the rights that your faith gave to you 1,400 years ago?" Warsi asked, recalling her central message to her female audience.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/23/warsi-says-pakistan-fails-islam-over-women

An social club that teaches women to be "obedient wives" has launched a branch in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.

The group already has branches in 18 countries across the world, including Jordan and Malaysia.

Syarina Hasibuan reports from Jakarta.

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2011/06/201162445513651730.html

A woman, beheaded by the sword thousands of miles from home. This, at last, proved too much for Indonesia. For years, this Southeast Asian nation has been sending its citizens to work in Saudi Arabia and, for years, migrant workers there complained of poor working conditions, abuse and violence. But the surprise execution of Ruyati binti Sapubi, a 54-year old maid accused of killing her female employer, seems to have shocked the country into action. Indonesian authorities, who say Ruyati was routinely abused, are outraged they were not informed of the sentence.  They announced on Thursday that Indonesia will stop sending maids to the kingdom — at least for now.

The outcry over Ruyati's life and death in Saudi Arabia has cast a rather bright light on what is all-too-often dismissed as a private matter: the use and abuse of foreign domestic workers. A vast body of research confirms what we all basically know — there are literally millions of people, mostly women, working in others people's houses. In Saudi Arabia alone, there are 1.5 million foreign domestic workers. Many enjoy decent conditions. Many do not.

Saudi Arabia is a dangerous place for far too many foreign domestic workers. In 2008, a Human Rights Watch report told them. "She would beat my head against the stove until it was swollen." Since most maids are housebound and far from home, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to get help. If they do seek aid, the system is stacked against them, activists say.

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

For Afghan women like Nahida, a mother of four children - three to a Taliban father - Barack Obama last week delivered a painful and shocking blow. Like most women in Afghanistan, Nahida is terrified of a return to Taliban power.

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has already disturbed many with his solicitous reference to the Taliban as "my brothers". Now US moves to allow the once-loathed enemy a seat at the negotiating table to figure out "a political settlement" have laid bare an alarming truth.

It appears that the Taliban have all but won. Across Afghanistan women are deeply afraid that the small gains they have made are about to be snatched away.

Before this war began, as a young, impoverished widow, Nahida felt the full force of Taliban brutality and their hatred of women when she was caught walking alone with her baby wrapped in the folds of her burqa.

On a Friday at one o'clock, Sheikh Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri is leading prayers in a small mosque in an upmarket neighbourhood of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The faithful fill two floors, listening to the cleric's sermon on the true sense of the traditional greeting "salaam aleikum" – peace be upon you. This, Shethri says, means love thy neighbour.

It is a moderate message from a man who even in fiercely conservative Saudi Arabia, home to the most rigorous strands of Muslim practice in the world, is considered a hardliner. Only 18 months ago, Shethri, 46, was fired from the country's high council of religious scholars by King Abdullah, who has ruled the kingdom since 2005.

His offence was to have criticised the king's decision to allow male and female researchers to work together at the new multibillion pound science university built on the Red Sea coast. The king had called the university, a key part of Saudi Arabia's drive towards economic modernisation, a "beacon of tolerance". Shethri retorted that "mixing [genders] is a great sin and a great evil ... When men mix with women, their hearts burn and they will be diverted from their main goal [of] education."

Shethri remains unrepentant. In an interview with the Guardian, his first with a western newspaper, he says the duty of religious scholars is to advise sovereign rulers but also "to make governors fear God if they err from the right path and to remind them of God's punishment if they continue to err".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/01/saudi-arabia-clerics-king-abdullah

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical kingdom that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving.

Saudi women, who are legally subject to male chaperones for almost any public activity, hailed the royal decree as an important, if limited, step toward making them equal to their male counterparts. They said the uprisings sweeping the Arab world for the past nine months — along with sustained domestic pressure for women’s rights and a more representative form of government — prompted the change.

“There is the element of the Arab Spring, there is the element of the strength of Saudi social media, and there is the element of Saudi women themselves, who are not silent,” said Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor and one of the women who organized a campaign demanding the right to vote this spring. “Plus, the fact that the issue of women has turned Saudi Arabia into an international joke is another thing that brought the decision now.”

Although political activists celebrated the change, they also cautioned how deep it would go and how fast, given that the king referred to the next election cycle, which would not be until 2015. Some women wondered aloud how they would be able to campaign for office when they were not even allowed to drive. And there is a long history of royal decrees stalling, as weak enactment collides with the bulwark of traditions ordained by the Wahhabi sect of Islam and its fierce resistance to change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/world/middleeast/women-to-vote-in-saudi-arabia-king-says.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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Saudi rights groups claimed on Wednesday that a decision to sentence a woman to 10 lashes for driving her car was payback by the ruling class for this week's landmark speech by King Abdullah, which cleared the way for women to participate in elections.

The sentence is believed to be the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia that has not involved a violation of Islamic law. It was handed down in the wake of around 20 women being arrested over the past few months for taking to the wheel as part of a campaign to showcase their lack of rights in the rigidly conservative society.

Last night it was reported that King Abdullah had intervened to revoke the sentence. The news came in a tweet from Princess Ameerah, wife of billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Earlier the convicted woman, Shaimaa Justaneyah, was reportedly in shock at the sentence. "I cannot think straight because of what I have had to go through," Justaneyah told the website Arab News.

Another female driver, Najla Hariri, is due to stand trial in front of the same prosecutor early next month.

Justaneyah's friend Samar Bedawi, who also drives her car around the Red Sea city of Jeddah, said the sentence undermined the king's speech, which had won plaudits from the international community.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/28/saudi-woman-lashing-sentence-car

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A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.

The report was prepared for Saudi Arabia's legislative assembly, the Shura Council, by a well-known conservative academic.

Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.

Saudi women have mounted several campaigns to try to overturn the ban.

Aside from the practical difficulties it creates, they say it is also illogical as in trying to keep them under family control and away from men, it actually puts them in daily contact with a male driver.

The issue has received huge international attention.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16011926

Saudi Arabia's religious police have arrested more than 140 people for celebrating Valentine's Day.

The Organisation for Promoting Virtue and Discouraging Evil says officers have punished those caught so far, and that its campaign of arrests is continuing.

In a six-page statement, the religious police said they were saving women from "deceiving men", who used the day to give the fake impression that they loved a woman while pretending to be a "harmless lamb".

The religious authorities say Muslims who take part in Valentine's Day are in fact weak, lacking imagination, and far removed from the "sublime and virtuous" objectives of their religion.

The organisation has also confiscated all red roses from shops.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-15/saudi-heart-breakers/3830624

A Saudi city known for its ultra-conservatism has created its own version of the Arabs Got Talent television reality show, but with no music and women banned from taking part.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/saudi-got-talent--but-no-women-or-song-20120611-205ad.html#ixzz1xS1It9gy

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Saudi Arabia is to allow its women athletes to compete in the Olympics for the first time.

A statement from the Saudi Embassy in London says the country's Olympic Committee will "oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify".

The decision will end recent speculation as to whether the entire Saudi team could have been disqualified on grounds of gender discrimination.

The public participation of women in sport is still fiercely opposed by many Saudi religious conservatives.

There is almost no public tradition of women participating in sport in the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18571193

TWO Iranians have been sentenced to death for persistent consumption of alcohol under the country's Islamic law, which forbids the use, manufacturing and trading of all types of alcoholic drinks.

The two, who have not been named by the authorities, have each previously been lashed 160 times after twice being arrested for consuming alcohol. A third conviction makes them liable for the death penalty.

The head of the judiciary, Seyed Hasan Shariati, based in Iran's north-eastern province of Khorasan Razavi, told the Isna news agency that the Supreme Court had upheld their death sentences and that officials were preparing for their execution.
''Two people who committed the offence of consuming alcohol for the third time have been sentenced to be executed,'' he said.
''The verdict has been confirmed by the supreme court and we are preparing to administer it.''

Under Iranian sharia, certain crimes such as sodomy, rape, theft, fornication, apostasy and consumption of alcohol for the third time are considered to be ''claims of God'' and they therefore have mandatory death sentences.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/iranian-drinkers-sentenced-to-death-20120626-210mu.html#ixzz1yw6Qq3Pd

The husband of a Chinese woman whose forced abortion seven months into her pregnancy caused uproar has disappeared, a relative said on Tuesday, adding her family is being harassed on a daily basis.

Feng Jianmei had to go through the termination earlier this month in the northern province of Shaanxi because she failed to pay a hefty fine for exceeding China's strict "one-child" population control policy.

The case caused an outcry when photos emerged online of Feng lying in a hospital bed in Zhenping county next to her baby's bloody corpse, prompting an official probe that concluded action should be taken against the perpetrators.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/husband-in-china-forced-abortion-missing-family-20120627-2114d.html#ixzz1yx4ZMnoK

A family in Saudi Arabia has accused religious police of being responsible for a fatal car accident.

Morality police argued with the driver of a car listening to children's songs with his family in a park in Baha province, reports say.

The driver, Abdulrahman al Ghamdi, drove off and was pursued by the police at speed before losing control of the car and dying in the crash.

The officers involved have been detained and are being questioned.

The incident happened in early July near the small town of Baljurashi in the south-western province.

After being followed for several kilometres by the police, Mr al Ghamdi's car fell down a bank at an overpass that was still under construction.

The 34-year-old's wife and two children survived the crash but were injured and remain in hospital.

A photo of the accident shows that the roof of the car was sheared off.

The Emir of the Baha region is reported to have said he was appalled at how the religious police behaved.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18843402

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Child 'Marriage' and Sharia Courts: It Must End Now

WRITTEN BY ONE LAW FOR ALL VIA COUNCIL OF EX-MUSLIMS OF BRITAIN | 20 SEPTEMBER 2012 

There is growing evidence that young children – some as young at 5 years old – are being “married” to older men in Sharia courts across Britain. This is increasingly being sanctioned by the Islamists who run Britain’s network of Sharia courts, and there is evidence that this practice is growing.

A recent undercover investigation by the Sunday Times found imams in Britain willing to “marry” young girls, provided this was carried out in secret. The imams had been approached by an undercover reporter posing as a father who said he wanted his 12 year old daughter married, to prevent her from being tempted in to a "western lifestyle".

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/from-affiliate-a-associate-members/525-child-marriage-and-sharia-courts-it-must-end-now

Three men were booted out of Saudi Arabia because they were deemed "too handsome" by religious authorities who worried that women would become attracted to them.

Sitting in the stands as delegates from the United Arab Emirates at the Jenadrivah Heritage & Cultural Festival in Riyad on Sunday, nothing seemed to be wrong with the men in question but that didn't stop the mutaween, Saudi Arabia's religious police, from charging in and hauling the men away, according to Arabic language newspaper Elaph.

“A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission members feared female visitors could fall for them,” the newspaper reported.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/saudi_arabia_deports_men

If this story is true, Saudi Arabia prefers its men to be ugly and with moustache bristles like a garden broom... See too at top...

A conservative Saudi Arabian cleric has said women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and bearing children with clinical problems, countering activists who are trying to end the Islamic kingdom's male-only driving rules.

A campaign calling for women to defy the ban in a protest drive on 26 October has spread rapidly online over the past week and gained support from prominent women activists. On Sunday, the campaign's website was blocked in the kingdom.

In an interview published on Friday on the website sabq.org, Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan, a judicial adviser to an association of Gulf psychologists, said women aiming to overturn the ban on driving should put "reason ahead of their hearts, emotions and passions".

Lohaidan's strong endorsement of the ban demonstrates how entrenched the opposition is to women driving among some conservative Saudis.

"If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards," he told Sabq. "That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problemsof varying degrees."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/29/saudi-arabia-women-drivers-ovaries

And these people/clerics are presented (presents themselves) to us as the summit of human intelligence in some countries... Idiots.... See toon at top...

Saudi Arabia has warned that it will take measures against activists who go ahead with a planned weekend campaign to defy a ban on women drivers in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

The women organising the campaign have been posting online footage of themselves driving in Saudi cities, and have called on Saudi women with foreign driving licences to get behind the wheel on Saturday.

"It is known that women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate in support" of this cause, Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told the AFP news agency.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/10/saudi-warns-women-against-defying-driving-ban-20131024165440384707.html

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More than 60 Saudi women got behind the wheels of their cars as part of a protest against a ban on women driving in the kingdom, activists have claimed.

A Saudi professor and campaigner, Aziza Youssef, said the activists have received 13 videos and another 50 phone messages from women showing or claiming they had driven, the Associated Press reported.

She said it had not been not possible to verify all of the messages. But, if the numbers are accurate, they would make Saturday's demonstration the biggest the country has ever seen against the ban.

Despite warnings by police and ultraconservatives in Saudi Arabia, there have been no reports from those who claimed to have driven of being arrested or ticketed by police.

A video clip of a protest by May al-Sawyan, a 32-year-old economics researcher and mother of two, was uploaded on the YouTube channel of the October 26 driving for women group, along with several other videos of women purportedly driving in defiance of the ban in Riyadh, al-Ahsa and Jeddah. It was not possible to verify when they were filmed. Another video to feature on YouTube was the spoof No Woman, No Drive.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/26/saudi-arabia-woman-driving-car-ban

How can any modern western country be friends with the Saudi mobsters?... And the Saudi support Al Qaeda.... Ah I know, the smell of petrol is in the air...

Local media in Saudi Arabia have said a story published by the Associated Press news agency stating that the advisory council to Saudi Arabia's king had recommended easing a ban on women driving in the country is a "fabrication".

Media quoted Mohammed Abdullah Al-Muhanna, the head of the Shura council, as calling the report "misinformed" and clearly showing a "lack of authenticity". 

Earlier on Saturday, AP reported that the council, whose recommendations are not obligatory on the government, had reportedly endorsed that women over the age of 30 would be allowed to drive with numerous restrictions, including a curfew.

AP said a council member, who had spoken on the condition of anonymity, had said that the recommendations were made in a secret, closed session held in the past month.

read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/11/call-ease-saudi-women-driving-ban-2014118783043576.html