Women Drivers Equal End of Virginity, Say Saudi Scholars

Recent comments by scholars from Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council probably won’t help the country’s women in getting the right to drive. The religious council has determined that relaxing the current ban on women drivers would “provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce” and would mean “the end of virginity.” Although the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah did announce this year that, in 2015, women would be permitted to vote and run in local elections, the recent emphasis on the supposed immorality of female drivers is likely to reduce the chances that the ban—part of a 1991 fatwa against gender “mixing”—will be lifted.