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‘Western Women Don't Care If They Are Raped on the Roadside,’ Says Saudi Historian

Categories: Middle East & North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Citizen Media, Human Rights, Religion, Women & Gender
A screenshot of Youtube video. Used under CC BY 2.0 [1]

A screenshot of a video on YouTube showing Saudi historian Dr Saleh Al-Saadoon making his infamous claim

Saudi historian Dr Saleh Al-Saadoon says women in the West drive because they “don't care if they get raped on the roadside.” He made the remarks in an interview with Rotana Khalijia, a Saudi-owned television channel aimed at Gulf countries, in his defense of a Saudi prohibition that bans women from driving. The video, which created an outcry online, was shared [2] far and wide on YouTube. 

Saudi Arabia is the only country [3] in the world that bans women from driving cars. There have been many efforts to break the ban, most recently on October 26, 2013,  [4]when dozens of women shared videos [5] driving cars in the day they plan on defying the ban [6].

The Saudi “historian” notes that:

Unlike riding a camel, driving a car places a woman in danger of being raped, which for Saudi women is a much worse experience than for any women in the western world where women “don't care” if they are raped.

To make his interview worse, he suggested a solution to import “foreign female drivers” to drive Saudi women to prevent a potential rape by contracted male drivers.