The women in Saudi Arabia are under attack.

There is a bitter history of struggle against discrimination and prejudices all across the world. The five billion people, who believe in justice and fairness, standing by our sisters in Saudi Arabia in their just struggle against discrimination and outdate-tribal prejudice, Gender discrimination had and has always been denied by using one false pretexts or another. Late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia himself had met tough resistance when had started his program for girl’s education. Those who had put-up their resistance that time were the members of religious community whom I called the community of ‘jhaleen’ who always ready to turn the great religion Islam, on to its head.  The women of others parts of the world passed through the same situation at one stage or another.   

“Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to receive a degree in medicine in USA, and perhaps in the whole world in 1849, at Geneva University in the State of New York.  She had applied for admission into twelve medical schools, and because she was a woman, their doors were closed to her.  At last Geneva University, the men students themselves took a vote in favour of admitting her and she finally secured her M.D. with honours. She was, however shunned by other women who refused to recognize her. She died 1901.

At about the same time that Elizabeth Blackwell was struggling for professional education in America, her sister in Britain were engaged in the same professional war against ancient prejudice. When manage to secure her place in Edinburgh University, the one group of student had  tried to mobbed her out while protected and escorted by others; but finally she was excluded from the university, on the plea that it violated the delicacy of feelings of the men students.” (Heritage of women, by A.A. Winter: P-255)

We whole heatedly are standing by with our sisters in Saudi Arabia. God bless you in your just struggle. The stotry as per The Weekly Standard is shocking where Manal al-Sherif arrested just because she want her God given right to use it. Is this justice and fairness?  Let me quote the whole news item as follows:

 "Saudi Wahhabis vs. Women Who Want to Drive Cars

Saudi authorities have arrested Manal al-Sherif, a courageous female subject of the kingdom who blogged about the demand made by her and others for the right of Saudi women to drive motor vehicles.

Al-Sherif was detained last Saturday and rearrested on Sunday. In her 30s, she reportedly learned to drive while living in New Hampshire. Al-Sherif had joined with her colleagues to launch a blog titled "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself."  The blog posted a YouTube video last week in which al-Sherif, living in Dhahran, the restive eastern province, protested the so-called "religious" ban on female motorists. 

The eastern province has numerous Shia Muslim residents who often protest against discrimination visited upon them by the Wahhabi sect, the state interpretation of Islam. But Dhahran is also the center of operations for Saudi Aramco, the oil monopoly that employs an army of Western technicians, and houses them and their families, including their wives and daughters. Predictably, Western oil experts living in Saudi Arabia do not raise their voices on issues such as whether women should legally be allowed to drive.

The title of the women drivers' blog is clever, because the argument against female motoring put forward by the Saudi morals militia, the brutal mutawiyin, alleges that the right to drive would encourage promiscuity and other vices. In reality, because women living in Saudi Arabia, whether local or foreign, must depend on male drivers, they are vulnerable to rape and other sexual harassment."