Top Saudi cleric says women who drive may damage ovaries

[Opti]

worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/29/20740267-top-saudi-cleric-says-women-who-drive-risk-damaging-their-ovaries



In an interview published on Friday on the website sabq.org, he said women aiming to overturn the ban on driving should put "reason ahead of their hearts, emotions and passions."


RIYADH - One of Saudi Arabia's top conservative clerics 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 October 26 has spread rapidly online over the past week and gained support from some prominent women activists. On Sunday the campaign's website was blocked inside the kingdom.

As one of the 21 members of the Senior Council of Scholars, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan can write fatwas, or religious edicts, advise the government and has a large following among other influential conservatives.

His comments have in the past played into debates in Saudi society and he has been a vocal opponent of tentative reforms to increase freedoms for women by King Abdullah, who sacked him as head of a top judiciary council in 2009.


I wonder how he explains riding in a car is safe, but actually driving it is not.

[Virgil Showlion]

I wonder how he explains riding in a car is safe, but actually driving it is not.

Women drivers.

[Jaguar]

Sept 29, 2013 13:52:00 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

I wonder how he explains riding in a car is safe, but actually driving it is not.

Women drivers.

Bad, Bad Virgil,

[Opti]

If driving badly puts you at risk for damaging your internal organs without actually being an accident I've been apparently sharing the road with quite a few folks with medical issues.
Not all of them are male, but the last one was.  Given how he was driving his fullsize car
when it was a single lane I wonder if my neighbor, as an older guy, was responsible for the
long new dent on the passenger side of his fullsize coupe.

[Spellbound454]

...and testicles are the reason boy racers drive around like idiots.....

So, perhaps no-one should drive.......except old people and children.

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

Just another tactic of the Islamic leaders to keep the female Muslims oppressed.

How dare they become independent (and equal) humans to their male counterparts.

[Peace Of Mind]

LOL!  I'm going to use that the next time somebody asks me why I never had kids. 

[swamp]

Huh, driving caused my fertility problems. Good to know. 

[MarleyKeezy78]

I read this earlier and my feelings were between   And   May the crotches of these men who come up with this crap to keep women down be infested with fleas of a thousand camels!!! Maybe some of these men need to be stoned   (And not the fun kind)

[Tennesseer]

It is true.  Otherwise how do you explain women losing the ability to produce eggs after driving for 35 plus years. 

[MarleyKeezy78]

 Har, har... 

[tallguy]

That sounds bad enough to be a Pat Robertson line.  

[Jaguar]

Sept 29, 2013 16:32:40 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

It is true.  Otherwise how do you explain women losing the ability to produce eggs after driving for 35 plus years. 

Age & nature, geez do I have to spell it out for you.

[Virgil Showlion]

Sept 29, 2013 15:22:04 GMT -5 Spellbound454 said:

...and testicles are the reason boy racers drive around like idiots.....

So, perhaps no-one should drive.......except old people and children.

Men get into accidents more frequently. Studies attribute it to impatience and aggressiveness while driving.

Whether or not men are more suited to driving due to mental and physiological reasons is a matter of some debate. Some studies state "yes" by statistically significant margins, others state "no". Like most of the social sciences, the results can be easily invalidated either way by demonstrating that other variables frustrate the statistics. It would be fair to say that a conclusive answer is beyond the scope of modern scientific techniques.

I go with a "proof is in the pudding" approach. If I feel nervous about driving with individual X, or if X seems perpetually clueless about his/her surroundings, he/she is a "bad driver". Sum all the male X's, all the female X's, take the ratio, and you get "reality".

As for driving damaging women's ovaries, it'd be interesting to hear the cleric's rationale.

[tallguy]

As for driving damaging women's ovaries, it'd be interesting to hear the cleric's rationale.

As well as the differentiating factors between something that is protected WITHIN the body, in one case, and something that...isn't, in the other.

[Tennesseer]

Sugi (?) said:  "Age & nature, geez do I have to spell it out for you."

I don' know the age in which Canadian teens are allowed to secure a drivers' license, but down here in these here parts, the age is 16.  Add 16 years of age to 35 years of a woman driving and you get 51 years-which happens to be around the average age of menopause.

Did you really think I picked 35 years out of the blue?    

[Virgil Showlion]

*lol*

It's a dreaded can't-tell-what's-satire war between Purty Pooper and Tenn. Second only in lethality to the war of a thousand hyperboles.

[Deleted]

Sept 29, 2013 16:32:40 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

It is true.  Otherwise how do you explain women losing the ability to produce eggs after driving for 35 plus years. 

 It MUST be true... men have been driving for over a century and not even ONE of them has EVER conceived and delivered a child without extraordinary medical intervention!~

[mmhmm]

Here ya go, Virgil.  Saudi cleric reasoning at its finest:

"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 problems of varying degrees," he said.

He did not cite specific medical studies to support his arguments.

Reuters Article On Said Saudi Cleric

[EVT1]

Typical nonsense from crazy religious fanatics- next thing you know they will be claiming women's bodies can defend against rape

[Jaguar]

Sept 29, 2013 18:15:35 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Sugi (?) said:  "Age & nature, geez do I have to spell it out for you."

I don' know the age in which Canadian teens are allowed to secure a drivers' license, but down here in these here parts, the age is 16.  Add 16 years of age to 35 years of a woman driving and you get 51 years-which happens to be around the average age of menopause.

Did you really think I picked 35 years out of the blue?    

No just teasing you hon.

[mmhmm]

Sept 29, 2013 18:52:29 GMT -5 EVT1 said:

Typical nonsense from crazy religious fanatics- next thing you know they will be claiming women's bodies can defend against rape

ROFL!  Yeah, evt, I think I've heard that somewhere before! 

[Opti]

Evt1, that's exactly the American politician I thought of when I saw this article.
He doesn't mean it to be funny, but it kind of is for me. He wants women in his country to
use reason when he obviously ignores it. I also like the pelvis tilting upward line. How many
people sit in chairs and seats in cars where their pelvis doesn't tilt upward compared to standing?

[Virgil Showlion]

Sept 29, 2013 20:53:46 GMT -5 @patstab said:

That seems to be all those religious horney old men sit around and think about is womens private parts. 

And let's not get started on those non-religious horny old women who sit around and think about nothing besides horny old men thinking about women's private parts.

[mmhmm]

This has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  There is nothing in Sharia law, the Qu'ran, or Islam that forbids women driving.  This is a societal/cultural matter in Saudi Arabia, not a religious one.

[Virgil Showlion]

Sept 29, 2013 21:12:28 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

This has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  There is nothing in Sharia law, the Qu'ran, or Islam that forbids women driving.  This is a societal/cultural matter in Saudi Arabia, not a religious one.

Considering we've already characterized the response of one Saudi cleric to a driving rights push as "all those religious horney (sic) old men sitting around and thinking about is (sic) womens (sic) private parts", I somehow doubt the distinction matters in P&M land.

[mmhmm]

"They" are not making it a law.  It's not.  It's societal.  The clerics are, unfortunately, involved in both; however, Sharia law does not prevent women from driving and the clerics cannot change that.  Bedouin women drive.  They drive huge, cumbersome water trucks all over the freaking desert.

You really need to be there to hear the discussions about that.  Most of the more educated Saudi men are all for their wives driving.  Otherwise, they've got to schlep the woman around themselves, or hire a driver.  These guys think the no driving garbage is stupid, too, but societal norms change slowly.  There have been a lot of changes just in the past 10 years with regard to women's issues in the Kingdom.  The planned "let's get out and drive, girls" protest (October 26 is the planned date) isn't the first in the Kingdom, and it won't be the last.  There are always a lot of guys out and about, rooting for their women!

[mmhmm]

Sept 29, 2013 21:25:23 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Sept 29, 2013 21:12:28 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

This has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  There is nothing in Sharia law, the Qu'ran, or Islam that forbids women driving.  This is a societal/cultural matter in Saudi Arabia, not a religious one.

Considering we've already characterized the response of one Saudi cleric to a driving rights push as "all those religious horney (sic) old men sitting around and thinking about is (sic) womens (sic) private parts", I somehow doubt the distinction matters in P&M land.

"We" have done no such thing, Virgil!


Oh, and ...

 Psst, this isn't P&M.

[tallguy]

It is true. Otherwise how do you explain women losing the ability to produce eggs after driving for 35 plus years.

It's really too bad that it takes that long.  Women could save a fortune on birth control.  Of course, that would mean that Rush would have to actually make up stuff to rant about.

[Tennesseer]

Sept 29, 2013 22:05:09 GMT -5 tallguy said:

It is true. Otherwise how do you explain women losing the ability to produce eggs after driving for 35 plus years.

It's really too bad that it takes that long.  Women could save a fortune on birth control.  Of course, that would mean that Rush would have to actually make up stuff to rant about.

Don't you mean Rush would have to actually make up 'more' stuff to rant about?