Separate Section for Women at Football Stadiums Urged P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News
JEDDAH, 29 September 2007 — The majority of soccer fans in the Kingdom have demanded separate seating arrangements for women at stadiums across the country to help them watch live football matches.
A survey conducted by an Arabic daily on the issue showed that 51 percent of participants wanted such seating arrangements for women while 49 percent opposed the idea.
Six percent of some 300 participants, aged between 17 and 65, wanted enclosed areas for families at stadiums. The participants included university students and employees of banks, companies and government departments.
The survey is significant as a large number of Saudi women follow football matches like their male counterparts. Their number is growing year after year, especially after the participation of Saudi soccer teams in international football tournaments.
Opponents argue the attendance of women at football stadium would open the floodgates of evil and immorality. Many of them do not like women watching football. They do not believe that watching matches at stadiums is a right of women.
“Several television stations are providing good coverage of football matches. So women need not go to stadiums to watch them. They can watch them sitting comfortably in their homes,” one opponent said.
Supporters said giving women access to stadiums would stem the phenomenon of them assembling at markets and coffee shops to watch football matches.
Iman Aseeri, a secondary school girl student and a Hilal team fan, said she strongly supported the idea women being allowed to watch football matches at stadiums. “There is nothing wrong in it and our religion and culture do not disapprove such an idea.”
Aseeri believes that her presence at the stadium would make her closer to the event and interact with it in a more enthusiastic way. But Huda Al-Qahtani of King Khaled University, said she did not favor the idea and for her it is a waste of time.
Mahara Abdullah Ali, an intermediate school teacher, supported the idea and believed that it would help teenage girls and women to ease their tension caused by some social problems. However, she insisted that the seating arrangements for women at stadiums should be made in accordance with Shariah and Saudi customs.
Um Abdullah, a bank employee, favored the idea. But her main concern is security and wants police to give extra protection for women at stadiums. “If we are not safe from hooligans at market places, how can we expect it at stadiums,” she asked. Nouf Fahd, a hospital administrator in Alkhobar, strongly supported the proposal, saying it would help women to relax and enjoy in the open air like their men folk and support their favorite teams.
Arab News.
There is still so many places where a women in Saudia Arabia is banned from. Guess for which reason ?
never mind football leave it a the end of the list what about the right to drive ?????it is the only country which ban women from driving saoudian women need to wake up and fight for their rights !!!!i heard also that a soaoudian woman hasn t got right for heritage it is normally managed and controlled by her brothers, oncles, cousins ... !!! if she marries a non saoudian a muslim even from a gulf country for instance Kuwait , they take her nationality???? the right term for them : is slavery, they have some tribe s laws which hasn t got nothing to do with religion !!!!!!!! invented and forced by men !!!!!!!
I've got to know that saudi women used to drive during the early years of independance. They have been baned to do so some thirty years ago ?? The ground of this was to prevent a women in meeting a non 'hareem', a policeman or another car driver can get in touch with here and that will be the end of the world. What is completly hypocritical and insincere is that the majority of Saudi women now days have drivers, 99% of them are foreigners. So what for the islamic rule ? are indian drivers hareem ?.
A Saudi friend was telling me that he spotted a saudi princess driving a dark colored window red ferrari in Riyadh ? Thinks may change soon.
Also newspapers reported a demonstartion in Jedah of some 20 saudi ladies that drove to some officials offices claiming their rights to drive.
What's funny is another saudi fellow told me that he prefers women not driving, he goes saying: It is already a big mess and traffic jams everywhere only with males driving.
the truth is in saoudi arabia they still consider women inferior (jawari) they can own them also they think women are less intelligent , weak , not trustworthy , when a saoudi family has a child female it is like a funeral , they don t celebrate , it is like shameful sin to have a child female sickening way of thinking, even in the upbringing of their children , they treat the male like a prince but the girl she get beaten up every day they are hypocrit society , their men are married to foreigners and have mistresses all over the world and a small human right like driving is forbidden for women , i can t understand how these men think when they say women shouldn t drive because so and so .... they can t convince nobody with their hollow rubishy dectatorship toward women , i feel sorry for women there and it is shameful that an arab country treat their women this way , shame on them
Saudi Women Lobby King for Driving Right By DONNA ABU-NASR – Sep 17, 2007
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — For the first time ever, a group of women in the only country that bans female drivers have formed a committee to lobby for the right to get behind the wheel, and they plan to petition King Abdullah in the next few days for the privilege.
The government is unlikely to respond because the issue remains so highly sensitive and divisive. But committee members say their petition will at least highlight what many Saudis — both men and women — consider a "stolen" right.
"We would like to remind officials that this is, as many have said, a social and not a religious or political issue," said Fowziyyah al-Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars. "And since it's a social issue, we have the right to lobby for it."
Committee members want to deliver their petition to the king by Sunday, Saudi Arabia's national day.
The driving ban applies to all women, Saudi and foreign, and forces families to hire live-in drivers. Women whose families cannot afford $300-$400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor's.
The last time the issue was raised was two years ago, when Mohammed al-Zulfa, a member of the unelected Consultative Council, asked his colleagues to think about studying the possibility of allowing women over age 35 or 40 to drive — unchaperoned on city streets but accompanied by a male guardian on highways.
The suggestion touched off a fierce controversy that included calls for al-Zulfa's removal from the council and stripping him of Saudi citizenship, as well as accusations he was encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men.
The uproar underscored the divisions in Saudi society between the guardians of its super-strict Islamic codes of behavior and those who want to usher in more liberal attitudes.
Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from male strangers, say women in the driver's seat will be free to leave home alone and go when and where they please. They also will unduly expose their eyes while driving and interact with male strangers, such as traffic police and mechanics.
But supporters of female drivers say the prohibition exists neither in law nor Islam, but is based on fatwas, or edicts, by senior clerics who say women at the wheel create situations for sinful temptation.
Women tried to defy the ban once and paid heavily for it. In November 1990, when U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, some 50 women got behind the wheel and drove family cars. They were jailed for one day, their passports were confiscated and they lost their jobs.
Although the furor over al-Zulfa's comments has abated, anything that touches on the issue provokes strong feelings.
In the weeks ushering in the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began Thursday, a furious debate erupted in a Saudi newspaper over a Ramadan television serial that takes up the hardships the ban has caused.
In the serial, "Amsha bint Ammash," the main character, Amsha, loses her father and is forced to relocate from her village to Jiddah. After an unsuccessful round of job searching, she decides to become a taxi driver — a job open only to men.
To get around the ban, she disguises herself as a man, adding a mustache and donning the white robe and red-and-white-checkered headdress Saudi men wear.
When the program was first advertised, some reacted with shock that a Saudi woman was not only portraying a man, but also one who drives. Conservatives say women should not emulate men in behavior or dress.
The controversy has forced the serial's writer, Abdullah Abdul-Amer, to issue a statement stressing the goal of the program, aired on the Lebanese satellite channel LBC, "is not to incite women to drive."
"All I wanted to do was raise our contemporary issues from a Saudi viewpoint and through comedy," said Abdul-Amer.
But that has not appeased Saudis determined to uphold the driving ban.
In a letter to Al-Hayat daily titled "Amsha, we don't need you," reader Iman Abdul-Wahhab wondered why the driving issue "has become an obsession for many, Saudis and non-Saudis."
"Has this become a weak point for us?" she wrote. "As a Saudi girl, I say, 'No.'"
"This is a tradition that has become acceptable," she added. "No one has any right to use it as a means to mock or ridicule."
On Monday, another Saudi newspaper, Al-Watan, ran an article about a major car dealership sending out invitations for women in Jiddah to come try out a new family sedan for 24 hours. But the dealership stressed the invitation was for women and their drivers, who are the only ones permitted to test-drive the cars.
Al-Oyouni said she understands that some women oppose ending the ba
the truth is in saoudi arabia they still consider women inferior (jawari) they can own them 
chargement...
