From Arab News, with thanks to Skeet Street.
RIYADH — An associate professor of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh has objected to the hiring of a Muslim woman as a pilot.In a statement issued in response to a full-page advertisement by Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal, chairman of Kingdom Holding Co., congratulating Capt. Hanadi Zakariya Hindi for becoming the first Saudi woman to get a commercial pilot’s license, Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmad said the appointment was un-Islamic.
Al-Ahmad, who teaches Shariah law at the university, said the job would require her to travel without a male guardian and would therefore lead to her mixing with men...
Mixing with men! The horror!
Last week a petition asking for an end to the ban on women driving in the Kingdom was submitted to the National Society for Human Rights. The signatories included 60 Saudi women.A poll conducted recently in Riyadh, however, found that 88 percent of Saudi women refuse to drive cars. According to the women, driving is not a priority for a majority of Saudi women; most women believe the main women’s issues have to do with their right to work, marriage, divorce and domestic abuse...
The Saudi women that "refuse to drive" don't understand that they have subject to psychological abuse and that the lack of liberty of free association and the ability to come and go is an example of such abuse on an institutional scale.
Mooo! Stupid cows.
The women could change this in a couple of generations if they had a brain, but they continue the stupidity of islam.
All she has to do is tell them she that plans to fly her plane into the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty and all will be forgiven.
She has to know how to play to the audience.
(Plus she'll always have a male Muslim co-pilot in case she gets cold feet.)
It's not hard to imagine why the Saudi women responded as they did. The right to drive in an unchanged Saudi society just gives them the right to go out in public with a giant bullseye on their back. Until more fundamental rights are considered, why would they want to leave home by themselves? Shopping is more enjoyable with company anyway.
It's what you call internalised oppression. If you oppress people often enough, there will be some people who will internalise that oppression, and agree with it.
She's being checked out to fly right seat on megabuck, multi-engined, 600 mph corporate jets, but is not allowed to drive herself to work. And sometimes can't get to the airport at all.
Rrrrring. Rrrrring.
Kingdom Holding Company. Fatima speaking. May I help you?
Uh, yes Fatima. This is First Officer Hindi. I, I can't make it in for the Paris flight today.
I'm sorry to hear that, sister. Is there anything I can do to help?
No. No. Daddy has um, ah, decided that I can't go today.
I understand. Well, you know the company policy against wearing a veil. So try to avoid facial bruises. The customers would rather not see that sort of thing. Call us when you're, uh, feeling better.
O.K. Uh Oh. Here comes daddy. Gotta Go.
Click.
I think if I were a Saudi woman I'd be afraid to drive too. It wouldn't be very safe with that ridiculous head covering anyway. You'd have no peripheral vision, and even regular vision would be dangerously impaired. But to push for that backward dress requirement to be relaxed would then set you up for abuse by men who aren't taught self-control. It's a vicious cycle, but their society is meticulously, insanely designed to keep women hidden and not participating in society more.
Funny, isn't it. The Saudis celebrate female suicide bombers -- as long as they are doing it in Israel, Gaza and West Bank.
Have the Saudis never heard of Amelia Earhart, or do they choose to think she got what she had coming to her?