This Gulf News report is about Bahrain’s problem with veiled female drivers and how to identify them. It pertains to Saudi Arabia because the arguments and solutions being raised here will certainly also be raised when it comes time to permit women to drive in the Kingdom.

One thing is clear: if there’s a will to change things, there will also be a will to thwart that change!

    Steering into controversy over veiled women drivers
    Habib Toumi

    Manama: Traffic authorities and an Islamist society have steered into controversy over the identification procedures of women drivers who have their faces covered.

    Al Asala, the Salafi society with seven MPs in the 40-member lower house, has vehemently rejected an article in the proposed traffic law that allows male police officers to ask women drivers to uncover their faces to allow them to check their identity. According to the society, female officers must be present when a car driven by a fully-veiled woman is stopped by the police for a traffic violation or identity verification.

    “Male officers cannot look at the faces of fully-covered women drivers, and the presence of women to carry out the verification procedures is a necessity,” Al Asala representatives on the parliamentary security committee said during the discussion of the traffic law draft.
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