Twitter & Facebook have been abuzz today with the news that the Hay’a (Commission of prevention of vice….etc) has told its members that they are not allowed to follow women that drive their cars. Apparently several online newspapers had published this announcement which turns out to be just a rumor that was quickly denied. Yep. Not True.
Honestly It’s pretty clear that it’s just a rumor, because a- There is no way of enforcing it. b- They still clash with Lingerie shops on the whole women shop girls thing (against them naturally, somehow its better to have men sell lingerie to women than actually let women work), so it’s not like they follow legal guidelines anyways. and c- Most of the electronic newspapers that published this did so in a copy/paste style, with no names for the source in the Hay’a who told them this. Having said that, “Al-Hayat” newspaper DID publish this and they are one of the oldest newspapers in the country. So that’s probably what lent it legitimacy. Maybe it did happen but they don’t want to abide by it??
That didn’t stop twitter from going crazy with a new hashtag of the title of the article, where people got into the same useless and endless debate between Pro, Against, and the Jokers.
Tssk tsk… What a waste of time.
On the positive side, the “announcement” did include that the reason for this is that there is no law actually banning women from driving, so this is outside of the Hay’a’s jurisdiction (like that ever stopped them). Maybe the whole point was just to test the public’s reaction or spread awareness.
Still a waste of time…
For those of you who can read Arabic and are interested in the announcements, here is the Al-Hayat link.
And the other newspaper denying it
And a youtube video on the most popular social networking topics today, mentioning this.
Driver Diaries From The Kingdom 