Mick Hartley

Girls schools need to be inspected, obviously. And, since this is Saudi Arabia we're talking about, those inspections must clearly be done by women. But – and here's where it gets tricky – to reach the schools may require a car journey.  

The Grand Mufti puts his finger on the problem (via):

Saudi female education inspectors of the General Administration of Education here have been warned about the impropriety of being driven by the administration’s drivers to remote areas when they inspect schools.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh, the Kingdom’s Grand Mufti, in a closed TV circuit meeting with the female staff, said that such trips with drivers who are not related to women inspectors are dangerous and require an urgent solution, Arabic daily Al-Watan reported.

Quite what that urgent solution may be, and whether it might possibly involve allowing the women to drive themselves, the Grand Mufti was unable to say. Though he did go on, helpfully, to suggest that with the summer holidays approaching now might be a good time to read some books dealing with home affairs, and to warn against watching satellite TV channels which "fight the faith and attempt to drag viewers into an abyss of vice, terrorism and corruption". The dilemma of those women inspectors who don't have a close male relative willing and available to drive them around remains unresolved.

Back to the Koran and the Hadiths, then. There must be something in there, surely, to provide guidance….

Not unrelated, and an interesting read: Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science. In a nutshell, because of the triumph of the anti-rationalist Ash'ari school somewhere round the twelfth or thirteenth century:

With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. …the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable….

Reason, because it teaches us to discover, question, and innovate, was the enemy…