Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi women campaigning for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia have received support from a group of Saudi comedians whose satirical view of the ban forbidding women in Saudi Arabia from getting behind the wheel of a car continues to draw international attention to the campaign for women’s rights.

Their video, No Woman, No Drive, is a satirical play on the Bob Marley classic song “No Woman, No Cry,” has gone viral YouTube, receiving more than 6.5 million views since it was posted on Saturday.

One of the video’s creators, Saudi Arabian performer Hisham Fageeh, is well known in the Arab-speaking world for his comic videos on YouTube, which often contain a social commentary.

The tune mocks the country’s ultraconservative restrictions that ban women from operating vehicle and require them to be in the company of a male guardian for several activities. The video also mocked the claim by one Saudi cleric that if women were allowed to operate a vehicle it could damage their ovaries and affect reproduction. Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan’s, a leading figure in Saudi Arabia, argued that “if a woman drives a car, it could have a negative physiological impact … Medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman’s ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.” He argued that the ban prevents reproductive problems.  Al-Loheidan said, “We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems.”

Well known on the Arabic-speaking web for his funny YouTube videos, which often contain a degree of social commentary, Hisam Fageeh has posted a new video spoofing his country’s practice of forbidding women from attaining driver’s licenses. Fageeh parodies the Bob Marley song “No woman, no cry” with lyrics lampooning Saudi Arabia’s car-related gender restrictions, which Saudi women are challenging this week with a mass protest drive.

Fageeh continued to mock the country’s ban on Monday after at least 60 women took to the road in protest of the ban on over the weekend. In a post on Twitter, he jokingly suggested that young, unpredictable, teenage male drivers are more of a danger to the public than adult women drivers. He tweeted “Just got hit by another car driven by a teenage male while doing a phone interview about #NoWomanNoDrive” with the hashtags #NoTeenagerNoDrive, #Saudi and #Irony.

Tamador Alyami, an activist and blogger in the city of Jeddah, who drove last week, said she appreciated the video and appreciated the satirical comedy at this stressful time for the women’s rights movement. She said, “It cracked me up. I laughed, and I shared it with everybody. I wanted it to have the same effect on them because it eased up a lot of the tension I was feeling.”

For further information, please see:

CNN International – Saudi Cleric Warns Driving Could Damage Women’s Ovaries – 30 October 2013

Huffington Post UK – Saudi Comic’s ‘No Woman, No Drive’ Video Goes Viral – 30 October 2013

The New York Times – Saudi Men Sing ‘No Woman, No Drive’ In Mock Homage To Ban On Female Drivers – 30 October 2013

The Daily Beast – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Behind the Viral Video – 28 October 2013

The Washington Post – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Saudi Arabian music video spoofs ban on female drivers – 27 October 2013