Saudi women are not allowed to drive. If they want to go to a place, they are driven by men. Saudi women are obligated to wear niqab that cover their faces, except eyes. But many of them have beautiful eyes.
Their beautiful eyes can attract men. Men who attracted to beautiful eyes woman that they see in public area, usually will follow this woman to know where is she lives, or record the car plate number that ride by this woman. But they didn't do further because they afraid to a man who guard this woman. If women drive in Saudi Arabia without adult male, those men will chase them.
This is information that I got from several sources in Saudi Arabia.
Majority of ulama in the world allow women drive car, even alone, as long as meet certain conditions. But if we ask those ulama "should women drive car without mahram in Saudi Arabia?" maybe all of them will answer "no!".
Situation in Saudi Arabia is different. There is a bad image of Saudi men as men who can't see women without doing something wrong. Not all of them, of course. But according to some sources in Saudi Arabia, at there we can find men like this in everywhere.
i can't see what reasons they can have for not allowing women to drive. every islamic ruling has to be based on evidence, from the Quran or Sunnah or even ijmah of our righteous predecessors (which is also based on the former two). cars didn't exist back then, but horses and camels did and women did ride them. If women were allowed to ride horses, camels, etc, then they should be allowed to drive as well. not allowing women to drive out of the city is a different matter, because there is a hadith that prohibits women from travelling alone. but not allowing women to drive is ridiculous and has no islamic basis, imo.
Shaykh Muqbil from Yemen is a non-Saudi scholar who prohibit women to drive car except in emergency situation. Different than Saudi Ulama who prohibit women to drive without
exception.
And in a statement, Shaykh Muqbil said "We can't say this (prohibition for women to drive) is haram". This is because there is no any daleel in Islam that can be used to prohibit women control car as driver. Woman traveling alone is different matter.
Like I have written, ulama can prohibit ummah do something that actually halal as non-Shar'i prohibition. But unfortunately I have found some fatawa that clearly classify this prohibition as Shar'i Haram which those who break this prohibition get sin.
You do get that problem. In some cultures, people usually blame the problems on the women, even though the man has done wrong as well.
In my place, if an old ustadz see a man tease a woman, he will beat this man with his rattan stick. But unfortunately, in some other cultures, in situation like this they will blame the women, not the men.
