A Fearless Saudi Woman at the Wheel

Wajeha al-Huwaider is at it again. Saudi Arabia's most creative human rights activist made a 3-minute YouTube video of herself driving a car in Saudi Arabia. Of course, in the Kingdom where women are barred from driving and are deprived of other basic rights, her jaunt down a country road behind the wheel was an illegal act that could have gotten her thrown in jail. Not long ago, she posted an earlier video on YouTube that showed her trying to apply for a Saudi driver's license at a police station.

It might not seem like much, but such acts of civil disobedience amount to breaking social taboos in ultra conservative Saudi society and are extremely rare. If you think the YouTube videos are a silly stunt, think again. Al-Huwaider is a very serious woman, a Georgetown University graduate, a journalist honored by the International PEN organization. She has been banned from writing in Saudi Arabia because for her human rights views. Two years ago, Saudi authorities temporarily confiscated her passport, barred her from leaving the country and pressured her to sign a statement promising to quit human rights activism. The authorities don't think she's silly. They think she's dangerous.

Many Saudi liberals believe that women will never get their rights if they don't demand them. Few Saudi women stand up to be counted like Al-Huwaider does. In 2006, on the first anniversary of King Abdullah's ascension to the Saudi throne--Abdullah is seen as sympathetic to granting more rights to women but reluctant to cross swords with the Kingdom's hard-line religious powers-- she staged a one-woman protest on the causeway linking Saudi Arabia with the state of Bahrain. She held a placard reading, "Give Women Their Rights." She was arrested within 20 minutes. But as her YouTube videos demonstrate, al-Huwaider is a woman who refuses to be silenced.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo