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Driving a car may not be a sin but a crime it is in Saudi Arabia. Rich women may own the best and the most expensive vehicles but driving pleasure is forbidden. The ‘daredevil’ female folk may not drive back to their homes but surely get an acclimatization tour of prison.

The world’s only country where women on the wheel tantamount to civil disobedience, it is not legally banned. However, driving licenses are not issued to women. Manal Al-Sharif is the face of defiant Saudi women who are challenging the conservative kingdom with their hands on steering wheels and foot on accelerator. Saudi women, equally capable like their other Middle Eastern cousins, raised their peaceful protest via Facebook and showed off their driving skills through Youtube videos.

Ms Al-Sharif was twice arrested for driving within a week, earlier she was warned and later sent to prison. No ordinary woman, aspiring to be a taxi driver, she represents the Saudi elite which shuns male subjugation in a multi-layered society where the female folk remains stripped off voting rights in the kingdom, except in chambers of commerce.

Saudi media claims that the affluent female has voluntarily quit driving and thus pardoned. Ms Al-Sharif is said to have ‘voluntarily’ agreed to abandon ‘June 17’ driving campaign, a unique offshoot of the Arab spring. The group’s Facebook page ‘Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself’ attempts to convinces authorities to reverse the discriminatory law.

The monarchy imposes a strict dress code for its female citizens requiring them to cover their face. Iran, Saudi Arabia’s ideological opponent, too imposes a similar restriction but does not involve veil.

Not long ago, French ban on veiled female drivers caused uproar across the Muslim world but most commentators and news sources either blackout the story or hesitate to comment on the development. Authoritarian regimes in the Muslim countries have been catalytic in portraying a hard image of Islam, providing fertile ground for the ignorant to stereotype its followers. In a land where Muslim women since early days of Islam rode horses and camels, ban on driving may prove the first step to towards larger public disobedience. Until then, the Islamophobes find another front to stigmatize Islam and its followers.

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