As Reuters notes, Saudi Arabian women are celebrating a unique experience in Riyadh: their right to attend a car show with the near-term prospect of actually being able to drive on Saudi streets.
Next month, Saudi law will permit women to take to cars and drive themselves wherever they wish to go. It’s an important moral moment that will afford greater freedom to Saudi women, especially younger Saudis, but it’s also a crucial political milestone.
After all, the liberation of women is just one element of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to turn his desert kingdom into a modern, economically dynamic nation-state.
Yet, not everyone is happy about the modernization.
On social media, Saudi women have been attacked by Saudi religious figures and followers who believe they should not be freed from their present condition of indentured servitude. And while bin Salman retains the power of the state to confront these fundamentalists, they are likely to mobilize towards increasing violence as their Wahhabi dystopia becomes ever more fleeting.
That’s because the struggle between Saudi modernity and Wahhabism is one that both sides understand will lead to a mutually-exclusive victor. The two ideologies are not compatible in vision or in practice.
Let us hope modernity wins out.
