A woman’s car was set on fire in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca only a week after the kingdom lifted the ban on female drivers, Gulf News reported on Tuesday.
Salma al-Sherif, 31, said her car had been deliberately set alight this week by men “opposed to women drivers,” AFP reported quoting local media.
“The incident is being investigated by security officials,” Mecca police said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Sherif said she had allegedly faced abuse from men in her neighbourhood soon after she began driving in a bid to ease her financial pressures. “Half of my salary of 4,000 riyals (Rs 73,280) was spent on a driver to take me to my workplace and drive my elderly parents,” Sherif told Arabic newspaper Okaz, according to AFP. “But from the first day of driving I was subjected to insults from men.”
In 2017, Saudi Arabia had announced that it would lift its ban on female drivers by June 2018. On June 24, woman were legally allowed to drive. The Saudi General Traffic Directorate began issuing domestic driving licences to women who have international ones on June 4. Several other women are training at new state-run schools, and three million women are expected to drive by 2020.
Some Saudi men have expressed their dissatisfaction with the change, and are using an Arabic hashtag for “You won’t drive” in their social media posts, BBC reported. Others welcomed the lifting of the ban.
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