This is the best pro-women’s rights stuff we’ve seen out of Saudi Arabia, ever. Saudi comedian Hisham Fageeh has posted his excellent No Woman, No Drive video to bring attention to the plight of women in the Middle Eastern country.

Fageeh’s No Woman, No Drive rendition of the Bob Marley classic No Woman, No Cry, is not only sarcastic and sharp, but it is topically relevant as well, knocking the absurd idea that driving could damage a woman’s ovaries.

Watch No Woman, No Drive video below

We’re not quite sure how the Saudi authorities are going to take this one, and hope that Fageeh, for his own sake has some ties to royalty or big oil money. For the third time ever on Saturday, the day this video was released, Saudi Arabian women took to the streets and drove – protesting what they feel is their God-given right. According to media reports, some 60 women took to the streets, and they felt no resistance by the police.

While driving cars isn’t our first choice of transport in the Middle East (we promote buses, trains, cycling and walking), getting the women out to drive is a first step in liberalizing their right to choose. And women, we know, have an immense impact on environment policy and practice.

Hisham Fageeh will definitely be going to Letterman with this one. And we’d love to see more activists from the Middle East poke fun at their own culture, if you dare.

As an aside, reckless driving is very common in Saudi Arabia, where as a past-time youngsters take part in this crazy, scary “sport” of drifting their cars into spectators. Drifting is a sin, but it’s still being done. It’s known locally as hagwalah.

Maybe women there should not only give up driving, but about getting into cars as well: Saudi Arabia has the highest rates of death by car accidents in the world.

Now for the lyrics…

Lyrics to No Woman, No Drive
No woman, no drive
No woman, no drive
No woman, no drive…

Say I remember when you used to sit, in the family car be’ backseat
Ova ovaries are safe and well
So you can make lots and lots of babies
Good friends we’ve had and good friends we’ve lost
On the highway
In this bright future you can’t forget your past
So you put your car key away

No woman, no drive
No woman, no drive

Here little sister don’t touch that wheel
No woman, no drive
I remember when you used to sit, in the family car be’ backseat
Of course the driver can take you everywhere
Because the queens don’t drive
But you can cook for me my dinner
Of which I would share with you
Your feet is your only carriage
But only inside the house
And when I say it I mean it:

Everything’s gonna be alright….
Everything’s gonna be alright….
Everything’s gonna be alright….

No Woman, No Drive
No woman, no drive
Oh little sisters don’t touch that wheel
No woman, no drive

Now for the real story: watch a Saudi woman defy the ban. She drove this past Saturday in Saudi Arabia. Below is a video of Manal Al Sharif driving in Saudi Arabia (with English subtitles):

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