Discrimination in fact is how many of the Saudis define themselves. Saudi Arabia is about separation of gender, race, tribe, fiefdoms.

By removing the ability to drive themselves anywhere, women were at the mercy of male authority, compelled always to inform men of their destinations and returns, and in a country where women could not travel without prior authorization by men, they were effectively hostage to their male relatives. Rania.

Generations of women are ignorant, ignorant of the Quran and its teachings. If we don’t inform ourselves as women, we don’t know about the rights we can exercise, which are empowering to women actually, because Islam is such an egalitarian religion, Qanta! Islam gave women inheritance rights and property rights and the rights to divorce and to choose a marriage partner. Servitude never enters the equation. Beatings are Haram.” Maha.

Did an unconscious sickly Muslim have the same responsibilities as a conscious, able-bodied one?

Religious zealotry therefore became the anchoring fabric weaving fractious fiefdoms together into a Kingdom.

In Riyadh, I would be licensed to operate procedures on critically ill patients, yet never to drive a motor vehicle. Only men could enjoy that privilege.

The origins of the Mutawaeen therefore were never to be an anti-Western mine-sweeping tool, rather a means of policing the state for the security of the precarious monarchy that had conquered it.

Inexplicably, the Kingdom's clerics compel non-Muslim women to veil also, a rule which is not to be found codified in the Quran.

Worse, they suggested this was a considerate move for the protection of women, conveniently disguising their discrimination with a thin veneer of patronizing gallantry.

I was slowly becoming aware that chauvinism and sexism was just as marked among many of the Western attendings as it was amongst many of the Saudi and other Arab physicians, as though the climate of the workplace promoted an infectious transmission of male supremacy.