Quotes on Saudi

Criticism of the Middle East should not be directed only at Saudi Arabia. Human rights abuses are happening throughout the Arab world.

I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned.

The bicycle freed 19th-century women from their homes and from their dependence on men. I hope that in Saudi Arabia, the car will do the same.

In Saudi Arabia, they always tell us we are queens. We are pistachios. You know the nut? Like something that is protected. So even if you have a very good education, restraints are put on women.

In May 2011, I drove a car in the city of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, to protest the kingdom's ban on women driving.

In the Saudi system, women are considered inferior. No matter our age, we have male guardians. We must get permission from men to attend school, to work, to marry, to travel overseas - even to have basic medical procedures.

For us, driving is not what we are looking for, but being in the driver's seat of our only destiny. That means ending guardianship in Saudi Arabia, which means recognizing women as full citizens.

Until the Saudi authorities who administer the holy sites take concrete steps to protect female pilgrims, we must protect each other. Men must stop assaulting us, yes. But women the world over, regardless of faith, know that until that happens, we are each other's keepers.

My family moved to Saudi Arabia from Glasgow when I was 15. Being a 15-year-old girl anywhere is difficult - all those hormones and everything - but being a 15-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia... it was like someone had turned the light off in my head. I could not get a grasp on why women were treated like this.

As a woman in Saudi Arabia, you have one of two options. You either lose your mind - which at first happened to me because I fell into a deep depression - or you become a feminist.

Denying women the right to drive has imposed huge costs on Saudi citizens.

I would like to see evolution in my country, not revolution. It is much better for us to work together with the government to transform Saudi Arabia for the future.

In Saudi Arabia - recognized as one of the worst violators of women's rights - women outnumber men on university campuses and yet are treated like minors who need a male guardian's permission to do the most basic things.

That is life for a Saudi woman: wherever we go, whatever we achieve, we are the property of a man.