Saudi women petition and pepper-spray

Oppressed Saudi Arabian women are fighting back --- literally. According to Arabic news service Asharq Al-Awsat, two Saudi Arabian women attacked members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice after the men "politely" asked the girls to change their inappropriate clothing. The girls allegedly insulted the men, and then one girl pepper-sprayed them in the face while the other recorded the altercation on her cell phone.

Saudi Arabian women are not just fighting the virtue police. They are also fighting for the right to drive cars, BBC reported. In 1990, 47 women challenged the country's unofficial taboo when they took their husbands' cars out for a drive. The women were arrested and the country's Grand Mufti issued a fatwa forbidding women drivers. The ban cannot be overruled except by another fatwa, but Fawzia al-Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars, is still trying: "This is a right that has been delayed for too long."

BBC said Saudi's conservatives fear that letting women drive will mean letting women "mix freely with men." Nina Shea, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Saudi Arabia is "far more backward in their interpretation of Islam than any other country." Shea said according to Saudi Arabian thought, "Women create chaos. ... The morality of society rests on the actions of women. Men are not expected to stop harassing women. Women are expected to sequester themselves, cloister themselves, cover themselves so men stop harassing them."