CAIRO – In a milestone for Muslim women, Brunei all-female Muslim pilot crew has operated a plane from Brunei to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia where driving cars remains a thorny issue for women.
“As a woman, a Bruneian woman, it is such a great achievement,” Captain Sharifah Czarena Surainy, who completed her initial pilot training at the Cabair Flying School in Cranfield, told The Independent.
“It’s really showing the younger generation or the girls especially that whatever they dream of, they can achieve it.”
Flight BI081 was operated by Captain Surainy, Senior First Officer Dk Nadiah Pg Khashiem and Senior First Officer Sariana Nordin last February 23.
It came as part of events marking the Islamic country’s National Day, which celebrates the country’s independence.
The occasion came just over three years after Captain Czarena became the first female captain of a flag carrier in Southeast Asia.
“Being a pilot, people normally see it as being a male dominant occupation,” she told The Brunei Times in 2012.
For years, women resorted to hiring live-in drivers while other relied on male relatives.
Saudi scholars and conservatives have long voiced fears that allowing women to drive would lead to Western-style freedoms and an erosion of traditional values.
There is no evidence in Shari`ah that forbids women from driving. Women in the lifetime of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to ride camels and horses.
The practice of Saudi Arabia on such matters is more to do with the tribal customs rather than with the norms of the Shari`ah.
In 1990, a group of 47 women drove 15 cars in the capital Riyadh in defiance to the state ban.
They were swiftly rounded up by police and penalized, while their male guardians were reprimanded.
The following year, a fatwa was issued by then mufti and head of the Council of Senior Ulema (Muslim scholars), Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, prohibiting women from driving cars.
In October 2013, “Women’s Driving Campaign” activists spearheaded a social media campaign calling Saudi women to defy a female drive ban has been gathering pace, with numerous women posting their videos on social websites for themselves behind the wheel in various cities across the Kingdom.
More recently in 2014, Saudi female activists launched a new campaign when dozens of women defied the driving ban, posting their videos while driving around their neighborhood on social media.