Manal Al-Sharif > Manal's Quotes

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#1

“Freedom is to live with dignity”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: dignity-of-women, freedom, manal-al-sharif, women-empowerment, women-s-rights

14 likes

#2

“The rain begins with a single drop”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: arabic-proverb, hope, manal-al-sharif, optimistic, rain

21 likes

#3

“My face is my identity. No one will cover it. I’m proud of my face. If my face bothers you, don’t look. Turn your own face away, take your eyes off me. If you are seduced by merely looking at my face, that is your problem.
Do not tell me to cover it. You cannot punish me simply because you cannot control yourself.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: burqa, face, identity-quotes, muslim-women, niqab, veil, women-s-emancipation, women-s-empowerment, women-s-rights, women-s-strength

20 likes

#4

“My scars teach me that I am stronger than what caused them.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: scars, self-awareness, self-confidence, self-love, self-realization, strong-women

37 likes

#5

“Extremism frequently turns its champions into angry people, driven by conflicting desires. At first, I pitied my less enlightened parents and siblings. Then I felt superior to them, poor sinners that they were. Then I lost patience with their unwillingness
to see the one true path and resorted to threats, intimidation, and yelling. At night, I was tormented by thoughts of what would happen to all us of when we reached our graves.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: extremism, islamists, jihadis, radicalism, saudi-arabia

1 likes

#6

“I had to smuggle an early Nokia camera cell phone into the country from Bahrain in 2004. There was a large black market for these banned phones, with smugglers hiding them inside car bumpers or car door frames, while customs officials and police used ultrasound devices to ferret them out.)”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: bahrain, camera-phone, forbidden, nokia, radical-islam, saudi-arabia, smuggle

0 likes

#7

“Gradually, I realized that the ideas I had embraced and defended blindly all my life represented a singular, and highly radical, point of view. I began to question everything.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: extremism, islam, questioning, radical-islam, radicalism, salafi, wahabi

2 likes

#8

“I knew that I wouldn’t be able to apply for the ID card without his signature, but I went to the registry office anyway and sat there waiting, holding back my tears. I took an application form and the guardian consent form and returned to the car chastened. Abouya looked at me and said sarcastically, “Where’s the card?” It was a clear statement that he was still the master of my fate.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: guardianship, male-guardianship, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, women-s-rights

0 likes

#9

“This is what happens when the state intervenes in a person’s private life; it creates two separate personas. It compels you either to lead two separate lives, or to violate what’s imposed on you
when the state isn’t looking.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: burqa, freedom, islam, laws, muslim-women, niqab, salafism, unnatural-law

7 likes

#10

“When we’d finished, I asked the division planner if he had left out anyone in the division. “No, Manal,” he told me. “I’m quite sure we haven’t missed anyone.”
“So there are no girls here apart from me?”
“No, there aren’t.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: patriarchal-society, professional-women, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, women-engineers, women-s-empowerment, working-women

0 likes

#11

“I was lonely, desperate, and angry. At that moment, I truly understood what it meant to be a Saudi woman. It meant being confronted with every possible kind of
obstacle and discrimination. It meant being told that if you want to race with men, you’d have to do it with your hands and legs cut off. I started to wish I had been born somewhere—anywhere—else.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: discrimination-quotes, driving, equality, equity, hopeless, manal-al-sharif, men, obstacles, patriarchy, professional-women, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, women, women-s-rights

5 likes

#12

“How odd it is that we judge a woman by her clothes and the place she eats lunch and the subjects she talks about with her colleagues
on her coffee break, yet we don’t judge a man if he doesn’t grow his beard or if he works with women or speaks to them. Why do Saudi women allow subjugation to a man and adhere to men’s rules and conditions? Why did I?”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: patriarchal-society, rules, saudi-men, saudi-women, women, women-and-men, women-power, women-s-rights

3 likes

#13

“I got a text from my husband. “Manal, you are divorced,” it read. “Your papers are in the court of Khobar.” I was divorced in my absence, just as I had been married.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: discrimination, divorce, extremism, manal-al-sharif, marriage, patriarchy, salafi, saudi-arabia, saudi-men, saudi-women, text-message, wahabi, women-emnacipation, women-s-rights

1 likes

#14

“The axiomatic thing about Saudi society is that while there are a seemingly infinite number of rules, it is also possible for people in authority to go outside those rules, and, if not break them, at least bend them quite a bit.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: discrimination, exception-to-the-rule, manal-al-sharif, patriarchy, saudi-arabia, saudi-society, saudi-women

1 likes

#15

“Because my mother couldn't change my present, I decided to change my daughter's future”
― Manal al-Sharif

tags: daughter, equality, manal-al-sharif, mother, mother-daughter, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, women-s-liberation, women-s-rights, women-s-strength

5 likes

#16

“It is an amazing contradiction: a society that frowns on a woman going out without a man; that forces you to use separate entrances for universities, banks, restaurants, and mosques; that divides restaurants with partitions so that unrelated males and females cannot sit together; that same society expects you to get into a car with a man who is not your relative, with a man who is a complete stranger, by yourself and have him take you somewhere inside a locked car, alone.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: contradictions, drivers, driving, equality, right-to-drive, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, segregation, women-s-rights, women-to-drive

2 likes

#17

“So you’re the infamous Manal al-Sharif,” he said, eyeing me from behind his desk. “Aren’t you ashamed of what you did?”
“Is driving a car something shameful?” I answered back.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: car, daring-to-drive, driving, equality, infamous, manal-al-sharif, right-to-drive, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, segregation, shameful, women, women-s-rights, women-to-drive

1 likes

#18

“She took my papers, the papers that had followed me from the Khobar police station to jail, and pointed at a place where I was supposed to sign. On the paper there was a line for charges. In the blank space, someone had written “driving while female.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: daring-to-drive, driving, equality, inequality, jail, manal-al-sharif, patriarchal-society, right-to-drive, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, segregation, women-s-rights, women-to-drive

2 likes

#19

“How beautiful it is to live in a world with no walls.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: daring-to-drive, driving, equality, inequality, jail, manal-al-sharif, patriarchal-society, right-to-drive, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, segregation, women-s-rights, women-to-drive, world-with-no-walls

6 likes

#20

“We were like captive animals that had lost the will to fight. We even went so far as to defend the very constraints that they had
imposed upon us.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

tags: daring-to-drive, driving, equality, inequality, jail, manal-al-sharif, patriarchal-society, right-to-drive, saudi-arabia, saudi-women, segregation, women-s-rights, women-to-drive

5 likes

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