re: #3 researchok

Your points are well taken. Clearly, the mucku mucks are in it only because it serves their interests.

That said, you can’t put genie back inb the bottle. Average women with access to to information and the outside world are not repudiating Islam (as some men might say). They just want equal rights.

When the average woman in any society says, ‘This is worth fighting for’, change is inevitable.

This is true. But one has to acknowledge that the House of Saud tries to ride this wave, control it and steer it. And that is probably the worst way that the fight could play out. Activists need to take hold of the change. Rights cannot be “granted” by the King – anything the King grants is a privilege, to be taken away at his whim, too. Lots of smokescreens, too. Symbols, supposedly meaningful in 2015 or whenever, but in the mean time the women still get beaten for exercising their human right to move freely. Human rights cannot be granted. They have to be asserted, bottom-up.

The revolution, and that always means: the uprising of the people against an injust government, is inevitable. The Arab leaders have known this for decades now. All the House of Saud can and will do is to impede the process while securing their assets.