In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive, a senior state cleric has ruled women should not be allowed behind the wheel because they have “a quarter the brainpower of men”.

Sheikh Saad al-Hajari, the head of the government’s religious edict authority in the southern province of Assir, recently made the comments at a lecture on “the evils of allowing women to drive”, Saudi daily Sabq reported on Wednesday.

 

“It is not their fault, but women lack intellect do they not?” Hajari asked an audience.

 

“Their lack of intellect does not harm their piousness because they are made that way,” he said, explaining that in Islam a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s.

 

“Would you give a man with half an intellect a driving licence? So how would you give one to a woman when she has half an intellect,” he said.

 

“And if they go out to the market this gets halved again! So they now have a quarter of an intellect,” Hajari said without giving an explanation for his reasoning.