It is 48 miles further than in Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive by themselves at all.  So this fatwa is a part of what we would mistakenly call "moderate" Islam in India?  It is hard to imagine moderate Islam in a country which suffered at the hands of Islam, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of Hindus.

The choice of 48 miles is not random: it is the distance a camel can travel through the desert on a good day.

Try using that as an ice-breaker at the next party you go to.

Let me know if it works.


From The Telegraph March 9 by Dean Nelson

Muslim women 'should not travel more than 48 miles from home without male chaperone'

Muslim women have been banned from traveling more than 48 miles from their homes without being chaperoned by a male relative, according to a fatwa issued by one of Islam's leading universities.

The ruling was made by the Darul Uloom Deoband, the leading Islamic university founded in northern India in 1866, which has millions of followers from Bangladesh and Pakistan to Muslim communities in Britain.

Its fatwa was issued after a female follower had asked: "Is a married woman permitted to travel to another country with her female sibling?"

In a reply on the Deoband website, she was told:"She cannot travel without a 'mehram' [male relative]. It's mentioned in the Hadees that a woman should not travel for more than 48 miles except in the company of a 'mehram' relative."

Its response, which was delivered on International Women's Day, provoked anger among Muslim women activists who said it was based on conditions in the Arabian peninsula more than 1,400 years ago and no longer relevant...

Indeed. 

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