So what's the big deal?

Comcast's crack news team tells me that people in Saudi Arabia are up in arms about someone proposing the reversing the ban on women drivers. It seems that the Saudi Arabian all male, all God, all the time, authority believe women should be shielded from strange men and say that driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics. "Driving by women leads to evil," Awammi me-Salammi wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. "Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men." This unequal treatment is just an example of what happens when a religious establishment has the upper hand in defining freedoms and lifestyle. We in the West (we're in the West part of this rotating sphere, right?) can't seem to fathom this degree of logic as we are liberated, educated, smarty-types who pursue happiness and equality for all people...unless you are from the south, or are poor, or need medical marijuana, or if you want to have a choice when you are pregnant at 12, or vote, or don't believe in the one true white-guy-with-brown-beard Jesus, or have a disease that could be cured with stem cell research, want to die with dignity, believe in evolution of species, or your gay, black, Hispanic, Canadian, or Democrat. So my response to this story is, 'what's the big deal?' Why this belief system should surprise, alarm or outrage us here in the US is a mystery to me? Perhaps, if we see that women have no right showing their eyes in Saudi Arabia, we fret and worry for what's next? Water conservation and health board violations for those who don't shave their armpits in France? Laws for having only two children per Chinese family so you must strangle and bury five birthed and healthy daughters so you can have one son that will carry on your crazy gene? An edict that states: no less than 50 flies per starving Ethiopian? If we don't do something now, America, it's gonna be like 1984 times a hundred!