Saudi King Abdullah announced on 25 Sep 2011 that the nation's women would gain the right to vote and run as candidates in local elections to be held in 2015 in a major advancement for the rights of women in the deeply conservative Muslim Kingdom. In an annual speech before his advisory assembly, or Shura Council, the Saudi monarch said he ordered the step after consulting the nation's top religious clerics, whose advice carries great weight in the Kingdom.
We refuse to marginalise the role of women in Saudi society and in every aspect, within the rules of Sharia, said King Abdullah, referring to the Islamic law that governs many aspects of life in the Kingdom. The right to vote is by far the biggest change introduced by Kind Abdullah, considered a reformer, since he became the de facto reler in 195 during the illness of Kind Fahd. King Abdullah formally ascended to the thorne upon Fahd's death in August 2005. The Kingdom's great oild wealth and generous handouts to citizens have largely insulated it from the unrest sweeping the Arab world. But the King has taken steps to quiet rumblings of discontent that largely centred on the easter oil-producing region oulated by the Shia Muslim minority.
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