According to Islamic religious scientists, it is a well known fact that women lose their virginity the minute they drive a car.

The exact mechanism for this event is not known, but several experts have been working on the phenomenon for the last decade. Their results will be made public in a long-awaited article in the Journal of Islamic Gynecology in January, 2012.

Most Saudi scientists believe that the hormone WHuP-E2 “kicks in” during moments of intense exhilaration, causing a small explosion in the urogenital sinus that punctures the hymen.

This is the same sort of reaction that contributes to sexual pleasure, and as Dr Muhammad d’ullah din Dishwatah noted, driving is probably much closer to sexual intercourse and orgasm than western science has been willing to acknowledge.

“Islamic science has been much more advanced in this area than western science,” he explained. ”As a result of our prophetic tradition, we have been able to think outside the box.”

“A young woman who takes her brother’s BMW out for a spin on Sunday is playing with fire,” Dishwatah claimed. ”In the west, this may not be relevant. But here, we believe there is only one appropriate way to lose one’s virginity, and it isn’t doing wheelies in the parking lot of the Riyadh Harvey Nichols.”

Dr Dishwatah says he is a “moderate” on this issue and represents the secular trend in medical science.

Professor S’watu Said of the National Islamic University of Technology and Space Science goes a step further:

“The Quran itself speaks of the evil of women driving and accurately predicts the consequences,” Said said.

“There is a direct causal link between women driving and the amount of evil God permits to exist in the world at any given time. Some passages are quite clear on the subject while others are more oblique: Surah 29, for example, says, ’Lo! the Hour is surely coming. But I will to keep it hidden, that every soul may be rewarded for that which it striveth (to achieve)’. What could be clearer?” Said asked. ”The verb حملة meaning to drive and the verb نسعى, or strive, are closely related. They even rhyme in English.”

Both Dishwatah and Said agreed that the correlation between women driving and the end of the world are well-attested in Islamic tradition. ”Many people, including my wife, have missed the significance of the trend, ” Dishwatah noted, “but for me it is as plain as the nose on your face.”

Quoting from his recent translation of Surah 82 (Al-Infitar), he enumerated the signs: ”1. When the heaven is cleft asunder, 2. When the planets are dispersed, 3. When the seas are poured forth, 4. When the sepulchres are overturned, 5. When the pages are laid open and 7. When the women drive…. know then that the end of days has come.”

Asked why men are permitted to drive, Said insisted that it is not merely a matter of tradition:

“Men think nothing of driving. They do not experience the same kind of exhilaration and hence they do not have orgasm when they drive. This is the way Allah has made us.”

The real concern is with the social effects of exhilaration, Dishwatah said. Men and women will turn to homosexuality and pornography in vast numbers. “I predict that in ten years there will be no virgins left in the Kingdom. But the number of BMW’s will have increased perhaps thirty-fold.”

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*In the truth is stranger than fiction category but not nearly as funny, the Daily Mail ran the story of the Islamic experts’ verdict on women drivers the same day as this piece was ready. Checking twice to be sure I hadn’t linked to a satirical website, I was stunned go see the following:

“The report warns that allowing women to drive would ‘provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce’.

“Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report’s authors claim, there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom.”