Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Driving Miss Saudi

According to this group of highly educated Saudi women, gathered to hear a speech by US envoy Karen Hughes (who I never liked much), they are perfectly happy not being able to drive cars.
"When Ms. Hughes expressed the hope here that Saudi women would be able to drive and "fully participate in society" much as they do in her country, many challenged her.

"The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn't happy," one audience member said. Well, we're all pretty happy." The room, full of students, faculty members and some professionals, resounded with applause.

Oh really?? How true is this? Were these women being honest or just posturing in response to the patronizing tone of Ms. Hughes who is a senior Bush administration official charged with spreading the American message in the Muslim world?

Nobody likes being told what to do, least of all in a setting like the one described here.. But how long will these women keep burying their heads in the sand?

21 comments:

  1. Not just when they study abroad, but the minute the plane takes off from Riyadh or Jeddah

    Or so I'm told

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  2. Dear Zaydoun:
    This is an aspect that is displayed by the complacent brainwashed culture that is prevalent in our societies, where change is looked at with paranoia. You remember a few years ago right after Sep. 11 and the US campaign against the Taliban, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes visited Kuwait and part of his profile included a meeting with some (medical?) students. One of the young women expressed her opinion that politics should be left to men. Imagine if the majority of Kuwaiti women shared her opinion, suffrage for women would have remained a dream.

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  3. q8demon... Apparently we don't have to imagine it. A lot of women share her belief

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  4. منو اغاثا كريستي الكويت؟ لا يكون فجر السعيد؟؟؟

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  5. Nychick

    يا معود الوعي السياسي مو بس مفقود عند نساء الكويت، حتى رجالها. خليها على الله

    Zaydoun

    آنه ما أرضى على فجر السعيد

    على الأقل من باب الزمالة

    إي هين

    8-)

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  6. منو الاهم؟
    قيادة المرأة للسياره و لا الاعتراف بها ككائن حى أولا؟
    المسأله مساله النظر للمشاكل الحقيقيه فى المجتمع و مشاكل المرأه الحقيقيه..
    المشكله أكبر من أجازة سياره و منصب قيادى

    موضوع ذو صلة
    http://alsaha.fares.net/sahat?128@121.RwRfsJ7Nb1V.0@.1dd83803

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  7. OK, political rights for women virtually came without a major input from women activism, but at least the issue was under debate for decades. Maybe I should?ve said: if the women fought against their political rights as some groups are still attempting to, they wouldn?t have been granted? The issue of political awareness is part of the bigger picture of cultural awareness, which is lacking in the current generation for several reasons. As long as the population indulges itself in shallowness, it will remain shallow. But again if one does or says nothing, then nothing will happen.

    (All this gave me an idea for a post about womens activism in previous decades ? stay tuned!)

    As for the Agatha Christie quotation, I think Barabara Cartland would have been a better choice. After all she was the queen of trashy novels.

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  8. I would say Jackie Collins

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  9. Dear Zaydoun: Oh, OK I agree ? totally forgot about her!

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  10. Zaydoun, I heard, few months ago, that few Saudi women sent a letter to King Abudulla (before he was a king) protesting that they don?t want women to be recognized under the law as drivers.. does this make sense to you ? I mean if you don?t want to drive, simply don?t.. why would you go the extra mile to stop others that want to drive.. what?s the defense on that ??

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  11. sometimes , when you are lashed 20 times a day , and it contuine like that for 3-4 generation , everyone would think lashing is good , else why did the people before them not stop it

    also , its the bush factor , a lot of people hate bush what ever he do , hell i know some people who felt that bush was making lies about saddam and that saddam never did a thing ( just because it was bush who said it ) , i'm sure if bush tomorow said he converted into a muslim , some people would lose it and kill them self

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  12. I was just reading this article before i checked your blog...
    I think she was challenged because the message was coming from an american, an outsider...like many of us we accept criticism and complaints from within but when it comes from someone who is not kuwaiti we always tend to get defensive...
    The SAudi women knew what she was saying is true but they couldnt accept what she was saying because it was coming from an outsider.

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  13. it's their life.. who cares?

    if they want something, they should fight to get it?

    apparently they don't give a shit..

    thats weird..

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  14. زيدون:
    والله ملينا من هالحكي
    وعادوا وزادوا فيه على غير سنع ترا

    انا كمراه سعوديه مو مشكلتي قياده سيارتي او لا
    ولا اهتم بهالموضوع لانه فيه سائق او اثنين او ثلاثه


    المراه ينقصها اشياء كثيره اهم بكثيير من قياده السياره
    وهالعجوز الشمطاء واثقه انه النساء السعوديات بيسوقون!!
    يعني طابخينها صح بس ناقصهم اعلان الموضوع

    وجود هالانسانه بالسعوديه كان المقصد منه تحسين صوره امريكا .. يعني مصالح شخصيه

    اذا مهتمين للمراه السعوديه لهدرجه .. اهتموا بتعليمها وتوظيفها قبل سياقه السياره
    اللي انا مو ضدها على فكره

    ليش المراه السعوديه مالها مجال غير التدريس بس
    اقترح على هالعجوز تفتح لنا شركات نسائيه اصرف من الحكي الفاضي

    ومشكور على هالموضوع اللي مدري من وين طلعته
    :)

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  15. I don't think its our business to discuss Saudis life style or anybody else for that matter. We might dislike the Saudis way of living and to most it seems too suffocating, but we cannot complain or ridicule just because its different than ours.



    We have more than enough bullshit here, it might smell little better but it is still bullshit

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  16. nychic

    When your passport says Land of Utopia on its cover then you can complain about others domestic problems

    What you see as being negative, others here in Kuwait like Islamists look at it as being perfect. Saudis life is controlled more by Bedouin traditions than ours , it has little to do with religion. And looking at our history We do NOT share the same traditions as Saudis. Just like we don't share traditions with India , thus we cant complain about Indian Women wearing Saris.

    As for reading about other countries news, we have to, just like watching CNN international, the anchorman would focus on problems or certain aspects in a society, but you will never hear him criticizing or calling the US a better country than the rest.

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  17. nychick

    I'm sure there are more Saudis who find our lifestyle as being "wrong" and would it be ok then for them to criticize us and provoke some here to change things?

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  18. باتكلم عن ديرتي البحرين.. صج ان وضع المرأة عندنا احسن من غيرها بس بعد للحين ما خذت كامل حقها يعني ما في اي امرأة عضوة في المجلس النيابي لأن بكل بساطة ما في لا وعي و لا تثقيف سياسي عند المرأة بس المجلس الأعلى للمراة قاعد يحاول ان يضع خطط و برامج تساعد المرأة على دخول المجلس في الانتخابات الياية و هاذي شي جيد بس للحين المرأة مظلومة في اشياء كثيرة منها قانون الاحوال الشخصية و البهدلة اللي لازم المرأة تمر فيها في قضايا الطلاق و غيرها من المشاكل .. و مسامحة على الاطالة :)
    خارج الموضوع.. شفايدة هالالحرف اللي لازم نكتبهم بعد ما نحط اسمنا و الباسورد ؟ :)

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  19. Karen Hughes is a stupid idiot, and like I said above I'm not surprised they lashed out at her.. here's more

    The undersecretary's dangerous trip

    Karen Hughes takes her "Innocents Abroad" tour to the Middle East -- and plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

    - - - - - - - - - - - -
    By Sidney Blumenthal


    President Bush has no advisor more loyal and less self-serving than Karen Hughes. As governor of Texas he implicitly trusted the former Dallas television reporter turned press secretary with the tending of his image and words. She was mother hen of his persona. In the White House, Hughes devoted heart and soul to Bush as his communications director, until, suddenly, she returned home to Texas in 2002, citing her son's homesickness. There were reports that Karl Rove, jealous of power, had been sniping at her.

    From her exile, Hughes produced a memoir, "Ten Minutes From Normal," which is deeply uninteresting and unrevealing. Amid long stretches of uninformative banality lie unselfconscious expressions of religiosity, accounts of how she inserted Psalms 23 and 27 into Bush's speeches after Sept. 11, 2001, and an entire page of small type reproducing a sermon she delivered on Palm Sunday aboard Air Force One. She quotes then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: "I think Karen missed her calling. She can preach."

    After two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned in frustration in the face of the precipitous loss of U.S. prestige around the globe, Bush found a new slot for Hughes this year. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior State Department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the United States.

    This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the -- is proud of the saying that 'all are Turks.'"

    Hughes appeared to be one of the pilgrims satirized by Mark Twain in his 1869 book, "Innocents Abroad," about his trip on "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion." "None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to us ... We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans -- Americans!"

    Hughes' simple, sincere and unadorned language is pellucid in revealing the administration's inner mind. Her ideas on terrorism and its solution are straightforward. "Terrorists," she said in Egypt at the start of her trip, "their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up." Somehow, magically, these evildoers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve. "Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why President Bush mentions God in his speeches, she asked him "whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.' He said, 'Well, never mind.'"

    With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. "It is stunning ... the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden," Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists, is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," and recently briefed the Pentagon and the National Counterterrorism Center. "If you set out to help bin Laden," he said, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."

    Pape's research debunks the view that suicide terrorism is the natural byproduct of Islamic fundamentalism or some "Islamo-fascist" ideological strain independent of certain highly specific circumstances. "Of the key conditions that lead to suicide terrorism in particular, there must be, first, the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize. The second condition is a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals. If you read Osama's speeches, they begin with descriptions of the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, driven by our religious goals, and that it is our religious purpose that must confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful not only to religious Muslims but secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case."

    The undersecretary's blundering grand tour of the Middle East may be the latest incarnation of "Innocents Abroad." "The people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them," Twain wrote. "We generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them."

    The stakes, however, are rather different than they were on "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion." Hughes' trip "would be a folly," Pape says, "were it not so dangerous."

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Keep it clean, people!