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Karen Hughes in Saudi Arabia: A Follow-Up

Three letters in this morning's Times offer an interesting glimpse into the strengths and weaknesses of liberal opinion on Karen Hughes's public diplomacy visit to the Middle East. Heading up the "weaknesses" column, Kathy Seal of Santa Monica, California has this to say:

I treasure the vote and the other rights and privileges that American women and the men supporting them have fought for and won. Yet I'm appalled that Karen P. Hughes, the American under secretary of state for public diplomacy, is telling Saudi women that they should want these same rights and privileges.

People wonder why some people in other countries "hate America." Isn't such arrogance an irritant? Why can't we let the women in other countries fight for their own democratic rights just as we did, rather than telling them what's good for them?

Has it ever occurred to the administration that unless we're invited to do so, we shouldn't be going around telling people what they should want?

I couldn't ask for a more facile exemplification of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of cultural relativism.

Seal tells us that she treasures her rights. Since this claim functions in her letter as little more than the autobiographical basis of a temper tantrum, she never bothers to ask about the reasons for valuing rights, or why those reasons would be any different in the case of women in Jidda than women in Santa Monica.

Not having dealt with any of that, Seal is "appalled" that anyone else might do so. By this expedient, other people's "reasons" become little more than an "irritant" to her as well as to the Saudi totalitarians she's implicitly defending--an autobiographical declaration of its own. Seal tells us that "it hasn't occurred" to the Bush Administration that we shouldn't go around telling people what to do unless we're invited. It apparently hasn't occurred to Seal that we were invited. It's not as though Karen Hughes got to Saudi Arabia by the use of force. Nor has it occurred to Seal that the Saudi government tells us what to do all the time. Nor has it occurred to her that "our" fight for democratic rights in the American Revolution and Civil War came with foreign help--via French liberals and the British labor movement, respectively. Leave it a cultural relativist to get two cultures wrong in one go.

After a letter like that, it's a relief to read this letter from Jane Manning, a program officer for Equality Now, an organization that has consistently been right on the money in dealing with the human rights malfeasances of the Islamic world:

In an article that gave great prominence to a few elite Saudi women who told Karen P. Hughes that they are happy with the status quo, it is disappointing that so little attention was given to the many Saudi women who ardently favor women's rights to vote and to drive.

These women are advocating for ideals of justice and equality that are neither American nor Middle Eastern in nature; they are universal human rights deserving of protection from governments and inherent to all women and men, regardless of the national boundaries in which they live.

No comment required. I couldn't have said it better myself.

To end on a happy note, it's nice to see yet another confirmation of my previously-argued thesis that liberal Muslims (or nominal Muslims) seem to "get" what so many liberal non-Muslims don't get on such issues. Here is Ayesha Khalid Khan of Boston:

The reaction of an elite group of Saudi women to Karen P. Hughes is unsurprising. In an environment in which dissent is invariably suffocated by extreme punishment, it is difficult to imagine any possible reason for public acknowledgment of social inequities.

The women challenging Ms. Hughes claim to have "more than equal rights" and no desire for driving. Yet in 1990 a group of 47 Saudi women did protest the ban by driving down a city road in what became known as the infamous driving demonstration. These women were swiftly taken into police custody, interrogated, and fired or suspended from their jobs.

In such an environment, it should not distress Ms. Hughes to hear a gynecologist say, "I don't want to drive a car." It would be quite unreasonable to expect otherwise.

Having spent some (miserable) time in Saudi Arabia myself, I concur with Khan's basic point. Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian regime where dissent is essentially impossible to express. It makes no sense in this context to take what people say at face value. I do think Khan stretches that point a bit in assuming that the particular individuals at the Hughes event were themselves being coerced; maybe they were, maybe they weren't. One shouldn't underestimate the capacity for culpable self-delusion, even in a totalitarian regime. But that doesn't affect her main point.

Ms. Hughes has described her recent trip to the Middle East as an occasion for "listening." She might want, on her return to the United States, to listen to the reactions of people like Jane Manning and Ayesha Khalid Khan as well.

Posted on Friday, September 30, 2005 at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | Return

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