Making the Muslims love us
By Suzanne Fields
September 29, 2005

Karen Hughes has her work cut out for her. She's the undersecretary of state assigned to persuade foreigners, particularly Muslims, to love us. On her "maiden voyage" to the Middle East this week, she's in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, trying to win friends and influence people. This requires a sail through the Scylla and Charybdis of multicultural paradox.

As a professional woman, she embodies Western emancipation and stands as a bold rebuke to Muslim misogynists who are determined to keep women in their place. She wears a pantsuit like a woman who wants men to treat her like a man. Muslim women who have carved out careers will no doubt see her as a champion for women's rights. Women who cheerfully tolerate the indignities of an aggressively male religion and the men who want to keep it that way will see in her all they hate about America. For them, freedom is frightening. This is the most difficult of the issues Karen Hughes faces. She was stunned when several Saudi women told her they like the restrictions men put on them. When a Turkish woman criticized the war on terror, she was reduced to repeating Bill Clinton's mantra: "I feel the pain you are feeling."

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