Jidda, Saudi Arabia – The audience – 500 women covered in black at a Saudi university – seemed an ideal place for Karen Hughes, a senior Bush administration official charged with spreading the American message in the Muslim world, to make her pitch.
But the response Tuesday was not what she and her aides expected.
When 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 roomful of students, faculty members and some professionals resounded with applause.
The administration’s efforts to publicize American ideals in the Muslim world have often run into such resistance. For that reason, Hughes, who is considered one of the administration’s most scripted and careful members, was hired specifically for the task.
Many in this region say they resent the American assumption that, given the chance, everyone would live like Americans.
The group of women Tuesday, picked by the university, represented the privileged elite of this Red Sea coastal city, known as one of the more liberal areas in the country.
And while they were certainly friendly toward Hughes, half a dozen who spoke up took issue with what she said.
Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, is on her first trip to the Middle East. She seemed clearly taken aback as the women told her that just because they were not allowed to vote or drive that did not mean they were treated unfairly or imprisoned in their own homes.
“We’re not in any way barred from talking to the other sex,” said Dr. Nada Jambi, a public- health professor. “It’s not an absolute wall.”
The session at Dar Al-Hekma College provided an unusual departure from the carefully staged events in a tour that began Sunday in Egypt.
As it was ending Hughes, a longtime communications aide to President Bush, assured the women that she was impressed with what they had said and would take their message home. “I would be glad to go back to the United States and talk about the Arab women I’ve met,” she said.
Hughes is the third appointee to head a program with a troubled past. The first, Charlotte Beers, a former Madison Avenue executive, produced a promotional video about Muslims in America, rejected by some Arab nations and scoffed at by a number of State Department colleagues. Her successor, Margaret D. Tutwiler, a former State Department spokeswoman, lasted barely five months. A report issued in 2003 by a bipartisan panel chosen by the Bush administration portrayed a dire picture of American public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world.
Hughes, on this first foray, has churned through meetings in which she has tirelessly introduced herself as “a mom,” explained that Americans are people of faith and called for more cultural and educational exchanges. Her efforts to explain policies in Iraq and the Middle East have been polite and cautious.
As a visiting dignitary, she had audiences in the summer palaces of this Red Sea coastal city with King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan and the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal.