Pelosi/Scarf

Pelosi & the Headscarf:

I apparently have misjudged something Speaker Pelosi did. This morning I complained about her choosing to wear a headscarf in Syria; like everyone I had seen the pictures at the top of articles about her trip to Syria to meet with the government there. However, I seem to have been misled by the photograph's prominence into thinking that she was wearing it throughout her visit.

I've looked through a lot more photos of the trip now, and that is not at all the case. In fact:

1) She only wore it while visiting one particular mosque, and,
2) She did so in the Roman Catholic fashion rather than the Islamic fashion, as made clear by her crossing herself at the shrine of John the Baptist located in that mosque, and,
3) During the rest of her visit, both to Syria and Saudia Arabia, news photos show her without a headscarf. There's a good one in Yahoo News Photos of a Saudi police officer saluting the un-scarf'd Pelosi.

The photos played in the first news cycle as apparent submission to Islamist notions about a woman's place. That, coupled with the stories about her trip to Syria, to negotiate with a power supporting insurgent efforts against us in Iraq in despite of her President's request she not go, made the Speaker appear to be showing symbolic surrender. In addition, as the reports did not make clear that she was acting out of her own faith rather than submitting to another, she appeared to be hypocritical rather than faithful.

That impression, given by the way the news reports ran the headscarf photo with the stories about her diplomatic trips, was not fair. Indeed, as I reflect on it, it was defamatory (in the non-legalistic sense).

As she is herself a Catholic, there is obviously nothing wrong with her performing a (unusual in America, but traditional elsewhere) Catholic ritual; it is not hypocrisy or submission but a private act of faith to which she is wholly entitled. That should have been made clear, and prominently so, in these stories.

Further, far from the original impression, in fact Speaker Pelosi has given the Saudi world an image of a strong female leader who feels no need to submit to their religious requirement that she "be modest" and invisible. One hopes the photo of the saluting policemen is printed widely in the Islamic world. Good for her.

I still disagree with her decision to attempt diplomacy with Syria as if she were an executive rather than a legislative figure; but on the point of the headscarf, at least, she has done well. It appears the press can be as unfair to a San Francisco Liberal as it can be to a Texas Republican. I would like not to be unfair to anyone, and so wish to do what I can to correct the impression.