Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was seen roaming the streets of Damascus flaunting a Hijab. The Hijab worn by women across the Muslim world has come to symbolize either one of three things: 1) a symbol that men control women by forcing piety, or 2) a return to religiosity because of oppressive rulers, or 3) a fashion statement. If you ask any expert on the Middle East, you would get any one of three answers. The ones who usually claim it is a fashion statement are the political rulers who usually oppress people in general. A Hijab is NOT a confirmation of the rights of women in the Middle East but rather a symbol of their suppression.

As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women's rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women's freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing.

Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come.

...in her description of Israel’s readiness to talk with the Syrian thugocracy, Pelosi mysteriously forgot to mention one of Israel’s main prerequisites.

An Israeli government official said that was not the message Olmert had asked Pelosi earlier this week to convey to Assad, who seeks the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

“The prime minister said Israel is interested in peace with Syria, but Syria would first have to abandon the path of terror and providing support for terrorist groups,” the official said, in reference to Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Oh yeah, that.