To Veil or Not To Veil: The Pelosi Question

The new minister of education for Kuwait is a brave woman now famous across the Islamic world for a landmark moment: The day she walked up to the podium of Parliament, despite the catcalls from Islamist lawmakers, and took her oath of office without wearing a veil to cover her hair or face.

Her April 2 act of defiance placed Dr. Nouriya Al-Subeeh on the front line of the growing ranks of Muslim women leaders who are denouncing the veil as a symbol of female oppression. But on the following day, April 3, America's Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the very first woman to hold that position, meekly donned a veil during a visit to a popular market in downtown Damascus, sending the exact opposite message to tens of millions of Arab women.

After her precedent-setting episode, Dr. Subeeh explained her stand in an interview with the Egyptian weekly Rose El Yousuf: "A woman who wears the veil out of belief, which must be respected — just as the belief of a woman who does not want to wear a veil must be respected. The essence of democracy," she said, "is to respect and accept the opinions of others."

Ms. Pelosi made a similar choice — but in the opposite direction. Anxious to curry favor with the male rulers of the Middle East, she failed to comprehend that as an American woman, a symbol of Western democracy and secularism as well as a guardian of women's rights, her agenda should have rested elsewhere.

I have no doubt Ms. Pelosi, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, is a progressive feminist. But her decision to visit Damascus has proved counterproductive on many levels. Aside from giving the appearance of legitimacy to a rogue regime, photos of the unveiled and defiant Dr. Subeeh juxtaposed with a visibly diffident, veiled Ms. Pelosi are circling the Internet, an image that is taking a toll at a time when jihadist Islamists rely on the imposition of the veil as a weapon in their cultural war to the same degree as they utilize suicide bombers in their terrorist campaigns.

In putting on a veil when it was not required, Ms. Pelosi has done a huge disservice both to modernization and to her brave but beleaguered Muslim sisters trying to decouple the veil from Islam. The issue is not about a bit of fabric but about Arab and Muslim women fighting to emerge from under its symbolism of male domination, as Dr. Subeeh did, to speak up and be counted.

The next time America's highest ranking female office holder, Ms. Pelosi, wants to make a splash, she should opt for championing Muslim women in the line of fire.

Among those she might want to invite to appear before Congress is a brave Somali immigrant to the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who came to the attention of the world in 2004 when a Muslim fanatic killed director Theo van Gogh for making a film based on her accounts of the oppression of women under Islam. After fleeing her adopted nation under threats of death, the 37-year-old politician and activist's best-selling 2006 memoir "Infidel" has finally been published to great success in America — it contains plenty of useful information about the veil to enlighten Ms. Pelosi.

The House speaker could also honor an amazing Syrian-American psychiatrist who resides in Los Angeles, Dr. Wafa Sultan, who also receives constant death threats since denouncing Islamists on Al Jazeera and CNN, and scolding Muslims for persecuting non-Muslims and treating their women as "cattle" and "indentured servants."

Another possibility might be an Egyptian sociologist, medical doctor, and militant writer on the problems of Arab women, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, who is now a refugee forced to shuttle between Belgium and the Netherlands in order to escape the death warrant placed on her by several sheiks of the Saudifunded Al Azhar School of Theology in Egypt.

The author of more than 30 books, Dr. Saadawi is the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writer. Her works include an important novel, "Woman at Point Zero," that deals with the plight of Muslim women, and a groundbreaking nonfiction book, "The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World."

None of these women wear veils.