Two weeks ago, I boarded Saudi Arabian Airlines in Washington DC headed for Jeddah located on the Red Sea. In August of last year, I learned that I was one of 100 scientists worldwide chosen to serve on the faculty as a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at King Abdulaziz University, one of the top three universities in Saudi Arabia with nearly 2,000 medical students. This position requires that I spend three weeks per year in Jeddah doing research with faculty and teaching medical and nursing students at the university. This is my first time traveling here (and my first time in a Muslim country).
When I got to my departure gate in Washington, I realized I was about to enter into a new world. Many people, including the flight attendants, were dressed in clothing I had never seen before — the women with black dresses covering everything except their hands, wrists and faces, and the men with long white gowns and head coverings. At this time, my impression of the Middle East and Islam was like that of many Westerners, and it was not a positive one. This impression was largely based on discussion within evangelical Christian groups that tended to demonize Muslims and from the popular media that characterized the Middle East as a place of roadside bombs that killed American soldiers, the birthplace of terrorists who bomb ships and fly airplanes into the World Trade Center (indeed, Osama Bin Laden graduated from the university where I was headed), rioting people participating in the Arab Spring, endless fighting and suicide bombing, kidnappings and beheadings, and most of all, hatred for Americans (and Christians in particular) viewed as invaders, burners of the Qur’an, and backers of Israel. Therefore, it was with considerable trepidation that I sat down in my first class seat (at least I was flying in style) that would transport me to within an hour’s drive of what for Muslims is the holiest place in the world, Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed and Islam.
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