From Mecca To Election, Saudi Woman Carves U.S. Political Career

BOSTON, Massachusetts, July 28 (AFP) - Can a woman born in the conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the holy city of Mecca no less, really be elected to public office in the United States after September 11?
Ferial Masry thinks she can.
"My story is a great American success story," the bubbly 55-year-old told AFP on the sidelines of the Democratic national convention in Boston. "I always had a dream, but here is where the dream became real."
Masry hopes voters in her upmarket California region outside Los Angeles will extend that dream and send her to the state assembly in November, becoming the first Saudi-born man or woman ever to win an election in the United States.
Masry and her Democratic backers are quick to say it's a long shot -- her district has a long history of voting Republican -- but her high-profile campaign is a sign of the growing visibility of Arab-Americans in US life.
Arab-Americans say they have had an uneasy time in the United States since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Most of the attackers came from Saudi Arabia, and all of them were Arabs.
"Almost everyone in the community has been touched in some way," said Jean AbiNader, a US-born Christian of Lebanese descent and a board member of the Arab-American Institute.
He said visa problems, social wariness toward Arabs and the tightened restrictions set into law by George W. Bush's controversial Patriot Act all affected Arab families here.
Meanwhile strained relations with Saudi Arabia, a longtime US ally whose cooperation in Bush's war on terror has come under question, cannot do much to help Masry's chances.
But with Democratic challenger John Kerry pledging to rebuild US relations with allies angered by the war in Iraq, the election of a Saudi woman -- even to a modest state post -- would be a public relations coup.
Masry paints herself as someone who has integrated into American society in the best possible way, retaining enough of her culture not to lose her identity but nevertheless becoming a 100 percent-loyal US citizen.
Her son served with US forces in Iraq, and she says she wants to help Arabs migrating to the United States avoid getting sucked into a cultural isolation that could breed fundamentalist, anti-US feeling.
"I want to help those who are coming here with fear, those afraid of losing their identities if they integrate," Masry said.
At the same time, she says, her story has served as an inspiration for women and moderates in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East, giving them a dual sign that the United States is welcoming -- and that home-grown extremism is not the only option for the future.
"A man running in my position wouldn't make any difference," she said, claiming to be the only woman ever shown on the cover of a Saudi magazine not wearing the traditional Muslim veil to safeguard her modesty.
If she wins in November, Masry would have a low-level political seat like hundreds of thousands before her, working on the minutiae of state budgets and the like.
But she knows a win would also make history, and let her play a visible role as the United States re-examines the Muslim world after the events of September 11 and the Iraq war.
Before that, though, she has a more mundane obstacle that all would-be US politicians must climb.
"I've got lots of attention," she said with a smile. "Now I just need more money."