@gspdark1: So you're saying that you have to be from an affluent, politically influential family to have a sense of humor, to be able to enjoy life and the company of those different than you, to be level-headed and a non-fanatic?

I understand that she may have it easier than most, but it's pretty awful to say that you must be living well to be a good, interesting, and worthwhile person. I think the whole point of this episode was to show that Saudi Arabia is not a nation of Islamic fundamentalists who spend all day plotting the downfall of Israel, America and all Western influences. It is a nation of people — people who, it seems, choose to be as religious as they are — who, like us, go to the mall, work, go to the beach, snorkel, have dinner with friends and family, and enjoy themselves. In many way they are the same as we are, despite the fact that their lives seem foreign and strange from the outside.

Yes, Saudi Arabia has a lot of problems. Political, religious, human rights problems. Their justice system women's rights (and, to a degree, human rights) are deplorable. But just because the country has yet to catch up to our standards of modernity — or continues to fight our standards of modernity — doesn't mean they are wholly bad people, living wholly bad lives, being wholly bad to the other people around them. And it's more than high time that our notions of Saudi Arabians, and their "backwards" lives, changed. If it doesn't, we are guilty of the same crimes of perception as any terrorist.