A much more subtle transformation Jones witnesses and describes, one that is both timely and vital for us understand in these troubled times, is on the cultural/religious front. Over time, not only are the changes in the hospital administration great, but the presence of the mutawaa, the religious police, becomes ever more pronounced and intrusive. Jones describes the subtle but noticeable changes from "the gentler days of the mid-80s" when men and women freely cohabited in the housing units surrounding the hospital, and when professional chamber music concerts held at the International Hotel "were open to the public where men and women, Saudi and non-Saudi, would sit together and enjoy." Later, approaching and entering the new millennium, the mutawaa roamed the streets policing public morality, and open hostility and violence towards Westerners emerged.

Describing the changes, Jones provides a number of examples of underlying aspects of Western (but particularly American) attitudes and behavior that have fomented the hatred of America and the West among those now labeled terrorists. There's the negative portrayal of the Arab in a children's book (Children of the World) in an Atlanta school library, leading Jones to think to himself, "this is what the Arabs are complaining about." There's the fact that, in 21 months of living in Atlanta and reading the Wall Street Journal daily to find and "save any article that was not totally negative, that had just one sentence which hinted at something positive in the country," he found not even one. And there was that subset of Americans in Saudi Arabia - perhaps no more than ten percent - who carried with them "that insufferable, smug attitude that measures another person, or another country, by the degree to which they conform to American norms."

Perhaps more potent and pernicious than the above examples are those to be found in the media. Jones describes one particularly disturbing encounter with a well-known New York Times journalist, Thomas Friedman, the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem. Though Friedman did not technically misquote Jones, the journalist, after an interview during his first visit to Saudi Arabia, chose to quote "only the part of our conversation which reconfirms preconceived notions," thereby completely distorting Jones's statement. Specifically, Friedman quoted only the part about the author seeing "Saudi doctors and nurses around him celebrating on 9/11," but not his "overall statement about the number who had offered their condolences, the positive reaction of the Saudi hospital administration, and the number of Saudis who were far more concerned about Osama bin Laden changing their lives than the Americans' lives."

Another New York Times columnist sent to Riyadh, Maureen Dowd, instead of focusing on "understanding how Saudi professional women work, what their personal aspirations are, not to mention the aspirations and workings of the vast number of Saudi stay-at-home middle class mothers," and how these "contrast with the aspirations of American women," chose to contrast the negligees sold in prominent Riyadh lingerie stores with the completely covered women who shopped there.