Hasan Minaj explores several tropes about Muslims in the episode of Patriot Act, “Saudi Arabia”. One of these instances is when he was tearing down the way America has been buying Muhammad bin Salman’s “sale pitch,” as he says, specifically the way he lifted the ban on women driving. He implies that he thinks this act alone does not make MBS a good person, and he shows disdain at America for buying into it. This connects to the trope that Islam is uniquely sexist. MBS is held in such high stature in America for lifting the ban, even though he has done horrible things, because many Americans don’t expect much more from an Islamic country. Therefore, MBS is applauded for doing the bare minimum due to the bias Americans hold. Minaj uses humour to point out that this does not redeem MBS, and that it is merely a surface gesture to win the hearts of the biased Americans, by insulting the female rapper who made a “garbage” video around a car.
This episode also touches on the trope that Islam is inherently violent, and that the West spreads democracy. Minaj uses a compilation of news footage to show America’s positive reaction to Vision 2030. He shows that MBS has met with presidents, celebrities, and even Oprah. He says that MBS was “treated like a celebrity.” However, Minaj then goes on to show the aftermath of Khashoggi’s death. The same people who were praising MBS for his “reforms” immediately turned around to say that they would never do work with Saudi Arabia again, and that they felt tricked by MBS. Minaj contrasts the two reels of footage to show how important people in America ate their words when an American citizen was killed.
In fact, this brings up another interesting point made by Minaj: MBS has been getting away with killing and arresting people for years. America has continued to do deals with Saudi even though they knew that MBS was rounding up and killing hundreds of Saudi innocents. However, when an American citizen is harmed, they turn their backs on Saudi. Minaj makes this irony clear by framing the two news reels mentioned before the way he did, and also by laying out the numbers. This brings Minaj’s sequence back to the beginning of his episode, where he mentioned that any Muslim person already knew that MBS was a horrible person.