Question 2:
In the episode Saudi Arabia from The Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj discusses certain truths about Saudi Arabia. One moment in the episode that stood out to me was the time where he discusses when Muhammad bin Salman lifted the ban on women driving. This moment in the episode really speaks to the trope “Islam is uniquely sexist.” The wayMinhaj describes this new lift on the ban goes to show how controversial the whole event really is. He shows a news report where the reporter announces that a female singer in Saudi Arabia released a music video of her rapping in a car to demonstrate her freedom of now being able to legally drive. Despite this, Minhaj does make this whole scenario comedic of some sorts. While he does it very subtly, the audience does catch on to what he is trying to communicate. He brings up this major event by bringing back the discussion to Muhammad bin Salman. He starts by reminding the audience that “he was known as the reformer who was gonna change the Arab world.” At first, his statement sounds rather serious and direct. However, when he elaborates it seems as if he starts to show some sarcasm. He explains how “people in the West voted for MBS because they bought his sales pitch” which is a valid statement. But as he continues, the audience realizes that this statement begins to sound humorous when he uses a sarcastic tone when saying that “he lifted the ban on women driving.” The way in which he looks straight at the audience while shaking his hands in front of him and saying “I mean come on! He lifted the ban on women driving!” One could understand this expression as something serious, but the way I understood it when watching the episode was that he was possibly mocking the “people in the West” for using this action of MBS as a way of justifying why they voted for him.
As the episode continued, and Minhaj shows the news report of the female singer who released her music video to express her newly found freedom of being able to drive, we then can conclude that Minhaj is really mocking this whole event. As we see in the clips and after being pointed towards the strange aspects of the music video posted online by the female singer, we can understand how this situation speaks to the trope “Islam is uniquely sexist.” We see this through the way he criticises the video for showing a woman in a car but not avidly driving it. He also makes negative comments on the make and model of the car which also could downplay this whole scenario. So while Islam seems to be evolving to become less sexist, in reality, it is only creating new opportunities for people to make nasty comments and open new doors to other forms of sexism.