Monthly Archives: March 2019

In his episode of the Patriot Act, titled “Saudi Arabia”, Hasan Minhaj analyzes the role of Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) in the murder of Washington Post Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. The power that MBS once had over Islam, being labelled as “the reformer [that] the Arab world needed”, was soon destroyed by the revelations surrounding his killing of Khashoggi. More interesting than the details of Khashoggi’s killing itself, however, is the discussion on the various comedic techniques that Minhaj employs in order to narrate this news effectively. In his episode, Minhaj handles the fusion of real news (and other non-fiction) video clips and the comparison of Western and Muslim etiquette, particularly well. These are features that contribute to his engagement with, and advocacy against, the common trope that the “Muslim mind” is irrational.

Minhaj’s initial framing of MBS empathizes with those (mostly in the West) that supported him, but later goes on to demonstrate how, in reality, this praise and recognition is harmful to the representation and values of all other Muslims. The mention of one of MBS’s early accomplishments – lifting the ban on women driving – is evidence of the former, kind-hearted and principled, portrayal – one that may have fooled non-Muslims. However, the subsequent news headline clip, revealing his bizarre ways – namely holding his mother on house arrest so that she couldn’t interfere with his rise to power – proves just how far he would go to maintain his position. MBS’s role in the murder of Khashoggi comes as no surprise to nationals – his nickname literally means “Father of the bullet” – and yet the West is only just learning of his criminality. Through the incorporation of real news footage, Minhaj comments on how contrary the western perception of MBS is, compared to the Muslim experience of his control.

Minhaj continues to compare the West to Islam, but instead of framing Islam as irrational, he criticizes the choices of the West. The anecdote that comes to mind and best captures this pattern is the joke that spawns from his conversation on lotas. Minhaj jokes that so many people find this method (using water and your hands) gross, and yet toilet paper (the western method) is far grosser. He draws a comparison between how one typically handles removing dog feces from their expensive shoes and how they clean their body after using the toilet (both situations, where toilet paper is insufficient), and begs the question: “why don’t we treat our butts with the same respect as we treat our Air Jordans?” Minhaj makes very intelligent comedic decisions that seamlessly weave together aspects of Western and Islamic cultures in order to frame his target audience, but also to support his active engagement and fluency in both cultures.

Minhaj’s use of comedy effectively distances himself from the trope that the “Muslim mind” is irrational and instead flips this stigma entirely. Islam’s affiliation with Saudi Arabia, unlike America’s, is not a choice. Thus, framing an entire religion based on the judgement of such a small percentage of its people, is foolish, but when MBS extends the most basic human rights and suddenly he’s in Oprah’s book club, receiving tremendous praise; that is irrational.

Works Cited

Minhaj, Hasan. “Saudi Arabia.” Patriot Act, Netflix, 28 Oct. 2018.

In a controversial episode of his political comedy series, Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj provides a concise, yet comprehensive analysis of Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic crisis over the killing of Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. More specifically, Minhaj dissects the coverage of this event by Saudi Arabian and American media and highlights the similarities and differences in reporting between the two nations. Minhaj stresses the distinction between the way this event has been framed by the media, and the way it has been understood by the populace in both regions respectively. Moreover, he outlines the impact such a disparity between what is encoded by the media, and decoded by everyday citizens has on Saudi Arabians, Americans, and people of the Islamic faith.

To understand the significance of the Khashoggi case’s media coverage, one must have some prior knowledge of the long-standing economic and political relationship between these two countries. Thus, within the episode’s first five minutes, Minhaj summarizes the history of their “strategic alliance,” stating that due to Saudi Arabia’s unique location and significance within the Islamic faith, “whether it’s for oil or for arms deals, [Americans] have always played it cool with the Saudi’s no matter what they do” (Minhaj 2018). Acknowledging this history is important, as it explains why American news coverage of Saudi Arabia has been, as Minhaj points out, disproportionately favourable to Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammed bin Salman (MBS). For instance, American media framed MBS as a reformer, reporting primarily on his lifting of the female driving ban and his plans to end Saudi reliance on oil, and omitting his history of power grabs and autocratic behaviour. Simply put, U.S media aligned themselves with MBS’s “sales pitch” and framed him as a progressive “Rockstar” to maintain the aforementioned American-Saudi Alliance (Minhaj 2008). This in turn explains why American reception of news that the Khashoggi killing was under MBS’s orders was characterized by shock and feelings of betrayal. However, within Saudi Arabia, where citizens had knowledge of MBS’s past wrongdoings such as detaining and torturing family members, people were not surprised by this news. Despite similarly biased coverage in which the Saudi government continually denies stories of tyranny, Saudi Arabians refer to MBS as Abu Rasasa (father of the bullet) and recognize his power grabs as “standard procedure” (Minhaj 2018).

In sum, Minhaj points out that the discrepancy between the truth, what is encoded by Saudi and American media, and what is decoded by the citizens of these nations perpetuates the misunderstanding that the U.S and Saudi Arabia are true allies. Furthermore, due to Saudi Arabia’s significance within Islam, when news such as that of the power grabs by MBS is reported in the U.S. it breeds misplaced distrust of Muslim people within the U.S.; the consequences of which are suffered by Muslim-Americans. It is worth mentioning that due to the comedic tone of Minhaj’s program, one could misinterpret him as making light of these serious issues. However, a counterpoint to that would be that comedy is a more accessible format through which everyday people can begin to educate themselves on politically charged issues such as those discusses in Patriot Act.

Works Cited

Minhaj, Hasan. “Saudi Arabia.” Patriot Act, Netflix, 28 Oct. 2018.

Hasan Minhaj is an Indian-American Muslim, born and raised in Davis, California. He is a popular South Asian American comedian who received his own show called Patriot Act on Netflix after a very successful comedy special called Homecoming King. In the show Patriot Act, Hasan discusses and targets political and economic issues around the world. One episode, in particular, grabbed the attention of many as he discussed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post Journalist. In the first section of the episode, his focal point is mainly the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,

Mohammed bin Salman(MBS), and the extreme actions he takes to solve problems or even generate dispute. The decisions made by the MBS reflects how the world views the Muslim community. Muslims around the world have to face the consequences of a wrongful man’s actions. The episode, Saudi Arabia, caught the attention of MBS and was addressed to take it down, which Netflix did (in Saudi Arabia).

However, my attention is fixated on the second segment, where he speaks about the stereotypes of Indians. After the heavy material at the start of the show, Hasan was told to focus more on his Indian side, rather than his Muslim side. The reason for this is because saying one is Indian is less problematic than saying one is Muslim. At times Indians are not taken seriously or are highly respected because there is a stereotype among Indians, assuming they are don’t engage in scandals or are very well educated to become “doctors, lawyers, and engineers”. As a South Asian woman, I thoroughly enjoyed the second segment more because I related to and understood Hasan’s jokes. He emphasizes that “people love Indians” but began breaking the stereotypes by saying “if you have been watching the news lately, a lot of us have joined the dark side”. By saying this, Hasan destroys the misconception the Western world has about Indians and continues to use three Indian men John Kapoor, Bobby Jindal and Dinesh D’Souza, to crack the stereotype. By doing this it allows Indians to not follow or be represented by this “goodie two shoes” stereotype. John Kapoor “pharma entrepreneur who went rogue [..] bribed doctors into prescribing the potent opiate to non-cancer patients” to jab at the Kapoor refusing to wear an ankle bracelet, Hasan makes a brown uncle joke to lighten the mood which I found really funny and relatable. Bobby Jindal is a “former governor of Louisiana [..] who took a billion dollar state budget surplus and drove it straight to the ground”. Hasan again makes a joke about the stereotype of Indians that “go to colleges to work at hospitals”, relating this to Jindal and him damaging schools and hospitals. Hasan also mentions Jindal’s office painting by comparing it to a Fair & Lovely advertisement, a joke South Asians will understand. Finally, he acknowledges Dinesh D’Souza “far-right political commentator, author, filmmaker [who] says and writes insane sh*t.

To end his segment he shows a formulated video/PSA video of Indian kids wanting to be rebellious /follow the examples of people mentioned by Hasan. I think Hasan was very smart when deciding to talk about these issues during the second part of the show because his jokes were very cheerful and almost less serious. He wrapped up the episode by staying true kept true to both his identities, even though identifying as one of his identities, a Muslim, is controversial he brought it back to being Indian as well. He showed that he is proud of being both, regardless of the stereotypes.

Hasan Minhaj, a self-identifying Muslim Indian-American comedian, assesses several tropes about Islamic cultures— from Islam being monolithic to it being inherently violent— in his show Patriot Act. These tropes, commonly used in Western society, generalize Islamic cultures and propagate false ideologies about them. Minhaj, however, incorporates the use of these tropes ironically in his segment by using comedy which is subtle, yet moving for an audience with a majority of ‘brown’ people.

Islam, labelled frequently as an ‘inherently violent’ religion, is framed episodically in the media and often only the stories that support the trope are presented to the viewers. This leads to poor treatment of the entirety of the Muslim population due to the acts of a small Muslim subgroup. Minhaj highlights this framing in his sequence where he displays news reporters discussing the issue of Jamal Khashoggi. One news reporter states that the story of Khashoggi dying inside the consulate in Turkey was “designed to protect one man” and another states that the Saudi Crown Prince “dispatched a hit squad to execute and dismember Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi”. This segment plays with the Western expectation since a majority of Americans perceived the Saudi Crown Prince as a reformer and a step toward modernist ideology. In reality, however, Minhaj points out that several Muslims knew the consequences of Khashoggi criticizing the policies that Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) and that this Western perspective was founded on little knowledge and false ideologies. In fact, Minhaj, like several other Muslims, predicted that any discourse that goes against the MBS regime would be censored since there is zero tolerance for that in the nation. To address this, Minhaj jokes, “This is the Patriot Act, or as it’s known in Saudi Arabia, “Error 404, Page Not Found,” which is an effective way to bring to light that censorship is an ongoing problem in repressive regimes.` By censoring Minhaj’s content, however, MBS played right into the Streisand effect wherein his attempt to hide and censor a piece of information lead to it spreading more widely.

To build on this idea, Minhaj addresses the trope of ‘Islam being monolithic’ which generalizes over a billion individuals that follow Islam, each of who, in reality, have an individual perspective on the religion and life itself. Minhaj consistently refers to ‘brown’ people as one entity and brings up ‘brown’ stereotypes in a comedic manner and he uses his own cultural context with a hint of sarcasm to point out the detrimental effects that labelling a culture as monolithic has on its individuals. Through this, Minhaj is able to demonstrate how the Saudi Arabia controversy targets all Muslims, despite Saudi Arabia consisting of only two percent of the entire Muslim population.

As a ‘brown’ person from India studying in a Western university, it is evident that my culture is heavily stereotyped and I believe that ‘brown’ people are not interchangeable no matter what these tropes suggest, which is why I found it refreshing that a well-known Muslim Indian-American is commenting on the negative effects that the propagation of these tropes has on a larger social group.

During the episode “Saudi Arabia” of the Netflix show Patriot Act, the Indian-American hoster, Hasan Minhaj, ironically and comedically narrates a series of events surrounding the current Saudi Arabia diplomatic crisis. He starts his performance by explaining what was the last straw, the main reason for the diplomatic conflict in Saudi Arabia – the brutal murder of the Washington post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. There was a general refusal of the American authorities, including Trump, and the public in general to believe that the killing was premeditated by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, also popularly known as MBS. Previous from the occurrence, MBS was portrayed and encoded by a lot of the major media as a reformative figure due to some of his actions. MBS was responsible for lifting the ban that prohibited women from driving and the famous project vision 2030, a plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy. However, even though a lot of western people saw him as a reformative, most of the population in Saudi Arabia already knew that it is not true.

In Saudi Arabia one giant family controls majorly everything, moreover, it is a country with the net worth of more than one trillion dollars, according to The New York Times. For that reason, western countries including the United States of America tries to maintain a good relationship with it. This is one of the reasons why so many media outlets constantly tried to protect MBS trying to maintain the connection with Saudi Arabia. However, the murder of the journalist is not something as unexpected or surprising as the media portrays. In 2016, MBS put his own mother in under house arrest so she couldn’t stop him from achieving the power.

The way Minhaj narrates the events it’s in a very funny and tragicomedy style, it makes you laugh, but it also makes you question. What is encoded by the media is not always what is decoded by the public. Minhaj beautifully explains that as a Muslim he access God through Saudi Arabia, so it is devastating to see those kinds of things from the authorities of the country. It does not represent his and other Muslims values, as he stated. He also explains that the main problem with the encoded/decoded messages is that Saudi Arabia is the representation of Muslims, as a result, whenever they do something wrong, it creates a stereotype for all the others. In the end, America will keep having a good relationship with Saudi Arabia due to the money, even though MBS is not a great representative. As Minhaj states in the end, “MBS is not modernizing Saudi Arabia, it is modernizing Saudi dictatorship”.

Citations

“Saudi Vision 2030.” En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2019. Web. 22 Mar. 2019.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-unlearned-lessons-of-jamal-khashoggis-murder/2018/12/23/8584328e-0220-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7a6cc88fe7e6

“The Jamal Khashoggi Story So Far.” BBC News. N. p., 2019. Web. 22 Mar. 2019.

Saudi Arabia is an episode of the Patriot Act, a show hosted by Hasan Minhaj. In the second segment of this episode, Minhaj puts emphasis on the social framing of the Indian Americans. Firstly, he describes how society expects Indian people to behave well and have outstanding achievements, for example, to be engaged in the professional occupation. It seems that American society has the impression of Indian immigrants to be “good”. But then, he gives some instances of “bad” Indian Americans, such as John Kapoor and Dinesh D’Souza, to show facts that are against the social framing effect. Kapoor, for example, as an Indian American pharmaceutical entrepreneur, has bribed doctors and committed wire fraud. Minhaj satirizes that maybe these people have set Indian Americans free for high expectations, but actually they have destroyed the good figure of Indian immigrants. Lastly, a video describes how Indian parents expect their children to have stable and eminent jobs and how the bad Indian Americans have an influence on children to lead them to a “bad” road to do whatever they want is shown. We can get the conclusion that how the prior framing of Indian Americans has been changed through some famous weighted minorities.

By putting this segment after the Muslim case, Minhaj proves and also strengthens the idea that it is unavoidable that society can have simplex framing to a group of people, Muslim and Indian Americans for example, but it can be reconstructed by weighted minorities. Just as he claims that Saudi Arabia is only 2 percent of the whole Muslim population, but when Saudi Arabia does something wrong, Muslim all over the world have to take the consequences. It is easy for Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to do something simple, such as lifting the ban on women driving, to leave a good impression to America for the reason of the Islamic tropes that have been framed in the American minds, in this case—Muslim as sexist. However, the impression only changes towards him, the individual only, but not the whole Muslim society. It is also easy for the society to change their perception to Indian immigrants after knowing those bad famous Indian Americans. Considering that Minhaj actually has the identities of both Indian and Muslim, it might seem strange to him that how easy it is for a person to leave a good impression with a specific background, Muslim for example, but also how easy it is for a few people to ruin the impression of a whole group of people. But it sounds a little relaxing to him and the children in the video to live without the high social expectations.

Hasan Minhaj, in the “Saudi Arabia” episode of Patriot Act, unravels the reporting on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi into more easily understood layman terms. In a way this allows us to get an insight on the encoding/decoding process, as described by Stuart Hall, as it happens. Minhaj shows this process beyond just its traditional media implications. He also expands on the presence of this process in politicians’ and other powerful people’s remarks. His knowledge on the topic, both from research and a Muslim point of view, allows him to better understand the source information. By extension he comments on why it was being reported in that particular way. For example, in this episode, he shows how the encoding/decoding process can become corrupted, particularly in politicians. He points out that many politicians, like past US presidents, ‘forget’ to address atrocities, like those on Yemen, the Saudi Arabian Royal Family commits. Showing how the wealth that Saudi Arabia holds is enough for many people of power to completely change their own encoding process when addressing the public, and perhaps even change their own decoding at the subconscious level.

He then points out that it was not until the murder of Jamal Khashoggi that this encoding/decoding process, and framing, actually changed. While before, as Minhaj put it, “[Muhammad bin Salman] was greeted like a rockstar,” the media finally caught up enough to alter their framing. They put him at the forefront of accusations, rather than only focusing on the good that he does; such as, in Minhaj’s words, “providing basic human rights” like letting women to drive. Again this showed Minhaj clearly how both media and politicians only change with the influence of money; and how this money is enough to change their own encoding within their frames.

Patriot Act, as a piece of media, is responsible for its encoding. In the show’s case, the encoding has the purpose of creating comedy; for a good reason, as comedy is believed to open people’s mind up for change more so than other forms like debates or serious political shows. While this has the potential to lighten the topic more than is appropriate, the intentions and impact is great enough to make it worth while. Also, his position, being a Muslim, gives him a kind of authority on the topic that I, for example, might not have given much thought before. In his case, being a Muslim not only gives a religious perspective, but rather highlights the cultural context that surrounds the issues he talks about. While other studies could go in more depth, often the general public will decode more from this format, thus making it worth listening to.

In the second segment, Hasan Minhaj references the common experience of Asian immigrant children having to live up to their parents’ expectations of high achievement, and going into certain stable and respectable careers such as medicine, engineering, finance and business. This is also plays into the model minority myth that Asians are the minority group that can achieve the American dream and are exemplary minorities. Minhaj responds to those commonly held ideas by bringing up examples of “shitty Indians” which includes Indian-American politicians who work for the Trump administration, John Kapoor who was charged with felonies and Dinesh D’souza a far-right political commentator who is known to espouse far-right talking points and propaganda. Throughout his response, Minhaj brings up these examples and commenting on how they’re going against the expectations of Indians being good, well-behaving, hard-working immigrants. Towards the end of his response, Minhaj gives us the punchline with looking at the ‘bad Indians’ from a different perspective. He suggests that the ‘bad Indians’ actually breaks stereotypes and releases Indian-Americans from the expectations that’s been placed upon them. His response seems to deconstruct how we stereotype Indians, that even ‘good’ stereotypes are still limiting and does not allow for Indians to be perceived as just people who are equally capable of doing good or bad things. The response also has the effect of revealing the relationship between the model minority myth and Asians that perpetuate white supremacy. On the racial hierarchy, Asians are lower than white but above other racial minorities. This means that Asians are capable of buying into white supremacy as they can come from places of privilege which could incentivise them to perpetuate white supremacy.

The effect of putting this segment after the Khashoggi case is to reinforce the criticism against non-Muslim Americans perceiving the Saudi Crown Prince to be progressive, instead of actually just perpetuating the status quo not unlike the ‘bad Indians’ who perpetuate the status quo of white supremacy. The conversation between the two segments is that of Minhaj taking advantage of his in-group knowledge of both being Muslim, Indian and American, to be able to explain issues concerning how Indians and Muslims are perceived in America.

In Hasan Minhaj’s episode “Saudi Arabia” from his show, The Patriot Act, there are some sequences and jokes he makes that engage with common tropes about Islam. The use of tropes are subtle but seem to underly a majority of the jokes and points he makes to engage with his audience. There are times when he contradicts the tropes, plays with them in comparison to Western views, or uses stereotypes as punchlines. The two of the tropes found in Minhaj’s monologue are of Islam being monolithic and sexist.

It is a common stereotype and trope that all Muslims as the same and cut from the same cloth. This is something that Hasan Minhaj uses to his advantage with some of his jokes. The first thing he says on stage is a remark that the number of “brown people” in the audience reminds him of his cousin’s wedding. There are other times where he addresses certain topics as facts of being Muslim such as having a lota in “any brown person’s house” or how they feel about dogs. Minhaj’s dog comment, which is in response to the Saudi government investing money in a dog walking app, addresses the viewer saying: “you know how we feel about dogs,” implying that all Muslim people feel the same way about canines. Of course, these are meant to be funny and play into audience expectation. However, the trope is addressed seriously when he talks about America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Minhaj explains that for a place of such significance to their faith, Saudi Arabia doesn’t “represent [their] values”. The Muslim population in Saudi Arabia is on 2% and yet when they do something bad, it is pinned on the whole religion. On the other hand, when they do something good, Mohammad bin Salam speaks with Oprah.

A majority of the episode talks about Mohammad bin Salam, MBS for short, and his actions as the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the main issue being the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Minhaj explains how the West fell for MBS because they “ bought his sales pitch”. The fact that he lifted the driving ban for women made people stand for him which reveals how we assume Islam is sexist. When a trope that we have in our heads is turned on us, we congratulate them and go wild, even when it is just a right people deserve. It proves that when western culture’s expectations are flipped, we back peddle and jump on board. Hasan Minhaj is able to use humour to expose tropes that we have normalized.

Common Perceptions of Indian Americans, Techniques of Presentation, and the Unique Arrangement of Segments