Saudi Arabia’s Got Talent
This headline in The Times caught my eye. The first paragraph describes a hit show on TV throughout the Arab world.
Much of the Middle East will grind to a halt tonight as an audience of more than 20 million gathers round television sets across the Arab world for the final of the hit show Million’s Poet.
But the surprise is that one of the five finalists is a housewife with four children from Saudi Arabia, who appears fully vielled in black.
Three weeks ago, she stormed into the penultimate round with a blistering attack on extremist Muslim clerics. Her poem, The Chaos of Fatwas, denounced those who issue hardline religious decrees, comparing them to suicide bombers as “monsters wearing belts”. She attacked the segregation of the sexes maintained by preachers who “prey like a wolf” on those who seek progress and peace.
Her performance won an ovation from the audience and the highest mark of the round from the judges, who praised her courage and honesty. As the scores were announced, she punched the air.
She has received death threats for what she has said, but it would appear that she has certain backing from the King.
The West may blanch at Saudi Arabia’s human rights record but Hilal is full of praise for King Abdullah’s efforts to drag the country forward in the face of the same opposition and bile that she has endured in recent weeks.
Radical clerics were outraged when the kingdom opened its first mixed-gender university last year. Fatwas have been issued calling for those who promote equality of the sexes in education and the workplace to be put to death. Through it all, the elderly king continues to force the pace of change.
I wish Hilal all the luck in the world in the final of the contest.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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