(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Syrian Muslim Sami Zayn warmly received in Saudi Arabia -- pro wrestling's strange soft power [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-05-28 Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba (Tawaf al-Wadaa), Islam's holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca on February 27, 2020. (Photo by ABDEL GHANI BASHIR/AFP via Getty Images) Before we get to the nice stuff, let’s not kid ourselves — Saudi Arabia has a brutal regime that denies humans their rights and dignity every day. Just recently a humanitarian aid worker who used an anonymous Twitter account to mock Saudi Arabia filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the kingdom alleging an attempt to silence critics in cooperation with Saudi agents working at Twitter: In 2019, Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East region, was charged with acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government. The complaint also alleged that Saudi citizen Ali Alzabarah, who worked as an engineer at Twitter, accessed confidential Twitter data about users, their email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses, the latter of which be used to identify a user’s location. A third man named in FBI complaint is Saudi citizen Ahmed Al-Mutairi, who is said to have worked with an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family as an intermediary. Abouammo was convicted last summer of failing to register as an agent for Saudi Arabia and other charges. While Saudi Arabia claims these days to welcome LGBTQ+ tourists, it has an appalling, bloody history: Welcoming international visitors who are LGBTQ+ is at odds with the kingdom’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights for its own residents, which are relatively non-existent. Saudi Arabia remains one of the few countries where homosexuality is punishable by the death penalty. In the kingdom, Sharia Law also forbids ‘crossdressing’, there are no anti-discrimination protections for queer people and LGBTQ+ personnel are banned from serving openly in the military. LGBTQ+ activists and public figures have faced persecution including lashings and imprisonment for offending “public morality” by being LGBTQ+ publicly, such as in TikTok videos. In 2019, five men were executed after admitting they had had sex with other men. A year later, a blogger was put in prison and then deported for a social media post where he issued support for gay people. Good luck to any migrant laborers who attempt to work for the kingdom on one of their many megaprojects, as Front Office Sports explains: Months after the 2022 World Cup, questions linger amid new allegations over the treatment of migrant workers by tournament organizers. Around 200 security workers were deported in January for participating in a protest calling for better pay and working conditions, according to Reuters. Workers from Kenya, India, Pakistan, and Nepal were fired on the last day of the tournament. Reports leading up to the tournament documented poor living conditions for migrant workers, construction jobs that required long hours in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and an inability to legally quit or transfer jobs without employers’ permission. The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia's government, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 left an indelible stain on Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The 2018 assassination of Mr. Khashoggi and the brutality of his death, detailed in news reports at the time, shocked the world. And it disgusted American officials, including the C.I.A. director at the time, Gina Haspel, according to current and former intelligence officials. Ms. Haspel and the other American officials listened to a recording obtained by Turkish intelligence that not only captured Mr. Khashoggi’s struggle against Saudi agents and his killing, but also the sounds of the saw being used on his body. The Saudi government issued a blistering response to the report’s release and the penalties, rejecting the document as a “negative, false and unacceptable assessment” about its leaders. Fortunately for MBS, he had “yuge” help when it came to laundering his reputation in Washington D.C.: “I saved his ass,” Trump told Woodward for his forthcoming book “Rage,” according to an excerpt published Thursday by Business Insider. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop,” Trump said. (Since then, exactly how many millions MBS could be funneling to Donald Trump through LIV Golf is a mystery). So okay, let’s not be Pollyanna here. Part of the way MBS has attempted to rehabilitate his reputation on the world stage has been through popular sports and entertainment, as Sebastian Castelier for Haaretz explains: The billions of dollars Saudi Arabia has been investing in sports have been railed by critics as brazen “sportswashing” aimed at burnishing the kingdom’s global image in a bid to obscure its appalling human rights record. In the last six months alone, Saudi Arabia won its bid to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, a pan-Asian winter multi-sport event organized by the Olympic Council of Asia, signed soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo to play for Al-Nassr Football Club in Riyadh for a cool $200 million a year, hosted its fourth consecutive version of the Dakar Rally, sent its first female tennis team to an International Tennis Federation event and is rumored to be preparing a joint bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2030. So when Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) signed a 10-year deal with Saudi Arabia to hold exclusive events in the kingdom, it left a sour taste in many mouths. A year into the deal, Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated summarized how the effort was going: Can capitalism have a conscience? That question repeated itself the past few weeks as the NBA attempted to repair its lucrative relationship with China—and is relevant again as WWE returns to Saudi Arabia on Thursday another big pay day. WWE should not be partnered with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, especially after the vicious assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Aligning with Saudi Arabia—home of human rights crimes, such as jailing activists and a mass execution this past April—makes it difficult to support the product. There is also the question of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Up until this Thursday, WWE’s female talent had been prohibited from performing at shows there, though that will change at Thursday’s Crown Jewel show with a match between Natalya Neidhart and Lacey Evans. It is certainly an important addition to the card, but it does not change the fact that women have severely limited rights in Saudi Arabia. It must be said that since that initial match, many more women have performed to warm ovations from Saudi crowds. Yesterday’s event in Saudi Arabia, Night of Champions, featured three women’s bouts, including one hotly contested between WWE Hall of Famer (and kayfabe heel) Trish Stratus and popular (babyface) wrestler Becky Lynch: As a longtime pro wrestling fan, the progress shown toward women in wrestling has been refreshing and long overdue. Again, women wrestling in Saudi Arabia doesn’t excuse their broader treatment of women — but I’ll count the W’s wherever I can find them. Since we’re discussing the treatment of women wrestlers... (Hey, it’s Sunday morning on a holiday weekend — please indulge me a few more graphs today, though I promise I won’t get too wild), the last time I brought up pro wrestling in this space was to resurrect an old CM Punk clip where he bragged about gaslighting and using a “Bikini Girl” for free van rides while claiming to deeply hate her. Punk has been a key figure in billionaire Tony Kahn’s All Elite Wrestling (AEW) promotion (Tony is the son of billionaire Shahid Khan, who owns the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars). AEW’s primary rival is billionaire McMahon and WWE, for whom Punk once wrestled and was recently acquired by not-billionaire-yet Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor to be combined with not-billionaire-yet Dana White’s UFC (for whom Punk also competed for) to form a new powerhouse media company, The TKO Group. You’ll remember that White was caught on video slapping his wife in public (an act Emanuel remained silent about), while McMahon agreed to pay $12 million in hush money to four women to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity over sixteen years. Anyway, just in this past week, Punk was rumored to be the centerpiece of a new AEW show on Saturday nights for Warner Bros. Discovery and David Zaslav. So yeah, things are better for women wrestlers nowadays, no doubt-- but look at what kind of folks still run the show. Alright, let’s get back to Saudi Arabia and the “W” we can take from the events of the past week, which have been… remarkable? Since the deal WWE launched with Saudi Arabia began, a few notable wrestlers have not made the trip. One of those men was Sami Zayn, who’s attracted a huge following over a 21-year career as Sportskeeda explains: Sami Zayn, born Rami Sebei, is a superstar who doesn't shy away from his heritage. He is a Muslim and was born in Quebec, Canada, to Syrian parents. Which makes him a Canadian of Syrian descent. In July 2017, he even launched Sami for Syria as a way to provide medical care to civilians displaced by war. Due to the conflicts between Syria and Saudi Arabia, the superstar decided not to appear in shows that took place in the latter country. At a time when Zayn was a babyface underdog the fans rooted for against often insurmountable odds, the WWE asked him to turn on those fans and break bad. He proved more than capable for the task, finding clever methods to weave madness into his villainy, as ClutchPoints details: He’s dominated in WWE, holds legendary status for his time on the indies, and might just go down as one of the funniest performers of his generation for angles like his feud with Johnny Knoxville and his decision to bring out Trae Young at MSG. If he’s starting to think about his career retrospectively, at least he can appreciate the road ahead of him and the opportunities presented during this up period of his career, instead of taking it for granted. His Wrestlemania match with Jackass star Johnny Knoxville was a triumph of storytelling and comedy, not to mention a demonstration of the fine art of a pro wrestler keeping a celebrity performer safe in the ring. Folks, relax — it’s Sunday morning, let’s watch some rasslin’: Most pro wrestlers would have viewed a comedy match at Wrestlemania as the low point of thier career, and yet Sami used it to vault into the main event scene. Soon, he was hobnobbing with the top of the card and becoming affiliated with WWE Undisputed Champion Roman Reigns and his faction, The Bloodline. In this clip, Sami shows exactly why fans have come to adore his antics as he makes these tough men break with one inspired improvisation: I said I wasn’t going to get crazy on the length here, so we’ll skip to the part where this all came to a crashing halt, when Sami turned on Roman in defense of longtime friend and devoted Shania Twain fan Kevin Owens. This is just about the loudest pop you will ever hear a crowd make. It’s magical: To make a long story short (too late!), Sami and his friend Kevin captured the tag team championships in the main event of night one of the past Wrestlemania — which also meant their presence was required for the main event yesterday in Saudi Arabia. Until recently, a Syrian being welcomed in Saudi Arabia was… let’s call it “unlikely.” But as part of the MBS recent attempts at a charm offensive, some diplomatic ties have been re-established, as TJR Wrestling notes: Zayn is a second-generation Syrian and relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia in recent years have been non-existent. The countries suspended diplomatic ties with each other in late 2011 following Saudi’s backing of non-government forces in the Syrian Civil War. However, on May 9th, 2023 both countries resumed these ties with one another just days after Syria was also re-admitted to the Arab League. The state-run Saudi Press Agency issued a statement noting the reasons for re-establishing their diplomatic mission in Syria: So it wasn’t entirely certain how any of this would play when Sami and his family set foot in Jeddah this past week. Yet check out the reaction in this astonishing clip of Sami being introduced to a packed crowd for a media event: The massive crowd showered Sami with chants of “We love you,” and “Welcome home.” A day later, Samil was in an ihram, the Umrah garments, standing next to the Holy Kaaba on a journey to Mecca — a clearly emotional experience for him captured in this video: As Sami later explained on Twitter: Being a pro wrestler and being with WWE has taken me to places I never dreamed I’d get to see and do things I never thought I’d get to do. It has provided me a life filled with incredible experiences that I will cherish forever. This one is at the top of the list. الحمدلله (That Arabic at the end reads “alhamdulillah,” which can be translated as “praise be to God,” or “thank God.”) When the time came for the main event, Sami’s attire to the ring was a happy surprise for fans. From Wrestling Inc: For many years, Sami Zayn had been unable to attend WWE events in Saudi Arabia due to his Syrian heritage. However, in his and Kevin Owens' long-awaited return to the country, Zayn, a Muslim, walked to the ring proudly wearing a thobe as the audience sang along to his theme music. The traditional Arabian garb prompted a thunderous ovation from the crowd, one that Sami soaked in as he walked to the ring. Sami then addressed the crowd in Arabic, as one fan describes in the video below: As translated in the video: “Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Pray to the prophet. We’re in an Arab country. We have an Arab champion. We’re gonna do this in Arabic! Introducing the prizefighter…. “[switches to English] Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn!” Sami and Kevin went on to win the match, much to the crowd’s delight. So has a commercial relationship between a professional wrestling company and the kingdom led to peace in the Middle East? Not quite, though I wager performers like Sami Zayn have done more to help than, say, Jared Kushner. I promised not to be Pollyanna. Let’s just take the “W’ where we find it. Tax Musk. Add Pro Wrestling to the Olympics — I mean, it can’t be that different to judge from figure skating, can it? Get a different result. Okay, I’m reaching there. Enjoy the long weekend, I’m through. See you in the comments. 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