Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
He’s unknown in U.S., but a big star in Riyadh
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Say the name Joshua Van Alstine in Saudi Arabia, and the response is likely a blank stare.
But mention his Web-born persona, Abu Muteb, and chances are good you’ll get a knowing nod or wry smile for the baby-faced American military brat. He slings Saudi-accented Arabic, wears traditional Persian Gulf robes, mixes comedy and commentary and is surely one of the Arab world’s most improbable celebrities.
Van Alstine is a niche within a niche. He rode a wave of YouTube videos that were not even a blip at the college he attended near Dallas but were monster hits in Saudi Arabia.
Then an email arrived in May 2013 from the Saudi leadership asking whether he would consider moving to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. He accepted.
“This whole thing has been wild. Really crazy,” said Van Alstine, whose videos also landed him on one of the Middle East’s most widely watched television channels. Earlier this month, he was recruited by Qatar state television to help cover the country’s national day celebrations.
To get the full measure of Van Alstine’s journey, it’s important to know what the 25-year-old is not. He’s not a native Arabic speaker. He’s not of Arab descent. He had never set foot in an Arab country until he was in his early 20s.
But he is Muslim, raised in the religion of his Turkish-born mother as the family bounced between Turkey and the United States with deployments of his father, an Air Force enlisted airman who rose to the rank of chief master sergeant.
One stop was in San Antonio shortly after 9/11 when he was in grade school.
“For the first time I felt I wasn’t accepted,” he said. “Here I was, a white Muslim in America. Many Americans rejected me because I was Muslim. The Muslims in America — Arabs, Pakistanis and others — rejected me because they saw me as just American. I felt really isolated.”
That was until he fell into a clique of Saudi students at the University of North Texas. He started picking up Arabic and the distinctive Saudi dialect. One day in late 2011, from his parents’ basement, he decided to make a video challenging Westerners to seek a better understanding of Islam. He posted it on YouTube.
Then he made another one with a lighter touch about hanging with the Saudis. And another.
No one noticed on campus except the Saudi students. They tweeted it. And, back in the kingdom, the posts went into the meme-osphere in one of the region’s most vibrant social media landscapes. Here was something entirely new: a blond American winging it in Arabic with a Saudi flavor.
In early 2012, someone from the Saudi royal court tracked down Van Alstine on Facebook and invited him to visit. Van Alstine arrived just after the death of the No. 2 to the throne, Crown Prince Nayef, in June 2012. Because he was on a royal-sponsored visit, Van Alstine was added to the mourning events.
He joined the royal delegation to pray in Mecca and was part of a gathering with senior princes and others at a palace in Jiddah. Among them was the future Saudi king, Salman.
Van Alstine also paid homage to his sponsors by taking the nom-de-Web Abu Muteb, a nickname of then Saudi King Abdullah, who died nearly a year ago and was succeeded by Salman.
Van Alstine returned to the United States and kept cranking out videos for his YouTube channel, Americanbadu, or the American Bedouin. One video, a reply to a woman who professed to be fan of the Saudi soccer club Al-Ettihad, has more than 1 million views.
In May 2013, the Saudi Ministry of Education emailed him a job offer to help develop a new TV channel. He packed his bags.
To be sure, Van Alstine keeps it tame. The Saudi social media space is crowded but not with anyone who crosses red lines such as criticism of Saudi rulers or policies. Offenders are quickly silenced and sometimes jailed.
His comedy keeps to the safe ground of mild observations: the pidgin Arabic of many South Asian shopkeepers or the bewildering array of Saudi hand gestures. He can also get preachy and more than a shade of propagandist. In several posts — with a Saudi flag in the background — he has railed against Muslim-bashers in the West and has defended Saudi Arabia against criticism of rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent.
“I don’t feel conflicted at all,” he said, insisting that he does not try to overlay Western values on local standards. It’s a bit of a self-preservation that has earned him some detractors.
His father, Brian Van Alstine, said he was always aware of Joshua’s affinity for the spotlight. “But I’ve also tried to temper his enthusiasm with the reality that not everyone will understand or tolerate his point of view the same way,” he added.
Van Alstine’s sweet spot, however, is his natural state: a semi- goofy, toothy-smile American who favors traditional Saudi robes and headdresses and models himself as a Bedouin soulmate.
“He’s weird, but in a likable way,” said Ibraheem Alkhirallah, creative director at the Riyadh- based video production company Telfaz, which featured Van Alstine in one of its most popular Web shows, Temsahly, or Crocodile, which is a sock-puppet croc who interviews Arab celebrities or has adventures around the region.
The centerpiece of the awards wall at Telfaz is a YouTube plaque for the first 1 million subscribers to Temsahly — among the show’s more than 100 million views. The Van Alstine episode has been seen more than 1.8 million times.
It’s another glimpse into one of the Middle East’s fastest-evolving online cultures. Saudi Arabia ranks among the world’s top for per capital usages of sites such as Twitter and the WhatsApp chat network. Millions follow YouTube comedy shows such as Temsahly and the satirical La Yekthar Show.
“Saudi society can be a lonely place,” said Fahad Albutairi, the popular comedian who created La Yekthar, or “put a lid on it” in rough translation. “Liberals and conservatives, men and women, wealthy and struggling, all had really no way to really connect. With social media, we can tear off the masks and tear up the stereotypes.”
The same wave carried Van Altsine. But his image really took off when he appeared in 2013 on a 15-episode series on Middle East Broadcasting, the major regional television network, during the super primetime viewing season of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month. In the show, Van Alstine is living with a traditional Saudi family.
“I arrived as a dopey American and then out-Arabized the Arabs,” he said.
After his short-term TV gig, Van Alstine is setting up shop in Doha. He plans to resume his studies and seek new outlets in Qatar, which is among the region’s media hubs as the base for the Al-Jazeera network.
“They say that life is unpredictable,” he said. “If anyone disagrees, I have the perfect answer. Take a look at me.”