Backstreet Boys: Catalyst for World-Changing Social Progress

Have you ever heard of Manal al-Sharif? Perhaps not, but now you have, and you’ll be better for it. Manal is an example of a normal person who made a courageous choice to defy a social custom she thought was repressive and unjust. The Oslo Freedom Forum called it “creative dissent,” honoring her with an award last spring. Basically Manal decided to take on the religious and governmental establishment in her country, Saudi Arabia, by driving. For a lot of us in the West driving is a mundane action, something we do every day and haven’t been super fired up about since we were about 16 ½. But in Saudi, women are banned from driving, not by any legal code but by the equally binding socio-cultural-religious traditions established by conservative Islam.

In protest against this, Manal drove herself around the streets of al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, filmed it, and uploaded it to YouTube. This resulted in international attention and the beginning of the campaign Women2Drive. But there were negative consequences as well. Manal spent nine days in jail, lost her job, began receiving death threats, and her husband divorced her. Still, she stands by her beliefs and is hopeful that one day soon women driving in Saudi Arabia will be something normal, not something radical.

But what does this have to do with the Backstreet Boys? Well, in a way they’re the inspiration for Manal’s progressive views. In this article from CNN Manal recounts one of the major turning points in her life, a day when she began to realize that the rules, regulations, and religiosity she had blindly accepted all her life might not be infallible. That was the day she first listened to a Backstreet Boys song.

I kid you not! She listened to one of her brother’s cassette tapes and heard “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.” She describes the experience this way: “They had been telling us that music was Satan’s flute — was a path to adultery…this song sounded so pure, so beautiful, so angelic. It can be anything but evil to me. And that day I realized how lonely I was in the world I isolated myself in.” She began to question the rigid customs of her country and faith. Question and wonder what things would be like if Saudi Arabia changed.

Now, I must confess that I am a long-time BSB fan. Who knows, perhaps that fateful day in 2001 when Manal al Sharif first heard the “angelic” voice of Brian Littrell, 12 year old me was 12,000 miles away in the United States, rocking out to my own prized copy of Millenium. But as much as I always loved the BSB, I would have never guessed that their boy band ballads could change the world.   Yet it seems they have, as odd as that is.

There are two great lessons we can learn from this. One is to never underestimate the power of the boy band. If a Backstreet Boys song released in 1999 is having an impact on Saudi Arabia in the year 2013, where might the next unlikely inspiration come from?

The second lesson is, of course, never underestimate the power of the individual. As Manal said in her speech in Oslo: “The rain begins with a single drop.”

The really cool thing about this story is that it’s far from over. And for me, living in the middle east, immersed in the same culture Manal al Sharif fought back against, I have a front row seat. It may take years or decades for Saudi women to finally claim their right to drive (and so many other freedoms currently denied them), but, like all world-changing social progress, every small step by individuals like Manal is one step closer to realizing the goal.

I don’t know if a comparison between Manal al Sharif and Rosa Parks is warranted, but I’m going to do it anyway. There’s a reason we all learn about Rosa Parks in elementary school—because her one simple action effected huge social change. Even here in the middle east, all my students have heard of Rosa Parks, and are just as eager to use her as an example in their SAT essays as any American student would be. Rosa’s story spread around the world. I just hope one day American students are using Manal al Sharif in their essays in the same way. If they are, something big has changed, and Saudi Arabia and the world will never be the same.