Saudi Women, Unveiled

sixty minutes overtime waiting for a prince to come Norah O'Donnell interviewed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for 60 minutes you spent 90 minutes talking with him and also toured his offices his home what did you learn about him well that he's bold he's visionary but he's also been called reckless and impulsive Saudi Arabia is important but what he does in Saudi Arabia can change the entire Middle East O'Donnell and to 60 minutes producers Vanessa fika and Graham Messick met with the Prince more than a year ago and showed him past 60 minutes stories including this one about Ronald Reagan well we were trying to explain to him what 60 minutes was and he loved it and he got it immediately so once you had him in the interview chair did he say anything that that surprised you I said a lot of things that surprised us what I thought was most amazing is to hear a Saudi leader talk so specifically about what women can wear and what Islamic law actually says hallelujah the laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of Sharia that women wear decent respectful clothing like ma'am it's so interesting that the crown prince said it's the women's decision to cover or not to cover the decision is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear is there some friction there between what the crown prince said in his interview and what you saw on the street absolutely yeah our team we were out for dinner and as we're you know you know on the sidewalk just chit-chatting a car just pulls up kind of frantically and we hear something from a I say a megaphone megaphone yeah we hear something from like a megaphone and it's an Arabic we don't know what they're saying but then the window rolls down and this guy looked like the Saudi religious police he had the head covering and a very long beard I took out my iPhone and actually started filming them and walking toward them and and we locked eyes and he told me to cover my my hair in English in English was he yelling at you or oh it's a hectoring was it was it surprising that that would happen we were surprised but we were you know we're pretty red in here and the religious police have lost their ability to make arrests I think that mohammed al sheikh was one of the people we interviewed asked us what did they arrest you know that they thought you did they do anything yeah see about three years ago you probably would have been arrested arrested he had he had a pretty good response which is you don't know what it used to be like it may be for individual women in Saudi Arabia to work out these changes with their husbands and their fathers another thing mohamed el sheikh said is there's a difference between religious and cultural influences and there is a culture of modesty and conservatism in saudi arabia that's going to be a lot harder to to shake loose due to change i think the crown prince you know in a lot of ways he reminds me of one of those eternal optimists like Franklin Roosevelt or Reagan he's saying these things and everyone's listening but when you meet people they're sort of a wait-and-see approach and what do you think about their change for women I mean they're gonna be able to drive in June yeah no come on it's not on a dime just changing overnight you didn't cover right you didn't cover no and I really didn't need to as a Western woman but every Saudi woman has her head covered I would have felt uncomfortable not wearing my abaya walking around you can see here there are only men did you buy that there as a matter of fact we picked up about half a dozen abayas for the whole team in Brooklyn and when we got to Saudi Arabia so many people said you're a bias so beautiful where did you buy it we said well actually we've got it in Brooklyn when King Faisal of Saudi Arabia deployed 60 Minutes has been covering Saudi Arabia for four decades starting in the 1970s Riyadh is a strange city it is the seat of government the king resides here and only thirty years ago and we looked at some of those reports what do you think of the United States now you she became what I near me there was one from 2005 Ed Bradley went to Saudi Arabia to look at the changes that were starting to happen then in that one the women that they spoke to actually had their faces blurred because they were afraid of retribution i addicted all of the cover she began talking to us about what she wants you really need to look at those old 60 Minutes pieces and compare our piece and you will see a difference you will see a trendy hip Saudi woman with her cell phone on snapchat in group socializing out on their own I mean we did see quite a bit of that were the women comfortable talking on camera showing their faces there were especially the women at princess Nora University and that's because the head of their school was there and allowed them to speak on camera the story will continue after this there were other women that we met in a more casual setting that didn't even want their pictures taken I took you know I said can we take a selfie with their head cover and they said yes and they said now don't you use that picture anywhere don't post it anywhere I'll get in trouble they wanted to see pictures of my family and then they wanted to show me pictures of them not with their robes on or their faces covered and they wanted to know whether I thought they were pretty or whether they were beautiful and so it was interesting to me that while culturally there's a requirement to cover up that socially on social media there's a desire to show more they knew everything about American culture I was shocked by that like what they knew who Kim Kardashian's makeup artists was you know they knew him by name I don't even know that so they told me you know we watched Seinfeld and we get all the references and one person they all know and absolutely love Oprah because you know at 60 minutes it's gonna you're gonna look perfect I being a fan of this program for since 1975 so we're here at Princess Nora University this is Dima hello she's driving the Crown Prince realizes you have to change the economy and diversify in Saudi Arabia in order to do that you have to change the culture and if you're gonna change the culture you have to start with women you

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 1,707,003

Rating: 4.1562943 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, Saudi Crown Prince

Id: ZNFNxFlLzrc

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2018