The reality of the ‘All-American Muslim’ reality TV show

The series about five American Muslim families can’t represent all of us – any more than Jersey Shore does Italian Americans

The following is a re-post of an article written by Wajahat Ali and published by The Guardian, Thursday 17 November 2011 13.49 EST

For those constantly fretting about the inability of Muslims to integrate or assimilate into western culture, fret no more!

American Muslims finally have their own reality TV show – the Learning Channel’s “All-American Muslim” – focusing on the lives of five American Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, who are predominantly Lebanese and Shiite. The show’s premiere gave TLC huge ratings and made the show No 2 in its time period. Mainstream critics have embraced the show citing it as “intimate and informative” and a “deeply intriguing, uncharacteristically thoughtful reality series”.

Reality TV is the current zeitgeist of popular culture. Unlike the euro, it is the predominant cultural currency, whose value is skyrocketing. America is on a first-name basis with their cultural ambassadors: Snookie, Kate Plus 8, Paris, Ozzie and Kim. Could Shadia, the show’s tattooed, country music-loving Lebanese American Muslim, with an Irish Catholic boyfriend, belong in the pantheon?

“[All American Muslim] is just a natural fit for us …We’re always all about telling compelling stories about real families,” says TLC’s Alan Orstein, VP of production and development. But some have already taken deep offense to this “reality” show, which claims to portray the “real” lives of Muslims.

Within days of the show’s premiere, the fear-mongering Islamphobia network complained the show is actually propaganda that promotes a “submission to Islam through the hijab” and “tries to make a religion which believes in world domination and the inferiority of women, seem normal”. The author of this article, posted on David Horowitz’s inflammatory Front Page Magazine, also goes on to compare Muslims to Nazis: “Muslims are like us [Americans]; that’s the problem. The Nazis were like us too. So were the Communists.”

Apparently, TLC is a stealth-jihadist outfit with grand schemes to brainwash American women into burning their swimsuits and tank tops and replacing them with modest, traditional Islamic clothing as a gradual means towards converting them to Islam. I’ll be waiting for their next reality TV show: “UV Radiation Fighters.”

Pamela Geller, founder of the shrill Atlas Shrugs blog and co-founder with blogger Robert Spencer of Stop Islamization of America, is convinced the show “is an attempt to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad”. Who would have thought a reality TV show could have so much brainwashing potential? Instead of mounting violent campaigns, all our enemies needed to secure victory was to produce “The Real Housewives of al-Qaida.”

If Geller, Spencer and Horowitz were producing their version of American Muslim reality, the episodes would focus on the families’ radical stealth jihadist plots. Through eight episodes, they would attempt to turn McDonald’s golden arches into minarets, transform California to Caliph-ornia, place a burqa over the Statute of Liberty, creep sharia into the Denny’s breakfast menu, and spike the elementary school eggnog with sumac and lentils.

A “real Muslim” according to many is this anti-American, extremist, violent stereotype – an image often plastered over news headlines. This myth is unsurprising, perhaps, considering 60% of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim. Furthermore, the No 1 source of information about Muslims for American is the media, and often, the images are negative. Yet, according to all the studies and evidence, the reality of American Muslims is that they are moderate, loyal to America, optimistic about America’s future, in tune with American values, well-educated, and are the nation’s most diverse religious community.

That being said, nearly half of American Muslims say they have faced discrimination. The FBI just announced anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen 50%. And a Republican presidential candidate with an alleged proclivity towards sexual harassment and unintentionally hilarious campaign videos has claimed a majority of Muslim Americans are extremists.

The portrayal of Muslims living their daily lives is not only a welcome relief from the usual tawdry caricatures of Muslims as terrorists, extremists and taxi cab drivers, but it also helps defuse the deep-seated fears and bias that unfairly lumps 1.5 billion members of a faith in with the perverse criminal actions of a few.

However, even American Muslims have voiced their criticisms with the show. The Twitterverse exploded (figuratively) with comments reflecting the diversity of the American Muslim opinions. Some said the show misleads with the title “All-American Muslim”, since it solely focuses on one niche religious, ethnic community (Lebanese Shiite in Dearborn, Michigan) and leaves out the majority of American Muslim communities, such as African Americans, South Asians, Sunnis and those from the low-income middle class. Others, apparently, want their TV Muslims to be avatars of religious and moral perfection and complained about some of the characters’ portrayal of Islam. (Shadia is a tattooed, partying rebel dating a white, Irish Catholic man who converts to Islam in order to marry her. Nina is a busty, dyed-blonde, opinionated business woman, with a penchant for tight dresses and ambitions to open her own club.)

Which only goes to show that representing Muslims and Islam in the mainstream is an utterly thankless job. The term “Muslim” is itself so politically and culturally loaded that it is impossible to escape controversy, no matter how trivial or manufactured. Since Muslims are a marginalised community with very few positive mainstream representations, audiences unfairly project onto these five families all their own insecurities, assumptions, fears, political ideologies, religious opinions, personal stories and other gratuitous baggage. So, if the characters do not 100% reflect the reality of certain audience members, then they cease to be authentic or valid.

The five families on “All-American Muslim” should not be asked to represent all Muslims, Arabs or Americans. Does Jersey Shore represent all Italians? If so, you can hear Frank Sinatra crooning in his grave. Similarly, Kim Kardashian does not represent all narcissistic, wannabe socialites with a fetish for athletes. (That may be an insult to fetishes.)

The best way to view “All-American Muslim” is simply a show about five families doing their best to be themselves. They’re just people, who happen to identify as Muslim, Arab and American. Their story isn’t the wild-eyed, paranoid fantasy that is colored by the hate-filled minds of the Islamophobia network. It isn’t the terrorist stereotype familiar to most American audiences thanks to mainstream Hollywood depictions and sensationalised news headlines. And it won’t be the story of this nation’s 3-4 million American Muslims (population estimates vary from 1.3 to 7 million), who will hopefully find more avenues to tell their unique narratives through mainstream outlets.

In the meantime, we should exhale and simply let this reality TV show succeed or fail on the merits of its ability to entertain, instead of obsessing about how “realistic” its depiction of Islam and Muslims is. If the ratings decline, TLC can always create a new talent show featuring the cast members of “The Real Housewives” and “All-American Muslim”, judged by Kim Kardashian and Ozzy Osbourne, whose winner gets an opportunity to join all the previous winners from “Dancing with the Stars” in a new “Survivor” series about who lives beyond the 15th minute of fame.

That’s a reality show whose authenticity cannot be denied.

Tostan Youth spread Human Rights across The Gambia’s Upper River Region

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Alisa Hamilton. She is currently volunteering with Tostan in Senegal. To find an amazing opportunity like this one, search the AUA Directory of Recommended Organizations© today!

Participants march to the Governor’s residence on the sixth day of the caravan

Recently I attended a Youth Caravan in The Gambia to cover the event for Tostan’s Communications Department. The objective of the annual six-day caravan was to inspire cross-village and cross-generational interaction. One youth participant and one facilitator from 73 Tostan villages came together to form a large group that visited five other Tostan communities representing three different ethnic groups. This caravan visited two Serahule, two Mandinka, and one Fula village. In each village, youth participants presented to the host community what they had been learning through Tostan’s three-year Community Empowerment Program (CEP) as well as its importance. After spending a night in a village, the group moved on to another the next day.

Getting to The Gambia from Dakar was a bit of a hassle. The initial voyage took 17 hours. I woke up at 6:00 a.m., was at the gare routière or transport station by 7:30 a.m. and on the road in a sept-place by 8:00 a.m. A sept-place, an old station wagon that seats seven people plus the driver, is Senegal’s preferred mode of transportation for long distances – always very crowded with a lot of luggage strapped on the roof (often including large farm animals like sheep). I always get stuck in the back.

A sheep on top of a sept-place

Once I reached the border six hours later, I grabbed my bags, got my passport stamped on the Senegal side, walked across the border and bought my visa at the Gambian immigration office. I then took a taxi to another garage in Bara where I met up with Lilli, the Tostan volunteer in The Gambia. We waited three hours for a sept-place to fill up and then embarked on another six-hour ride to Basse. The Gambia has a gazillion police checkpoints so we stopped every half hour, which chewed up a lot of time. After crossing the Gambian River, we arrived in Basse, the Upper River Region’s (URR) largest city, around midnight.

A crowd gathers around caravan buses arriving in a village

A youth participant speaks about human rights during the afternoon ceremony

The next day was the first day of the six-day Caravan, which was an amazing experience but super exhausting. We spent each day in a different village. In the morning we woke up, ate breakfast, packed up the vans and headed to the next village. Each afternoon featured a ceremony where participants spoke about youth rights, for example, the right to education, the right to chose one’s husband, and the right to be registered at birth. Then host community members performed a skit. Participants in the last village we visited performed a powerful play about a teenage girl who gets seduced by a young man who promises her money; she becomes pregnant and dies during childbirth. In the final scene, the actors sang a funeral song warning about the dangers of teenage pregnancy. Other skits addressed the importance of education and the consequences of child/forced marriage. The speeches and skits were in local languages, so Tostan Supervisors translated for Lilli and me.

Scenes from the play in Bassendi

After closing words by local leaders, such as the Female President of the village and the National Coordinator of Tostan Gambia, we had some down time before dinner. I ate a lot of rice and meat that week. It seemed we had fruity soda after every meal, as well (I’ve been eating a lot of vegetables and drinking a lot of water this week!). Every evening included a cultural night of dancing, poetry recitation, and cultural entertainment. Lilli and I were usually so exhausted that we left the soirée early to go to bed.

Alisa with the crowd during a cultural night

The sixth day took place in Basse and was my favorite. All of the Caravan participants, over 200, and Tostan organizers gathered at the Tostan office and marched to the residence of the Governor of URR. There youth participants presented a manifesto stating what they wanted from the government as support in their quest to improve the lives of Gambian youth. Key points included education scholarships for girls and boys, skill training centers for technical jobs, and better enforcement of laws prohibiting child/forced marriage.

Youth participant, Fatou Baldé, presents the manifesto

My favorite part was riding on the back of Moussa’s motorbike while taking video footage of the march. I took a lot of video throughout the week and am hoping to put together a short piece for Tostan’s blog or website. My written article is currently featured on Tostan’s blog and soon to be in the November Newsletter. Very exciting!

Alisa filming on the back of Moussa’s motorbike

I had so much fun and hope to cover another Tostan event in the future. The experience was incredibly enriching and one of the best times I’ve had since living in West Africa, although I was quite anxious to get back to my bed and overhead shower after a week of changing mattresses and taking bucket baths!

Ba beneen yoon! – Until next time!

Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Loveday, Tostan Regional Volunteer in The Gambia.

Peace Media Award Winner: Laura Boushnak

The following is a guest blog by Peace X Peace, an international organization that connects women working on the frontlines of peace building in 120 countries. www.peacexpeace.org.

Laura Boushnak is a photographer, a third generation Palestinian refugee, and an activist. Now she’s also our 2011 Peace Media honoree. She draws on her background and life experiences to create photography that uncovers issues and subjects most often overlooked.

Though she started out as a sociology student working for the Associated Press and then Agence France-Press, she now pursues freelance work and long-form photo projects full time. What is she working on now? Not just one project!  She has three in the works, collections of images ranging from cluster bomb survivors in Lebanon to Arab women’s literacy projects and the LGBT community in Beirut. She covers the Arab world from multiple angles, finding lenses (both figuratively and literally) through which to reflect a region of the world that is so often distorted in the mainstream media.

Laura reports that she chooses her projects based on her personal experience, which alerts her to social issues that deserve attention. She explains, “…in general there has to be a personal side to any of the stories I work on. For example, I started my project about cluster sub-munitions survivors a few months following the end of the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war, where I actually covered the whole event. I was taken by the fact that cluster munitions left behind after conflicts kill and injure civilians who are already trying to rebuild their lives after war.”

Some may scoff at the idea that photography can build peace. But Laura (and Peace X Peace) contend that the opposite is true. In the case of her literacy project, she “…wanted to show what is being done about women’s education and raise questions over the obstacles which stand in the way of their development.” The images of situations or events that are captured and disseminated can shape our understanding of those situations. Laura helps to build peace by shifting perceptions of conflict and possibilities for peace in Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries around the Middle East.

Peace X Peace Celebrates its 2011 Women, Power, and Peace Awards

Join Peace X Peace, an international organization that connects women working on the frontlines of peacebuilding in 120 countries, at their 2011 Women, Power, and Peace Awards event, which will be held on Monday, December 5th, at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington DC. This gala evening honors six extraordinary award winners, a catered reception, fine wines, live music, an inspiring theatrical piece by Woolly Mammoth actors enacting voices of women change agents, and a 10-minute Catalyst video of Israeli and Palestinian women working for peace. Each attendee will also receive a complimentary copy of Patricia Smith Melton’s remarkable coffee table book, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices, valued at over $50.

They’d love to have you join them. Please click here to purchase your tickets. Please get your tickets early as this will sell out. www.peacexpeace.org.

Unofficial Ambassador Steve Jobs

The following is a message from Ambassador Osman Siddique, the Chairman of AUA’s Diplomatic Council and the first Muslim-American to serve as a US ambassador, and AUA Director Ben Orbach. The message was published in the International Business Times and Microfinance Monitor on November 1, 2011.

WASHINGTON, DC: Much has been written about the achievements of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs since he passed away on October 5. A part of this story not yet covered, though, is how the idea of what Jobs represented for America will be missed across the Muslim World. From the alleys of Nablus to the streets of Lahore, the American people have long served as our country’s best representatives; the loss of Steve Jobs is the loss of one of America’s foremost Unofficial Ambassadors.

For years, people across the Muslim World have drawn a distinction between their disaffection for US policies and their affinity for the American people. For many ordinary people, certain policies offended sensibilities – such as torture at Abu Ghraib – or made lives more difficult – like supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt for decades.

It is this strong rejection of the US policy that has led to widespread “disapproval” of America in polling across the Muslim World. According to the Pew Foundation, America’s favorability in Pakistan in 2003 (the start of the war with Iraq) was 13 percent; in Jordan it was just one percent. Eight years later, it is 20 percent in Egypt and just 10 percent in Turkey.

At the same time, the American people are regarded differently – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may twist the masses in knots, but Facebook makes people smile. Our political processes and entertainment sector have long been international standard bearers, from the “rags to riches” election of the son of an African immigrant to explosive Hollywood blockbusters.

Our businesses are known for innovation and our education systems for teaching critical thinking. A degree from an American university has long been coveted while an “unlocked” iPhone is the latest and greatest American export. Steve Jobs and the company he built were a Colossus of this kind of “soft power,” a symbol of the value of the “people-to-people” component of international relations.

If this past year’s events in the Middle East and North Africa have demonstrated anything, it is that America’s relations with countries such as Egypt and Pakistan will not be determined solely by the dialogue that occurs between the leaders of our respective governments. In this age of technological connectedness and the 24-hour news cycle, governments cannot survive indefinitely if they don’t enable their people to pursue their aspirations. At the community level, people form their opinions of their national leaders and of America, too, based not upon the promises of treaties but upon the merits of deeds and the style of conduct.

In this respect, Steve Jobs was an American force for inspiration, innovation, and empowerment. Millions of iPhones and iPads bought all over the world reflect American ingenuity but significantly, the product of that ingenuity carries the promise of new possibilities.

While few Americans will have the impact of a Steve Jobs on a global level, many of us can serve as unofficial ambassadors at the grassroots level across the Muslim World and be a part of representing that same promise of a better future.

For example, Matthew Stackowicz is an English teacher who volunteered for three weeks in Sana’a, Yemen, and taught refugees from Somalia to tell their stories through photography. Brittany Richardson is an outdoors trip leader who volunteered for seven months in villages surrounding Lunsar, Sierra Leone, training young girls to ride bicycles. And Jean Kurtenbach is a senior who helped build a home with a Tajik family in Khujand.

Matthew, Brittany, and Jean represented the best of America to local leaders and citizens and formed partnerships that created a positive impact from a human development perspective. They supported the freedom of speech, the empowerment of women, and access to a healthier environment. Their deeds spoke volumes, and they improved America’s international relations at the community level.

Importantly, the partnerships they formed were not one-way endeavors. They were ambassadors to communities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and they returned to their homes in Indiana, California, and Nebraska as representatives of the idea that our personal actions can take us beyond stereotypes. Sadly for us as Americans, a 2010 Pew Foundation poll showed that 38 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Muslims.

America needs more unofficial ambassadors to the Muslim World, which is why we launched the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative this past year at Creative Learning, a Washington D.C. not-for-profit. More than 61 million Americans volunteered last year, but less than 1 percent of that number volunteered overseas and only a fraction of that one percent volunteered in a Muslim-majority country. By the end of 2012, America’s Unofficial Ambassadors will encourage 1,000 Americans to commit to volunteer for a week to a year, and we are building a community to offer them guidance and support.

Steve Jobs left an indelible mark as a great American, revered and respected worldwide for his contributions to our global community. His inventions catalyzed creativity, but one does not have to be a world-leading innovator to be a part of generating new possibilities – to build a house in Indonesia, to teach English in Jordan, and to help build peace as an unofficial ambassador.

The people-to-people connections we form, the decency we can demonstrate in the process, and the impact of the partnerships we create are all invaluable, from a development perspective and from a mutual understanding perspective, too.

M. Osman Siddique was the first Muslim-American to serve as a US Ambassador and chairs the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors Diplomatic Council. Benjamin Orbach is the Director of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative at Creative Learning. (www.unofficialambassadors.org).