I came home late last night and watch all of about ten minutes of All-American Muslim on TLC. What a pathetic attempt at cultural diversity, propaganda, and entertainment. It's bad enough that we have to endure "reality" television versus well-scripted programs, but this? Consider All American Muslim an extremely boring reality show where nobody gets voted off of anything, there no weakest links, and no tribes have spoken.
If the ratings for All-American Muslim have gone down it's because the show is boring. You learn absolutely nothing about American Muslim families (other than guys like to smoke something that looks like a marijuana pipe or whatever it's called).
It's ironic that some liberals are having a conniption fit over advertising this turkey when Little Mosque on the Prairie is regarded as too controversial to air on American TV. Well, let's look at the difference:
Little Mosque of the Prairie is scripted. Nobody is following a group of Muslims around with a camera hoping they'll do something interesting. The characters on Little Mosque are funny, annoying, touching, loving, infuriating. In other words--human.
There's very little in the way of cliche anymore, or Muslim PR. It's just a funny TV show, and a clean one at that. Nobody swears, Rayyan can only date with a chaperon, Baber wants his ship his daughter Layla to an Islamic school when he sees her studying biology with a boy (yes, actually studying nothing more) but can't part with Layla and is heartbroken at the thought.
One of my favorite scenes is when convert Sarah Hamoudi decides to become more religious after Baber implies that she's not a real convert because she lacks the obnoxiousness of the mosque's new convert. So Sarah, PR agent for the mayor, decides to pray five times a day. Her "prayer mat" is a pink bath mat. Little prob for Sarah, she doesn't want to pray out in the open, in her front office. The mayor, feigns respect for her religion and agrees to let Sarah pray in her office.
That is, until Sarah assumes the position for prayer.
Mayor: "How can I put this delicately? Your Muslim moon is on the rise." Then Sarah's little Muslim alarm clock goes off with the Muslim call to prayer. Mayor: "Jesus Mary and Joseph!"
That's it for the mayor. Sarah can't pray in her office anymore.
The mayor has little patience for anyone, except potential voters.
But the point is, Little Mosque on the Prairie is a success because it's funny and interesting. All American Muslim is boring. It has nothing to do with insensitivity or Islamophobia. It's boring.
Little Mosque is funny, touching, the characters--Muslim and non-Muslims alike give as well as they take in exchanging barbs, insults, the show is modesty and there's no swearing. It's successful internationally but yet too controversial for American television.
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