All American Muslim

[Goyangi]

TLC's 'All-American Muslim' follows 5 Metro Detroit families

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20111109/ENT10/111090302/TLC

Thank you for the link.

I guess I just think Islamic Fundamentalism is pretty damned hardcore stuff (like Wahhabism) and TLC wouldn't put Fundamentalist family on TV and a Fundamentalist family wouldn't go on a show called "All-American Muslim" anyway.

From the article:

The Zabans, meanwhile, are a more conservative Muslim family. Fouad Zaban is a football coach, and his wife, Zaynab, is a part-time secretary. They have four children, and Zaynab and her oldest daughters wear hijabs.

This is the conservative family. I get the impression that hijabs might be required but with a dad that's a football coach and a mom who (gasp!) works, Fundamentalist they are not.

Okay, I'm not expecting much nuance from a TLC reality show but I'm sure it will address some of the problematic aspects of the religion. I personally don't see, however, how excluding extremist viewpoints from the show is "whitewashing" Islam. This show is called "All-American Muslim." And I think Muslim-Americans deserve a platform to show the rest of the country what their lives are really like.

I think a Duggar-like treatment would be lame (way too zombie Pollyanna) but something along the lines of Sister Wives could be pretty interesting.

[changemanagement]

Terry Jones is from Gainesville, Florida, not Dearborn. I know this because my MIL lives in Gainesville and the place was a media circus. This same church also let to many public schools in Gainesville adopting a different dress code, one that didn't allow kids from his church to wear their "Islam is of the Devil" t shirts to school.

Yes, Terry Jones is not from Dearborn, but he made a trip there to burn the Koran. It didn't go over too well. He made a 2nd trip. That didn't go over too well, either.

http://biid.lsa.umich.edu/2011/04/the-a ... extremism/

[Buzzard]

I think the show is going to be a "muslims are just like everyone else show". It will likely feature families that choose to wear various forms of clothing and allow them to explain it. I expect to see people bowling, at amusement parks, baseball games etc. I think its good because while many of us have interactions with muslims that arent trying to blow people up there are parts of this country where they dont have a chance to see that Islam is a religion of peace and its only the extremists that are dangerous. Maybe TLC will actually hold to its name and teach people something... and then go back to its regularly programmed freak show...

[Kelya]

I read that one family has a mother who wears a hijab, an older daughter who does, a daughter who stopped after 9-11, and one who was considering it. Not sure how accurate it is, but I thought it'd be interesting to hear about their different reasons.

[jfred]

Yes. The Duggars should not be allowed to live since they don't watch as much TV as you do.

[QAF_Rocks]

From the article:

"People fear what they don't know. People need to understand, you are born into a certain religion, and that's just the way it is. I was born Muslim and I was born an American."

Oooh, Richard Dawkins would have a field day with that! You can't be born Muslim anymore than you can be born Catholic, or born Republican, or born Democrat. I don't really expect the show to address the issue, but I'd be interested to see if any of these families have members who have left the religion and stopped identifying as Muslim. From what I understand, apostasy is seen as a Very Bad Thing.

The Zabans, meanwhile, are a more conservative Muslim family. Fouad Zaban is a football coach, and his wife, Zaynab, is a part-time secretary. They have four children, and Zaynab and her oldest daughters wear hijabs.

I'm probably most interested in this family. In the previews, there are what appear to be scenes of the football team praying together. If it's a public high school, I would hope that any prayers are entirely student-led and that the coach is respecting the separation of church and state. Or rather, mosque and state. It's just as illegal for Muslim coaches to lead prayers as it is for coaches who are evangelical Christians.

[lilwriter85]

I think the show is going to be a "muslims are just like everyone else show". It will likely feature families that choose to wear various forms of clothing and allow them to explain it. I expect to see people bowling, at amusement parks, baseball games etc. I think its good because while many of us have interactions with muslims that arent trying to blow people up there are parts of this country where they dont have a chance to see that Islam is a religion of peace and its only the extremists that are dangerous. Maybe TLC will actually hold to its name and teach people something... and then go back to its regularly programmed freak show...

I also think the show will be like that. From the previews, they did show the families at events. I hope TLC allows the subjects explain certain things to the audience.

[emmiedahl]

I think TLC will satisfy curiosity, because that is what will drive many to watch the show.

tbh, I am somewhat of a voyeur (in a non-sexual sense). I am just curious about people and their lives, what makes them tick, what a Muslim or a radical feminist or a whomever eats for breakfast. The little things that happen every day define me in a way that my creeds do not. It is part of the reason I read ethnographies for fun. It's the reason I stopped watching the Duggars when they started taking trips everywhere.

If this show is non-sensational and just gives me a glimpse into American Muslim lives, I will lurve it.

[FakePigtails]

I think the show is going to be a "muslims are just like everyone else show". It will likely feature families that choose to wear various forms of clothing and allow them to explain it. I expect to see people bowling, at amusement parks, baseball games etc. I think its good because while many of us have interactions with muslims that arent trying to blow people up there are parts of this country where they dont have a chance to see that Islam is a religion of peace and its only the extremists that are dangerous. Maybe TLC will actually hold to its name and teach people something... and then go back to its regularly programmed freak show...

This is my hope too, having known people who were just plain extremely sheltered by where they live and how they've always been in terms of lack of curiosity. Do I wish they didn't need to see a show like this or meet someone from the group to know the vast, vast majority are okay? Oh hell yes! But the fact is there are a lot of people who need to see a show like this to see that, who aren't hateful but are suspicious and not curious or motivated enough to learn more. If it takes dumping a show like this in their laps for them to get that exposure (eta: also shut down some of the stereotypes) and start conversations, so be it.

[dawn9476]

Another article

http://www.freep.com/article/20111113/E ... RONTPAGE|s

[Buzzard]

"It wouldn't be a good fit for TLC if there wasn't a focus on weddings, babies, people raising kids, working moms and the challenges that families across the country continue to face," Winter said. "We're the Learning Channel."

I'm confused - how do any of these thing relate to "learning?"

[Deesire]

The conversion to Islam and Islamic wedding are weirding me out. Religious beliefs generally weird me out. I really don't get this guy, who is quite clear that he would have converted to any religion in order to marry the woman he loves. To me, that's not really religious belief. He doesn't strike me as either a Christian or a Muslim, though I understand it isn't for me to agree or disagree with whatever labels he claims for himself. But he just exemplifies so much of what ticks me off about people who adhere to religion and he don't seem, to me, through what they describe about their thoughts and motivations to actually believe what they purport to believe by wearing certain religious labels.

[treemom]

So how was it? I didn't watch it last night.

[UmmSqueakster]

I don't have cable, so I won't be able to watch it. However, I thought this critique was good:

http://theidealmuslimah.blogspot.com/20 ... hiite.html

As many American-Muslims have rightfully pointed out in their own critiques, ‘All-American Muslim’ is not the correct title for this cast, setting or show. It should have been called ‘All-Arab-Lebanese-American-Shiite Muslim.’ Interestingly, the producers chose to portray the majority of American Muslims through its ethnic, religious and immigrant minority. The show is set in Dearborn, Michigan; a city which best represents this minority American Muslim demographic.

They even chose to homogenize all Arabs by handpicking only a few members of the Lebanese community, most of whom if not all are Shi’a, to represent the "all-American Muslim" experience. This is where the show fails miserably in my eyes. ‘All-American Muslim’ may well be ‘all-American’ but it certainly is not all Muslim.

An average non-Muslim American viewer would never have recognized these subtle problems, because TLC is only perpetuating the age old media stereotypes about the Muslim community in America. All Muslims are Arabs, immigrants (or first-generation Americans), and perhaps that Shi’a Islam is the ‘better’ or more legitimate version of Islam.

My point here is not to delegitimize the Arab, Lebanese, Muslim, Shi’a community in Dearborn, but to point out that they are only a very small part of the very large, diverse and multi-faceted American-Muslim social fabric.

‘All-American Muslim’ is also all-American Orientalist. The opening scenes in the first episode are filled with ‘mysterious-looking’ fully-veiled women, and a young Muslim girl rollerblading in her abaya and hijab. TLC describes ‘All-American Muslim’ as “a powerful series that goes inside the rarely seen world of American Muslims to uncover a unique community struggling to balance faith and nationality in a post 9/11 world.â€

If TLC’s aim was portray these families as regular Americans who happen to be Muslim, then this statement makes no sense. Their show’s description and the airing of the first episode last night testify to the fact that Muslims are still, very much portrayed as the exotic ‘others’ in American society. The reality is that ‘our’ struggles are no different then any other religious or ethnic minority group in the history of the United States. We are going through the very same struggles as have Africans, Italians, Irish, Germans, Poles, Jews, and Japanese in the past decades and even centuries. So what makes the Muslim experience here so unique?

In that very same statement, TLC is also asserting that Islam is not inherently American. But the truth is that most American-Muslims have been born in the US; their ancestors lived on this soil for generations, and they experience absolutely no struggle between their ‘faith and nationality.’ They are and have always been both Americans and Muslims. There may be a struggle between nationalities in some immigrant Muslim communities, but this again plays into the role of immigration and how American-Muslims have no deep roots in American society - in other words, American-Muslims are the 'outsiders'. This is one of the reasons why it would have been brave to include an African-American Muslim family in the cast.

This last paragraph rings true. American Muslims are having a tough go right now, but not any worse than my second generation Italian American grandmother faced. She had people tell her to her face that they wouldn't hire her because she was a dago and a wop.

Look at what German Americans faced during WW1. And Japanese Americans during WW2.

(recognize that drawing style? I'll give you a hint. It starts with Doctor and ends with Seuss)

This isn't to say that it doesn't suck to be discriminated against. But this is, unfortunately, a time honored tradition in american, pick on the "new guy" (even if they're not so new). In general, we seem to have it a lot better than the Italians, Germans, Japanese and Irish before us.

[PennySycamore]

The conversion to Islam and Islamic wedding are weirding me out. Religious beliefs generally weird me out. I really don't get this guy, who is quite clear that he would have converted to any religion in order to marry the woman he loves. To me, that's not really religious belief. He doesn't strike me as either a Christian or a Muslim, though I understand it isn't for me to agree or disagree with whatever labels he claims for himself. But he just exemplifies so much of what ticks me off about people who adhere to religion and he don't seem, to me, through what they describe about their thoughts and motivations to actually believe what they purport to believe by wearing certain religious labels.

I know what is expected of people who want to convert to Catholicism or Judaism and the expectations are fairly high -more so for Judaism than Catholicism. I think that is how it should be. I was shocked at how little was demanded of Jeff to convert to Islam. I do think he was a bit taken aback when his father-in-law mentioned the submission thing. I hope this couple will be happy.

[QAF_Rocks]

It doesn't look like too many Free Jingerites are watching this show?

You should! I think anyone interested in religion, gender roles, and women's rights will find it fascinating. I snarked a bit over on the TWoP thread, but there are a ton of apologists there defending one set of parents for forcing their nine-year-old daughters to wear the hijab. I'm restraining myself from going off because I don't want to get a warning, but geez. Most people there seem to think it's so lovely and wonderful and it's totally the child's choice, and don't forget she said it makes her feel pretty. It's not oppression at all. :roll:

I asked them if they would be okay with those parents putting a burqa on a baby, but no one's answered me yet. :twisted:

[VeraAnne]

I don't actually get TLC. All the TLC snarking I do comes off of Netflix. So in 6 months when it comes on Netflix, I'll be right there snarking with you.

As for the burqa...I have a story of what actually made me come out of the quazi fundie circles that I was in.

I was at the park with my older kids in the middle of summer in Texas. My son and daughter were both wearing a t-shirt and shorts. A Muslim family came to the park. The mother was wearing heavy robes and a hijab that covered more of her face than the standard modern hijab. The father was wearing light pants and a shirt.

Their threeish year old daughter was wearing heavy, thick pants and a think long shirt. She was also wearing a heavy robe over the pants and shirt. She also had on two head coverings, that the poor dear was constantly trying to adjust to keep from slipping off and showing her hair.

Her older brother was wearing a Nike t-shirt and shorts. It was at least 98 degrees outside that day. That particular park has a water element which my kids were playing in. The older boy played in the water, but the girl did not.

I don't think I've ever felt that much rage in my life. I'd always been the type of parent who wouldn't put my kids in tank tops, but I went to target that day and got a few cute spaghetti strap shirts for my daughter. I started wearing shorts again. Fuck that shit.

[Kitty]

I don't actually get TLC. All the TLC snarking I do comes off of Netflix. So in 6 months when it comes on Netflix, I'll be right there snarking with you.

As for the burqa...I have a story of what actually made me come out of the quazi fundie circles that I was in.

I was at the park with my older kids in the middle of summer in Texas. My son and daughter were both wearing a t-shirt and shorts. A Muslim family came to the park. The mother was wearing heavy robes and a hijab that covered more of her face than the standard modern hijab. The father was wearing light pants and a shirt.

Their threeish year old daughter was wearing heavy, thick pants and a think long shirt. She was also wearing a heavy robe over the pants and shirt. She also had on two head coverings, that the poor dear was constantly trying to adjust to keep from slipping off and showing her hair.

Her older brother was wearing a Nike t-shirt and shorts. It was at least 98 degrees outside that day. That particular park has a water element which my kids were playing in. The older boy played in the water, but the girl did not.

I don't think I've ever felt that much rage in my life. I'd always been the type of parent who wouldn't put my kids in tank tops, but I went to target that day and got a few cute spaghetti strap shirts for my daughter. I started wearing shorts again. Fuck that shit.

I'm amazed that women who do that over here, where it's very humid in the summer, don't just overheat. It must be miserable for them in the heat like that.

It's also a bullshit double standard. Women are covering up a lot of the sane parts men have- arms, necks, legs, heads. What are so sexual about all of those if men have them too and don't need to cover them up?

[Kitchen Princess]

The author of the critical article posted is undermining his/her argument when they insist on hyphenating the phrase American Muslim. The phrase African-American is the most recognizable hyphenated phrase, and the two phrases are not comparable. Africa is a continent. Islam is a religion. By hyphenating the phrase they are undermining the point of the article, which is that not all Muslims are the same.

I hope the hyphenated phrase American-[religion] doesn't catch on. How preposterous and divisive.

[VeraAnne]

hope the hyphenated phrase American-[religion] doesn't catch on. How preposterous and divisive

I actually agree that the whole hypenated thing is stupid. We are all Americans not ___-Americans. However, it's become really common. It's certainly not unique to this article or Islam in general.

[Kitchen Princess]

I am to understand that wearing heavy clothing in hot weather is similar to being a heavy coated dog in hot weather. There are layers that insulate you against the higher temperatures outside of your body, and you don't experience it like sun on your skin. There must be something to it or there wouldn't be lots of people in hot places wearing lots of clothes.

I, for one, would not be able to handle it, because I sweat like a pig even in the winter time when I exert myself. I would sweat right through every layer in no time. Some people sweat hardly at all, and I think that can be generalized to vast swaths of some ethnic groups, and I wish I was one of them. But since I do, I prefer my skin to be open to the breeze so the sweat can do its evaporative cooling magic on me.

[Kitchen Princess]

I actually agree that the whole hypenated thing is stupid. We are all Americans not ___-Americans. However, it's become really common. It's certainly not unique to this article or Islam in general.

Seriously? You've seen the phrase American-Christian before? American-Jew?

I think it's unique to this writer, but I could be wrong. It doesn't even make sense, in the same way African-American does. It's backwards!

[emmiedahl]

Creaky Steel, there are differences in material that can make or break that argument. I knew a Somali woman who stayed covered for religious reasons, but she wore light and breezy stuff and always looked very comfortable. You cannot even compare that to dark colored polyester and heavy knits.

I have seen people referred to as Jewish American. It distinguishes a person from the default, which would be white Christian American.

[QAF_Rocks]

I don't think I've ever felt that much rage in my life. I'd always been the type of parent who wouldn't put my kids in tank tops, but I went to target that day and got a few cute spaghetti strap shirts for my daughter. I started wearing shorts again. Fuck that shit.

I would have been enraged, too. All of these belief systems put the burden of "modesty" on the woman, and it's not limited to adult women. They also manage to sexualize even the youngest of girls. That poor three-year-old has to cover her entire body because of the misogyny in her parents' religious book, just like Hannie can't wear jeans because she needs to be properly "trained" not to arouse the desires of men. It's all really sick when you're talking about little girls who should not be seen as sexual objects.

It it was just adult women choosing this for themselves, I wouldn't mind. It's still sexist, and there are still familial/cultural/religious pressures to make the "right" choice, but at least they're not being forced into it.

[VeraAnne]

Creaky, yes I've seen American-Jew or American-Indian. Usually it's the other way though Jewish-American, Hindu-American ect.

As for the clothes, there is absolutely no way that this little girl was anything other than suffering. If wearing a sweat suit plus another sweatshirt on top in the middle of summer was somehow cooling, you would see them all over town. You don't.