All-American Muslim: A Preview

November 8, 2011 By Azra

On Sunday, November 13th, TLC is set to premier a new 8-episode series: All-American Muslim in the United States. As this comes from the same channel that brings American viewers Sister Wives and the Kate+8 debacle, I’ll admit my immediate thoughts surrounding the show are wary, to say the least, when it comes to its ability to portray “what is it like to be Muslim in America.”

As I watched clips of video provided by TLC, I realized that the show’s entire cast hails from Dearborn, Michigan and an Arab-American Muslim background. I had a hard time trying to reconcile the image of an “All-American” Muslim as ones who have Arab backgrounds. The idea that “Dearborn is another world” from the show’s promotional video clip remained with me the entire time. (You can read some of the statistics on the diversity of backgrounds among first-generation Muslim Americans in the Pew Research Center’s 2011 report.)

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Kuwait’s Ban on “High School Girls” a Mistake

September 5, 2011 By samya

Ramadan is over, and this is normally the time for loads of critical commentaries on soap operas featured on Arab television during the holy month. Several Ramadan dramas like “Al Hassan Wal Hussein” (on the roots of Sunni-Shi’ite tensions) and “In the Presence of the Absence” (on the late renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish) have generated heated debates across the region.

Yet, here in the Gulf Region, the most controversial Ramadan television series has been “High-School Girls,” (Banat al-Thanawiya) which was banned on Kuwaiti Al Wattan network because it claimed to tackle highly sensitive issues pertaining to teenage behavior. Dubai television has been the only network to boldly air the serial, scoring the highest viewership mark in Ramadan. The show addressed what we view as women-related cultural and social taboos. Its airing across the region was quite important for creating genuine awareness about a long-forgotten age group: female teenagers.

“High School Girls” tells the story of five teenage girls attending the same high school in Kuwait. Like other young people of their age, those girls made jokes in class, dreamed of love, disagreed with their parents in relation to their private lives, and so on. Samar, Reem, Manal, Muneera, and Shahed come from different backgrounds, guiding each other in some situations while moving on a collision course in others.

The Kuwaiti soap opera throws light on the five girls’ lives in different contexts, ranging from family to school to other settings in a rather comical fashion that embodied a good deal of subtle criticism. The director of the soap opera, Saed Huwari, called on five emerging actresses to play high school student roles.

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Jamaat-i-Islami in Pakistan and the rape/adultery fallacy

July 13, 2011 By Guest Contributor

This post was written by Aziz Poonawalla and originally appeared at City of Brass.

I found this argument by Munawar Hassan of the political party Jamaat-i-Islami to be unbelievably disgusting and fundamentally blasphemous in the way he invokes the Qur’an to justify blatant misogyny:

Here is the most disturbing part of Hassan’s comments:

Anchor: The fundamental purpose of the women protection act was (is) to provide women with the right to file cases on the basis of circumstantial and forensic evidence, making convictions of rape easier. Where is the obscenity in that?

Munawar Hasan: This bill has been part of law for years, how has that affected the rights of women in Pakistan? What is the one issue that can be pointed out as a success of this law?

Anchor: One blaringly obvious problem with the Hudood law was the need to present four witnesses in order to convict a rapist, failure to do so resulted in the arrest of the woman on charges of confession to adultery, that was the main issue.

Munawar Hasan: What is the problem in that?

Anchor: The problem is this sir, that according to the 2003 national commission status of women report 80 per cent women were forced to languish in jails because of inability to produce witnesses of their rape.

Munawar Hasan: The objective of Islam is to discourage such acts, no one can be shameless enough to commit such an act in the presence of four people. Making it impossible to prove such acts, therefore the whole idea is to discourage bringing such acts into public light. Discouraging it to the extent that the act is never quoted. If such a crime occurs and since there are no witnesses than both men and women are suppose to keep it under wraps and not discuss it in public.

Anchor: Sir, are you suggesting that a woman should stay silent after she is raped? That she should not report the crime?

Munawar Hasan: I am saying she should keep quite if she has no witnesses. If she has witnesses than she should present them.

Anchor: What kind of an argument is that? A woman is raped and she has to look for witnesses to prove the crime?

Munawar Hasan: Argue with the Quran and not me.

Anchor: I am not questioning the Quran, I am questioning your argument.

This is unbelievable. Why do extremist Islamists always make the poorest, most ignorant religious arguments?

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