Cable channel for Muslims: “Bridges” creates a safe space for Muslims

And the only one, for now

Last year Omar Amanat, a young American Muslim entrepreneur, had achieved a level of success rarely seen among Americans under 30. Having founded the online trading service Tradescape at the age of 24, he survived the dot-com fiasco to end up selling the company to E*Trade last year for a cool $280 million, making him E*Trade’s largest individual shareholder. He could have plowed his time and money into his “next big thing”, but Amanat had other plans. As a New Yorker with offices in the World Trade Center, Amanat saw firsthand the devastation of September 11th. But in the wake of 9/11 he was also tired of seeing constant headlines about Muslims that painted pictures that did not reflect the American Muslim community he knew so well, so Amanat and fellow entrepreneur Muzzammil Hassan dreamed up Bridges TV. Set to launch in the summer of 2004, Bridges is a cable and sattelite channel that aims to do for American Muslims what Al-Jazeera did for the Arab world – shake up the media landscape and provide a resonant community voice. Backed by a Cornell University study that shows the American Muslim community to be more educated, fast growing, and in a higher income bracket than the average American (read: high advertising revenue), the duo have sought major investment and recruited media and cable professionals (both Muslim and non) to make sure Bridges is professionally run. And as targeted channels such as Telemundo and BET have been successful, Amanat thinks there’s a good shot for Bridges. “I realised that the only way to undo misconceptions was to create our own media forum from which our stories and culture would be shared with the world,” says Amanat. “Other cultural groups have gained acceptance and increased understanding through the media. Why can’t Muslims do the same?” Early indications are that they are on the right track. “We’re already getting over 100 people [subscribing] every day on our website and we don’t even have a product yet,” said co-founder Hassan.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.