![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/littlemosque\/images\/buddy_icons_sarah.jpg\"){kind=icon}
As a white Muslim woman who doesn\u2019t wear hijab, I\u2019ve always paid particular attention to the character of Sarah, played by Sheila McCarthy. In fact, for a really long time, she was the only representation (real or fictional) that I had ever encountered of a Muslim woman who shared my ethnic background and didn\u2019t wear a headscarf. It\u2019s hard to explain why this was so significant, but in our society where Muslims are so often illustrated as necessarily the \u201cother,\u201d it feels sometimes like we\u2019re told that you\u2019re either Muslim or you\u2019re white, and those images can get confusing for someone who fits completely into both categories. Since I don\u2019t wear a scarf, and have an English-sounding name, I\u2019m always seen as white (and therefore generally assumed not to be Muslim, which can lead to weird situations.) I was excited to see that Little Mosque<\/em> had a character who was similarly located in terms of identity.<\/p>\n Although there are a lot of problems (which I will get into in a second), I do have to say that I really appreciate that Sarah\u2019s character is there. She is clear about the fact that she is Muslim, and makes a point of mentioning her Muslim identity in several of the shows, even when she is not following traditional Islamic practices. This may allow the audience to understand the definition of a Muslim in ways that they may not have previously considered: she doesn\u2019t \u201clook\u201d like (their impression of) a Muslim, she doesn\u2019t \u201cact\u201d like a Muslim, so what is it that makes her a Muslim? Sarah\u2019s mere presence on the show has the potential to demonstrate that \u201cMuslim\u201d is, for many people, first and foremost a personal spiritual affiliation, and not an identity that has to be read from the outside. Given that the category of \u201cMuslim\u201d seems to be increasingly racialised as always a foreign identity in the media, political discourses, and elsewhere, alternate images are hugely important.<\/p>\n There is a (not entirely unfounded) stereotype among Muslims that those who have newly embraced Islam tend to immediately take on many of the most conservative understandings of Islamic practice, and distance themselves in many ways (changing their name, adopting new clothing, and so on) from the cultures in which they were raised. I appreciate that Sarah\u2019s character diverges from this image. The construction of her character affirms that people who become Muslim don\u2019t automatically have to become model followers of the faith, and that it is possible to be Muslim without this being the main defining feature of someone\u2019s life. Sarah manages to become Muslim without the rest of her life changing in massive ways, which may convey that Islam is not as incompatible with Western society as some people assume it to be. Sarah\u2019s presence on the show is an important tool of disrupting notions of who gets identified as \u201cMuslim\u201d and of what that identification actually means.<\/p>\n On the other hand, I worry that certain aspects of Sarah\u2019s character may actually bolster some negative and even harmful images of the relationship between Muslims and white non-Muslims in Canada. Sarah rarely says anything positive about Islam; she self-identifies as a \u201cbad Muslim\u201d (which is a whole other discussion in itself), complains about the Islamic lunar calendar (proposing they change the month of fasting to December rather than Ramadan, because days are always short and shopping is good), whines about missing Christmas, and scoffs at various other Islamic traditions. Although Sarah\u2019s identity as a Muslim might challenge viewers\u2019 impressions of who Muslims are, her dismissal of so many of Islam\u2019s beliefs and practices may confirm for the non-Muslim audiences of the show that such concepts are still foreign, archaic, or just plain weird. The value of having a Muslim character who shares the ethno-cultural background of mainstream Canadian viewers is negated to some degree by the fact that this character allows such viewers to remain relatively comfortable in their suspicion of Islam.<\/p>\n Sarah also demonstrates that she knows very little about Islam, even the basics. She defines herself repeatedly as a \u201cbad Muslim,\u201d and lacks elementary knowledge on practices such as the ritual prayer, despite presumably having been Muslim for at least a couple decades. In the episode entitled \u201cThe Convert,\u201d Sarah makes a bet with her daughter that she will be able to pray five times a day for an entire month. It only takes a short while for this effort to make her exhausted and disoriented, with no time for her work. On a personal level, I am annoyed that the one popular culture representation of a Muslim who looks like me is so flaky; on a broader level, I am concerned about what message this sends about Islam\u2019s requirements. Praying five times a day is one of the most basic pillars of Islam, and is followed by millions of people around the world, most of whom still manage to function just fine in the other aspects of their lives. While Sarah\u2019s inability to cope with this practice can certainly be taken as simply indicative of personal flaws in her own character, I do worry that it could also convey a message that following Islam is an unrealistic burden that just doesn\u2019t fit within a Western lifestyle. (At no point does the show demonstrate to us that other characters likely do pray five times daily, and unlike Sarah, manage to go normally about their lives.) I also worry that the fact that this \u201cbad Muslim\u201d doesn\u2019t wear hijab implies that all the rest of us non-hijab-wearing Muslim women also don\u2019t pray regularly (or know how to do so), or don\u2019t know much about the religion, when of course there is a wide range of knowledge and practice both among those who don\u2019t wear hijab and among those who do.<\/p>\n