A Decade for Documentaries

New Muslim Cool (2009)

A documentary which premiered in the P.O.V. series on PBS, New Muslim Cool (directed by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor) follows Hamza Perez, a Puerto-Rican American Muslim convert who was raised Catholic and used to deal drugs.  This serves as a perfect illustration of Diana Eck's work on religious plurality in contemporary America entitled A New Religious America:  How a "Christian County" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation.  The most interesting aspect of New Muslim Cool is not just Hamza's conversion to Islam, but his move from a more militant, exclusivist approach to his faith to a more inclusive and interfaith understanding of his religious calling.

This article originally appeared on the blog Pop Theology and is reprinted with permission.

J. Ryan Parker is the creator and editor of and main contributor to Pop Theology (www.poptheology.com). A fourth-year PhD student in Religion and the Arts (with a focus on film) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, his research interests include contemporary religious cinema after The Passion of the Christ, the history of religious cinema, and the ways in which films affect, and are affected by, religious consciousness. He has also served as a media consultant on documentary film projects.  He holds a BA in English from Mississippi College and an MDiv from Wake Forest University Divinity School.

Richard Lindsay is an unlikely savant from the wilds of Kentucky (but the northern part near Cincinnati). He is a graduate of the University of Louisville and Yale Divinity School. He is currently a fourth-year PhD student in Religion and the Arts at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, pursuing interests in religion, popular culture, film, and cultural theology.