Mosque humour

Posted by admin on Sep 30, 2008 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Those who weren’t enchanted with Lara Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie TV series (starring Michael Landon) of the late 70s and early 80s probably don’t recollect this unfortunate title for the Canadian sitcom that CBC will release for its third season in October. It’s called Little Mosque on the Prairie.

The series focuses on the Muslim community in the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan (population 14,000). The primary institutions of the community are the local mosque, presided over by Imam Amaar Rashid and located in the rented parish hall of the town’s Anglican church, and Fatima’s Café, a downtown diner run by Fatima Dinssa. The community patriarchs are Yasir Hamoudi, a construction contractor who originally fronted the money to establish the mosque under the pretense that he was renting office space for his business, and Baber Siddiqui, a college economics professor who served as the mosque’s temporary imam until Amaar was hired.

The inspiration for the show’s storylines comes from the real-life experiences of Zarqa Nawaz, the creator, consulting producer and writer. She was born in Liverpool, raised in Toronto, and moved to Regina ten years ago with her husband and children.

Although Nawaz claims, “Ultimately the show is a comedy and its purpose is to entertain,” she clearly tackles some major social issues that have a wide range of religious and political implications. Nawaz asserts that the series can extinguish these inter-religious tensions in a “non-confrontational, non-political way.” Supporters say that Canadians tend to objectify Muslims, and the broadcast helps to humanize them while challenging the typical North American stereotypes of Muslims. While it is certainly true that humour can be a great tool to critique and question stereotypes in our society and effect social change, one wonders what effect this particular brand of humour will have on Canadians.

The question is, “Will this sitcom really break down the walls of discrimination between Muslims and North Americans or Muslims and Christians? Is laughter really “the best medicine” for the fear and hatred that exists between nations and between religions? Or is the comic relief functioning to minimize monstrous relational differences in beliefs and culture that desperately need attention in our nation?

There is no question that Canadians hold ridiculous, CNN-saturated, fear-laden stereotypes of Muslims that have been manufactured to give the consent of public opinion to numerous political misdeeds. Additionally, having spent some time in the Middle East, I am confident that the same is true of Muslims toward North Americans. Furthermore, there is no question that these stereotypes are a detriment to commonplace relationship between individuals of either identity. To challenge these stereotypes with humour may do much to make introductions between the two groups less awkward. However, in this case, I think that this brand of Canadian humour has far worse effects. The humour, characteristic of Canadian humour, tends to oversimplify the complexity of the relational problems and justify the apathy of North Americans in an emerging crisis, nationally and internationally.