'All-American (Arab-Lebanese-Shiite) Muslim'

"One nation, under suspicion" -
interesting caption (image source)

If you’re an American Muslim, chances are you’ve probably hared and/or read about the new buzzing ‘reality’ show on TLC called ‘All-American Muslim.’ In case you haven’t, here is a short preview.

There are probably too many reviews, critiques and praiseworthy articles plastered on the internet about this show already, either condemning or celebrating the airing of the first episode last night. Certain liberal non-Muslim media outlets have already branded the series a success, while the actual American Muslim community has provided their own critical perspective to the discourse.

As an American Muslim woman myself of European descent, I will use this insignificantly small platform to express my concerns and hopes for the show regularly, discussing the good’s and bad’s as we go along, hoping that even my voice will be heard, understood, and accepted.

My political-science professor always used to make a joke in class about the effects of television and media on our society, quoting, out of all people - or should I say ‘cats’, Garfield when he said “if you saw it on T.V., then it must be true.” Sadly, I think this is the prevailing mentality among people in the World, including America. People’s opinions, world views and general sentiments toward the ‘other’ are easily shaped and confronted through the mass media. Television is a powerful political tool, and almost every government has used it effectively to its own advantage; manufacturing threats, spreading hate propaganda, or retaining an undying support for one group or another. Television, in other words, is used to mobilize mass opinion about an issue or a group of people. And it is doing no less with ‘All-American Muslim’.

As many American Muslims have rightfully pointed out in their own critiques, ‘All-American Muslim’ is not the correct title for this cast, setting or show. It should have been called ‘All Arab Lebanese American Shiite Muslim.’ Interestingly, the producers chose to portray the majority of American Muslims through its ethnic, religious and immigrant minority. The show is set in Dearborn, Michigan; a city which best represents this minority American Muslim demographic.

They even chose to homogenize all Arabs by handpicking only a few members of the Lebanese community, most of whom if not all are Shi’a, to represent the "all-American Muslim" experience. This is where the show fails miserably in my eyes. ‘All-American Muslim’ may well be ‘all-American’ but it certainly is not all Muslim.

An average non-Muslim American viewer would never have recognized these subtle problems, because TLC is only perpetuating the age old media stereotypes about the Muslim community in America. All Muslims are Arabs, immigrants (or first-generation Americans), and perhaps that Shi’a Islam is the ‘better’ or more legitimate version of Islam.

My point here is not to delegitimize the Arab, Lebanese, Muslim, Shi’a community in Dearborn, but to point out that they are only a very small part of the very large, diverse and multi-faceted American Muslim social fabric.

‘All-American Muslim’ is also all-American Orientalist. The opening scenes in the first episode are filled with ‘mysterious-looking’ fully-veiled women, and a young Muslim girl rollerblading in her abaya and hijab. TLC describes ‘All-American Muslim’ as “a powerful series that goes inside the rarely seen world of American Muslims to uncover a unique community struggling to balance faith and nationality in a post 9/11 world.”

If TLC’s aim was to portray these families as regular Americans who happen to be Muslim, then this statement makes no sense. Their show’s description and the airing of the first episode last night testify to the fact that Muslims are still, very much portrayed as the exotic ‘others’ in American society. The reality is that ‘our’ struggles are no different then any other religious or ethnic minority group in the history of the United States. We are going through the very same struggles as have Africans, Italians, Irish, Germans, Poles, Jews, and Japanese in the past decades and even centuries. So what makes the Muslim experience here so unique?

In that very same statement, TLC is also asserting that Islam is not inherently American. But the truth is that most American Muslims have been born in the US; their ancestors lived on this soil for generations, and they experience absolutely no struggle between their ‘faith and nationality.’ They are and have always been both Americans and Muslims. There may be a struggle between nationalities in some immigrant Muslim communities, but this again plays into the role of immigration and how American Muslims have no deep roots in American society - in other words, American Muslims are the 'outsiders'. This is one of the reasons why it would have been brave to include an African-American Muslim family in the cast.

There is one thing ‘All-American Muslim’ did accomplish, even in it’s first episode, however. TLC did manage to show its viewers a more complex and diverse representation of Muslim faith, and how each individual chose to practice or not-practice his or her religion. Yet even with this range of belief and non-belief, Islam itself was rendered monolithic.

I realize these are only introductory snap shots of a long series at hand, but I still remain wary of its future implications. I see the potential benefits of having a show like this on air, but I am also aware of its pitfalls and disastrous effects on the broader American Muslim community. We have to look through and past the cultural expressions of a Lebanese Shi’a Islam, and some social-class issues (not every American Muslim family can afford to live in a huge 4000 sq.ft. home), if we want to understand the real, reality of Muslims in America.

Did any of you watch the first episode of ‘All American Muslim’? What were your reactions?