Re: Little Mosque on the Prairie
Peace All
I've watched a few scenes of this drama and there are problems I fear about and they are listed below:
1) Is it really funny that Muslims behave ignorantly? This drama is set out to satirically present the failure of Muslims to a wide audience, not only does this undermine Muslims in general it gives canon fodder to the non-Muslims to claim that Islam has done nothing to end ignorance.
2) In the writers own words she as a Muslim says, that there is no character in the show that is defect free. So what message is being given here? Is this not another classic tale of telling people what Muslims are not? Rather we should be telling them who we are or what we are supposed to be?
3) There is no clear message of Islam being portrayed in the drama, rather it seems definitely an attempt to make Muslims more acceptable to Western societies, but I fear that it is being done at Islam's cost.
4) In Islam we are told to hide our faults, from one another and I believe to a greater extent it is intended to be meant to a wider audience also.
5) In Islam there are hadith which speak about those comedians who make people laugh through lies are cursed. Now these are not lies in the general sense, but they are intended to be magnified truths that we should all shy away from.
6) Satire can confuse the simple mind and it does not make it obvious when one is supposed to assume the opposite case to be true. This drama is laced with so much inuendo perhaps many non-Muslims will not click to it, however, Muslims will see it and perhaps will laugh, but for a moment some Muslims will say to themselves, "I do that" ... "Wasn't I supposed to?" ... "What should have I done instead?" and we end up living Islam through the eyes of the writer. Which may or may not be correct. The point being because one can make fun out of something it does not make that practice incorrect. The criteria of truth and falsehood, right and wrong comes from documentary evidence from Qur'an and Sunnah.
7) It leads on to another point in that it seems to be promoting a progressive Islam one that can change and adopt it's value structure. It seems to focus on rationalism and shows all Muslims as disjointed and Ummahless. This is probably more satire, but the effect it should have is not always obvious.
8) This type of practice is not one of encouragement it is a light-hearted dark humour one that I cannot see any of the companions undertaking nor the prophet Muhammad (SAW) himself.
I wonder what it makes Muslims feel like when they think of our dear Muhammad (SAW) who used to cry days in days out for us to enter Jannah and we sit back and laugh at our own misfortunes ????? !!!!!!!