Hopefully It Will Be A Success....

.....we need to be able to laugh at ourselves without being labelled by the politically correct zealots.

Allah in the family
Contributed by: jensonj
Allah in the family
By Etan Vlessing

Jan 2, 2007

TORONTO -- "Little Mosque on the Prairie," the latest sitcom from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., sees Canadian Muslims bumping up against white, Christian locals in rural Saskatchewan.

Zarqa Nawaz, creator and writer of the groundbreaking comedy that bows Jan. 9, insists she's an equal-opportunity satirist taking dead-aim at both Muslim and Canadian stereotypes in a post-Sept. 11 world.

"I expect both groups will be wondering if the other finds the show funny," says Nawaz, of Regina, Saskatchewan-based FUNdamentalist Films.

There's predictable jokes about Muslim beliefs clashing with Canadian traditions. In one scene, a father wearing a kufi, or a knitted cap worn by devout Muslims, protests that his Canadian-born daughter wearing a revealing tank top looks "like a Protestant."

"Don't you mean prostitute?" the daughter asks.

"No, I meant a Protestant," the father replies.

In another scene, a young man of Middle Eastern origins with a Canadian accent is heard in an airport check-in line telling his mother via cell phone that his father shouldn't think his choosing to stop being a Toronto lawyer to become an Imam in Saskatchewan amounts to career "suicide."

"This is Allah's plan for me," the young man says in passing, before an arresting cop appears suddenly and tells the surprised lawyer that he won't be making that appointment in Paradise.

Nawaz, a British-born Muslim and mother of four who settled on the Prairies with her family a decade ago, downplays the idea that the homegrown comedy may spark widespread controversy.

She insists her comedy springs from a relatively uneventful life in multicultural North America, unlike Europe, for example, where relations between Muslims and the wider Christian community are often a powder keg.

"North America should be the first place where a comedy like this would come about, where Muslims can be comfortable in their own skin and questions of Canadian identity can produce a sitcom," she says.

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