Source: Post Bulletin
Here’s a question for you. If there were a TV sitcom about the trials and tribulations of a Muslim community “up north” would you watch it?
Let’s say it’s a good sitcom, well-acted and cleverly written with enticing, on-location camera work. It includes a group of quirky characters in a small, rural town just trying to get along in a changing world. Think “Northern Exposure” meets “The Jeffersons.”
Could such a program survive here? Or is it still too soon after 9/11 for the masses to embrace a sitcom that focuses on those who follow Islam.
Minnesota native Mary Darling believes such a program can thrive here.
Darling, who grew up in Lotus Lake near Minnetonka, is an executive producer for “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” a highly successful (in Canada) sitcom that takes place in the fictitious community of Mercy, Saskatchewan.
She sent me an e-mail last week after reading a column in which I mentioned “Little Mosque.” I used the program, which I saw a promotional spot for while on a hockey trip to Virginia, Minn., as an example of the sort of thing you can see only on Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Darling lives north of the border with her Canadian-born husband, Clark Donnelly. Together, they own Toronto-based WestWind Pictures, which produces “Little Mosque.”
The sitcom is the brainchild of Zarqa Nawaz, a Muslim Canadian who approached Darling and Donnelly with the idea for a comedy focusing on misunderstandings between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
“Clark and I were immediately attracted to the idea,” Darling said. “We knew in our heart that the idea was viable because it brings a common humanity forward.”
I watched the first three episodes of “Little Mosque” on YouTube over the weekend, and I found it to be smart, funny and addicting.
The show explodes some of the stereotypes about Muslims. For example, the Imam for the Mosque in Mercy is a clean-shaven, ex-lawyer from Toronto in his late 20s or early 30s. Another main character is a feminist Muslim doctor. (In Episode 2 of Season One, she protests the installation of a barrier — made of discarded hockey boards — to separate the men from the women during worship in the mosque.)
The funniest lines are reserved for Baber, the most conservative Muslim in Mercy, who distrusts and misunderstands non-Muslims. In Episode Three, when Baber’s teenage daughter comes out of her bedroom wearing a top that exposes her belly-button, he tells her to change into something that doesn’t make her look like a Protestant.
“Don’t you mean prostitute?” the girls asks. “No, I mean Protestant,” Baber responds.
Darling says her production company has received a lot of interest from U.S. networks intrigued about the possibility of broadcasting “Little Mosque” the states.
I hope it does fly here. I’ve always found Canadians (my father-in-law is a native of Canada and my wife has a slew of relatives there) to be a little ahead of us when it comes to seeing comedy in potentially divisive issues such as race, gender and religion.
But I hope Darling is correct when she says the United States is ready for a program like “Little Mosque on the Prairie.”
“It focuses on our oneness where most stories these days focus on differences,” she says. “We actually believe that there is unity in our diversity.”
I do, too.
