It’s been a decade since the September 11 attacks and many Americans still don’t know quite what to make of their 2.75 million Muslim compatriots. Could a reality TV series help?
‘All-American Muslim’, which premieres today (Sunday) on the TLC cable channel, lifts the veil on five Arab American families in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan and finds their lives are, in many ways, not so un-American at all.
There’s the Amen family, whose outspoken tattooed daughter Shadia is engaged to an Irish American from Chicago who accepts her family’s request to convert to Islam on the eve of their wedding – and upsets his Catholic mother.
Newlywed twenty-somethings Nader and Nawal Aoude embrace teamwork like a new-age couple as they prepare for the birth of their first child, even as they adhere to a devout Islamic lifestyle.
Nina Bazzy is a glamorous blond party planner on a collision course with both her traditional-minded parents and the wider community over her bold plan to open her own trendy nightclub.
Mike Jaafar upholds the law as Dearborn’s deputy chief sheriff, while his wife Angela tries to keep their four high-strung children in line in one of those big suburban houses that signifies the American dream.
And the patriarch of the Zaban family, Fouad “Haj Walker” Zaban, is as passionate about his religious obligations as he is about leading the high school football team he coaches to the Michigan state championship.
“It seemed like a really, really good opportunity to dispel some of these misconceptions that we’ve been dealing with all our lives,” Shadia Amen said on Thursday, explaining why she agreed to do the show. “We’re not here to represent Islam. We’re just five American families who happen to be Muslim.”
Will ‘All-American Muslim’ understand American Muslims?
