Canadian Muslims urged to watch 'Little Mosque on the Prairie'

Canadian Muslims urged to watch 'Little Mosque on the Prairie'

Gregory Bonnell, Canadian Press

Published: Tuesday, January 09, 2007

TORONTO (CP) - Canadian Muslim leaders were urging their congregations to tune in to Tuesday night's debut of CBC's internationally hyped sitcom "Little Mosque on the Prairie."

"There are a lot of imams going around (suggesting) people watch (it)," said Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress and an imam himself. "I believe it's about time for Muslims to laugh at themselves - we are a latecomer into comedy."

"Little Mosque," set in the fictional town of Mercy, has received enormous media attention from news outlets including CNN, BBC Radio, The Associated Press and the New York Times. Much of the coverage has focused on the fact that the show is a comedy about Muslims set in a post 9-11 world.

Despite the buzz, however, reviews of the pilot episode, in which the community's Muslims take delight in getting their own mosque while the rednecks get nervous, have been a mixed bag.

"(It's) no masterpiece of comedy or social observation," wrote John Doyle of the Globe and Mail. "It's hokey as hell. But it's terrifically good-natured, has a few terrific jokes and its mere existence is a grand-slam assertion that Canadian TV is different and that the best of Canadian TV amounts to a rejection of the hegemony of U.S. network TV."

Brad Oswald of the Winnipeg Free Press wrote that "what Little Mosque delivers with its pilot episode is an average, adequately likable situation comedy in which unconventional sitcom characters engage in completely conventional sitcom behaviour. Nothing less, but certainly nothing more."

Vinay Menon, television critic at the Toronto Star, wrote that many of the show's jokes were lame, while the Toronto Sun's Bill Brioux called it "exceptionally unfunny."

And at least one prominent Muslim raised concerns about portraying Muslims as one-dimensional. Tarek Fatah, founder of the Toronto-based Muslim Canadian Congress, said he had "reservations about the depiction of Muslims as essentially a people whose lives revolve around a mosque."

"This is patently untrue," he said, adding that he fears the show will only serve to "pigeonhole Muslims as not more than a group that prays and preaches."

For his part, Elmasry hopes the show - the brainchild of Zarqa Nawaz, herself a Muslim - will have a "spillover effect south of the border" and inspire similar TV fare.

"I think they should learn from Canadians, that this is the best remedy to a high level of anxiety among American Muslims," said Elmasry.