Category: projects

on saturday, my husband and i attended “conversations with our muslim neighbors,” an event hosted by the community of the savior. it was the brainchild of my friend peter knapp, whom i’ve known since he invited me to screen The Muslims I Know at roberts wesleyan college many years ago. the idea was to get to know our neighbors by sharing food and being involved in direct, face to face, conversations. it went exceedingly well. hope we can continue this dialogue at more venues, over the years. this is how peter described it:

“Today our church community hosted a “Conversations with our Muslim Neighbors” luncheon. After several months of planning, 49 of us gathered to share a meal and talk about what it means to be a Muslim in Rochester today. Good discussion, good food, new information, and new friends resulted. It was time well spent.”

had this conversation at a meeting where we were supposed to band together and organize workshops that educate our respective congregations about racism. i ended up at a table with people whose congregations were either missing from the meeting or non-existent. we all introduced ourselves and our religious/activist affiliations.

one lovely gentleman said that he belonged to a sufi order but followed up immediately with the qualifying statement that he was not a muslim. he said to me, “u are a muslim, but we are non-muslims.” i smiled and said, “sufism is very much rooted in islam.” he said we could argue all night about that but he had been taught by an indian man and what he believed in had nothing to do with islam.

of course, people are free to identify as they like but this strong renunciation of islam accompanied by explanations of how to practice zikr (a devotional act in islam in which short phrases or prayers are repeatedly recited, to remember god or allah) was a bit dissonant.

also, mentioning an indian guru in order to distance oneself from islam is a tad misguided, on account of the long history of sufism in south asia and its evolution into a particular strain of islam which is still practiced in that region. it ties in with the american wish to popularize rumi by de-muslimizing him and his work. when people cringe at the very idea that sufism is the mystical dimension of islam, then perhaps it is time to explore the overlap between racism and islamophobia.

excellent reading of “disgraced” directed by shishir kurup, with rajesh bose as the protagonist.

after the reading we discussed the impact of the play, what rang true and what didn’t. i made the point that even though ayad akhtar adds some complexity and nuance to the situations and characters he creates, he continues to remain within certain parameters of what constitutes the accepted *outside* view of the american muslim experience. he’s said that as a stereotyped minority, we cannot continue to define ourselves in opposition to anti-muslim propaganda. i couldn’t agree more. i long to break out of that box, that suffocating framework. however, *embracing* anti-muslim propaganda, albeit with liberal doses of psycho-analysis and some social commentary, is hardly the best way to be free, to define ourselves outside of the racist, colonial frame of reference where we are expected to exist.

once akhtar’s play is seen as simply a story rather than *the* story, we will move beyond a dead end. in the meantime, we have to acknowledge that largely white, affluent, and educated audiences interpreting the play as being “universal” are NOT the ones being represented on stage. we have to recognize that privilege. and we have to ask ourselves if it’s ok to drown out the pain felt by many who are part of a vulnerable minority (in an age of profiling, surveillance, and indefinite detention) with standing ovations and accusations of being too literal or too reductive or too unsophisticated to get it. it’s a sad reinforcement of existing power dynamics.

in an ideal, richly diverse, racially and culturally equitable world, where there are 1000s of plays to turn to for contrasting representations of muslim men, we will not need to tease out all these problematic issues. right now, i’m just looking for something more than the muslim terrorist/wife beater/religious fanatic (that pretty much describes akhtar’s entire body of work).

many agreed with me and told me so at the end of the play (including geva theatre artistic director mark cuddy). the best validation i got was from rajesh bose (who played the main character). he told me it was painful for him to tell the childhood antisemitism story in every performance because as a south asian man, it didn’t resonate with him. he wish he could skip it. i agree. skip the odd south asian rabidly antisemitic mother who spits at her son for liking a jewish girl (what???), the 9/11-celebrating-muslim obscenity, and the wife-beating, and the play becomes more powerful and interesting. but would it continue to be the most produced play in america? probably not…

thx to my pals Isabelle and Elaine for attending the event. love u guys!

Monday evening, May 2nd, there was a screening of The Muslims I Know at the Irondequoit Public Library. The screening was organized by Judith Bello, facilitated by George Payne, and sponsored by Gandhi Earth Keepers International, Metro Justice Peace Action and Education, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Rochester Chapter. Fifteen years after 9/11, and 8 years after the release of my film, I’ve become wary of doing post-screening Q&As. It’s mentally exhausting to answer the same basic questions about Islam and Muslims over and over again and it’s emotionally depleting to sense any kind of resistance to the film’s efforts to humanize people who are regularly stereotyped and discriminated against. But I was in for a surprise. All the questions that came my way were well-thought out and the answers I offered were used to further the discussion in deep and meaningful ways. We talked about American Empire and the War on Terror, about consumerism and capitalist greed and whether other ways of being were imminent, we talked about nationalism and industrialization, and about templates for co-existence. One young woman was particularly sharp and inquisitive. As we were trying to illustrate the long history of Muslims in America, she pointed out Thomas Jefferson’s Quran and how Islamic principles and ideas are probably inseparable from the founding of what we understand to be the American state. All in all, it was a wonderful evening that left me hopeful and energized. Thank you to the organizers and to all who attended on a Monday evening. [Photograph by George Payne]