race&ethnicity 2-3 pages paper

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Muslim Diasporic Cinema of North America

Resisting Stereotypes Through Personal Narratives

Irum Shiekh

University of California, Riverside

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Summary

In the early twenty-first century, a growing number of Muslim storytellers have been

writing, directing, and producing feature films and television series about their respective

communities in North America. Falling under the umbrella of Muslim Diasporic Cinema, these

stories settle somewhere between the longing to flee from the essentialized binary identities of

immigrant/native, religious/secular, etc., and the desire to claim the performance of a

continuously shifting and politically charged Islamic identity. The crux of the Muslim Diasporic

Cinema is this dialectical yearning to unapologetically claim a Muslim identity without defining

its aspects.

The bulk of this work depicts the everyday lives of multigenerational Black Muslims and

their conscious and unconscious relationships to the transatlantic slave trade. Additionally, these

narratives revolve around the experiences and identities of immigrants, refugees, and exiles, and

their children growing up in the West. Most of these stories feature themes of intergenerational

conflicts, coming of age, and hybridity. Shattered memories and imaginings of a distant home,

along with desires, conflicts, dreams, and quests, comprise many of these stories. Most of this

fictionalized work is inspired by personal experiences and tells gripping, political, humorous,

and entertaining stories. They revolve around the memories of real or imagined forced

displacement and its ongoing conflicts with the concepts of home and a desired sense of

belonging. Politically subtle yet savvy, these stories normalize the everyday lives of

Muslims. By doing so, they create an oppositional space and stand up to the tropes of the

Hollywood industry that have dominated the silver screen for over a century. Instead of

providing angelic characters that can do no wrong, these storytellers create complex and rounded

characters full of contradictions. These artistic expressions reveal a world of possibilities,

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realized when marginalized communities pick up pens and cameras to shape their own

narratives. The success of these visual stories is reshaping the contours of the Hollywood

industry and inspiring emerging artists to claim a space within the increasingly diverse tapestry

of North America.

Keywords

Muslim diasporic Cinema, resistance, personal narratives, storytelling, diasporic queerness,

Black Muslims in film.

Introduction

In One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a wise, witty, and brave woman named

Scheherazade marries King Shahryar to save her father and other young women in her kingdom.1

Understanding that she may be killed in the morning, she develops an ingenious plan of survival.

Every night she harnesses her imagination to tell the king a captivating story but stops just short

of finishing it in the early hours of dawn. Each morning. the king decides to spare her life so that

he can hear the end the following night. Scheherezade understands that her life depends on the

continuity of the unfinished story, and she spins each story's end into a new tale the next night. In

the end, she survives, marries the king, and saves all the young women of her kingdom. One

remembers Scheherazade as a feminist, a loving daughter and wife, a visionary, and much more.

However, the superb craft of her storytelling kept the king wanting more. Without arms,

ammunition, and soldiers, she used the power of her imagination, and the skill of storytelling to

survive, resist, and save countless young women.

1 Antonie Galland, The Arabian Nights ̓Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One

Stories (London: Cowie, Jolland, 1838).

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Like Scheherezade, Muslim storytellers of the twenty-first century in the diaspora are in a

similar yet different space. As creative artists living in an Islamophobic world, they constantly

struggle with how to pick up a pen and camera to dissipate the thick clouds of hatred and

suspicion around them. How can they stay true to themselves and yet use film to resist a century

of negative stereotypes through artistic expressions? In these times of crisis, for these

storytellers, the creation of narratives are artistic expressions and acts of survival.

Jack Shaheen, a prominent film scholar, wrote, "Ever since the camera began to crank,

the unkempt Arab [Muslim] has appeared as an uncivilized character, the cultural Other,

someone who appears and acts differently than the white Western protagonist, someone of a

different race, class, gender or national origin."2 After World War II, the "unkempt"

Arab/Muslim evolved into a brute as the United States geopolitical interests dug deeper into

using culture and media to advance its imperial interests in the Middle East.3 Articulated through

tropes of adventure, exploration, and rescue, these Hollywood images ultimately helped provide

legitimacy and justification to military expansion and domination.4 The tragic attacks of

September 11 and the elections of 2016 poured additional fuel into the simmering Islamophobic

climate that has been in the making since the 1970s.5 The Hollywood industry produced other

2 Jack Shaheen, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture (Washington,

Walsh School of Foreign Services, 2004),

http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~layachia/MENA/Documents/Arab%20and%20Muslim%20Stereotypi

ng%20in%20American%20Popular%20Culture.htm. 3 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East

since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 4 McAlister, Epic Encounters. 5Khaled Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.

(California, University of California Press, 2019); Carl Ernst, Islamophobia in America: The

Anatomy of Intolerance. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Zafar Iqbal, Islamophobia:

History, Context and Deconstruction. (New Delhi, India; Thousand Oaks, California, Sage

Publications, 2020).

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blockbuster thrillers that glorified violence at American soldiers' hands filled with adrenaline

targeting Muslim bodies at home and abroad.6

The stereotypical depictions of Muslims, however, did not remain unexamined. Over the

last fifty-some years, brilliant intellectuals, committed activists, and superb artists have critically

analyzed Hollywood orientalist images of Muslims on the silver screen.7 This thoughtful analysis

argued that the West's cinematic depiction of the East revealed less about the characteristics of

the East than about the subjectivity, consciousness, and culture of the West and, more

specifically, their attitudes.8 This monumental analysis combines socio-political and historical

contexts with a theoretical framework to deconstruct these images' politics.9 Taught through

academic texts, activist circles, community workshops, and documentaries, this critical body of

work has been challenging the Hollywood industry on various fronts.

Combined with this critical analysis, Muslim writers, producers, and directors have

continued to march on a path filled with prickles of blunt stereotypes and ongoing legacies of

orientalism. From Mustafa Akkad, the Syrian American director/producer of The Message

(1977), to Nijila Mumin, the Black female director/producer of Jinn (2018), these filmmakers

have kept their eyes on the prize. With limited resources and no uncles in the industry, these

6 Examples Include: Clint Eastwood, Jason Hall, Robert Lorenz, et al., American Sniper.

(Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. 2019): DVD; Marco Beltrami, Kathryn Bigelow, and Buck

Sanders. The Hurt Locker. (Lionsgate UK. 2016), DVD; Peter Woodward, Gregor Jordan,

Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Michael Sheen, Unthinkable, (Culver City, CA:

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2013): DVD. 7 Edward Said. Orientalism. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul., 1978), Jack G. Shaheen, Reel

Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001); Evelyn

Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11. (New York:

New York University Press, 2012). 8 Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the

Rest of the World. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981). 9 Michael Singh, Catherine Jordan, et al. Valentino's Ghost: The Politics Behind Images.

(Michael Singh Productions, 2017): DVD.

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artists have created fissures in the thick walls surrounding the fairyland of Hollywood, built with

layers of nepotism. The film industry's overwhelming responses to these voices of change have

ranged from a complete disregard to condescending smiles to "there's nothing funny about your

people."10 However, the industry's countless rejections and dismissals have not crushed the

dreams of Muslim filmmakers. Specifically, after the tragic attacks of September 11, Muslim

filmmakers used personal narratives to usher in a new body of fictional visual work that I place

under the rubric of Muslim Diasporic Cinema.

Muslim Diasporic Cinema

Hamid Naficy, in his monumental work An Accented Cinema, states that diasporic

cinema generally is written, produced, and directed by "postcolonial ethnic and identity

filmmakers" who are "either immigrant themselves or have been born in the West since the

1960s to nonwhite, non-Western, postcolonial émigrés."11 Black Muslim filmmakers standing in

the middle of non-Muslim African Americans, Immigrant Muslims, and dominant White

American cultures,12 consciously/unconsciously haunted by the trauma of trans-Atlantic slave

trade, ongoing legacies of slavery, and structural racism, further complicate traditional

definitions of diasporic, postcolonial, and ethnic filmmakers. Paul Gilroy argues that black

diaspora is "[f]ormed through the African dispersion and the experience of slavery, and crossing

10 Michael Malek Najjar, “’There is Nothing Funny About Your People:’ Muslim American

Humor in Post-9/11 World” in Muslims and American Popular Culture, Volume 1:

Entertainment and Digital Culture (Praeger: Santa Barbara, 2014), 4. 11 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 15. 12 Sherman Jackson, "Between Blackamerica, Immigrant Islam, and the Dominant Culture" in

Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection.(Oxford, New York,

Oxford University Press, 2005).

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national, cultural and racial divides,…[and therefore] is a transnational and intercultural

formation, and historical process of renewal, innovation, and change."13 Resistance as a strategy

has allowed them to survive these forced displacements, enslavement, colonization, and

dispersions.

Diasporic Cinema, therefore, encapsulates diasporic identities as well as "political

orientation and oppositional and cultural practices."14 Naficy characterizes such work as

"accented films," as this work focuses on the ethnic and racial identity of diasporic filmmakers

within the host country.15 Martin and Yaquinto suggest that by focusing on "the central drama in

American culture, " these diasporic visual stories "explore the ambivalence and contingency of

diasporic identities."16 Politically charged, this Diasporic Cinema claims an oppositional stand to

the "hegemonizing ideologies and cultural practices" of the American film industry. Searching

for unattainable authenticity, the identities of these diasporic individuals are in constant motion.

"As the factors of identity ([religion], ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, and class) are

complicated and revisioned by the experience of exile and diaspora, such cinema suggests a

counterpoint to the deterritorializing and dislocating experience of global migrations, using

journey narratives to interrogate the 'homeless subject.'"17

Building on the work of Michael T. Martin,18 Hamid Naficy,19 and many other scholars, I

suggest that Muslim diasporic cinema falls somewhere between the longing to flee from the

13 Michel T. Martin, Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and

Oppositionality (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1998),10. 14 Martin, 3 15 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 4. 16 Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto, “Framing Diaspora in Diasporic Cinema: Concepts

and Thematic Concerns” Black Camera, 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2007), 22. 17Martin and Yaquinto, “Framing Diaspora in Diasporic Cinema” 22. 18 Martin, Cinemas of the Black Diaspora. 19 Naficy, An Accented Cinema.

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essentialized binary identities of immigrant/native, religious/secular, etc., and the desire to claim

the performance of a continuously shifting and politically charged Islamic identity. The crux of

the Muslim Diasporic Cinema is this dialectical yearning to unapologetically claim a Muslim

identity without materially defining it. Walking on slippery slopes of being simultaneously

outsiders and insiders, these diasporic filmmakers produce, write, and direct narratives that

examine their religious, secular, and cultural identities. Their lives and experiences are

constantly shifting and emerging. The hybridity of their experiences allows them to create

narratives that examine contradictions of being diasporic and Muslim.

However, the Muslimness within the Muslim Diasporic Cinema is not based on looks,

bodies, or religiosity; it is closely linked to the diasporic identities' political performance in

motion. Through self-affirmation, they relate to the socially constructed "Blackness" and "self-

identified racial identity"20 within Black diasporas. Challenging the essentialist and purist

notions of identity, Stuart Hall has highlighted the concept of hybridity within the Black

diaspora.21 Michelle Wright argues, "Blackness" within the black diaspora "cannot be located on

the body because of the diversity of bodies that claim Blackness as an identity. Blackness, then,

is largely a matter of perception—or, as performance studies theorist E. Patrick Johnson

observes—made up of moments of performance in which performers understand their bodies as

'Black.' "22 This performance and understanding of Blackness is "a political orientation and

oppositional cultural practice,"23 similar to an affirmation of a racialized political, cultural and

20 Martin, 3-4. 21 Stuart Hall, “What is this ‘Black’ in the Black Popular Culture,” in Critical Dialogues in

Cultural Studies (London, Routledge, 1997). 22 Michelle Wright, Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology.

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 4. https://ebookcentral-proquest-

com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/reader.action?docID=1977409. 23Martin, Cinemas of the Black Diaspora, 3.

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religious Islamic identity. These visual narratives carry the pride, joy, pain, and burdens of being

a Muslim in the diaspora.

Despite the insistence to claim an Islamic identity, these filmmakers are not claiming to

represent the entire Muslim community or depict a universal and fixed interpretation of Islam.

Instead, a storyteller provides a perspective that differs from that of others. Without insisting on

the universal application of any traditional values, these Muslim artists reveal and perform the

complexities of living in-between the contradictions of religion and modernity. Per Naficy,

"identity is not a fixed essence but a process of becoming, even a performance of identity.

Indeed, each accented film may be thought of as a performance of its author's identity. Because

they are highly fluid, exilic and diasporic identities raise critical questions about political agency

and the ethics of identity politics."24 These stories capture the intimate familiarity of growing up

Muslim. They are immersed with the utterances of Alhamdulillah (thank God) and Mashallah

(God willing) and breathing a space filled with the fragrances of shisha, biryani, and Turkish

coffee. This self-affirmation of Islam as a racialized identity is the marker of Muslim Diasporic

Cinema.

With this insistence to unapologetically claim an Islamic identity, the Muslim Diasporic

Cinema parallels the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s.25 "No longer burdened by the approval-

seeking sackcloth of positive imagery, or the relative obscurity of marginal production," New

Queer Cinema demonstrated that it "could be both radical and popular, stylish and economically

viable."26 Queer films produced in the 1990s such as Tongues Untied (1990), Paris is Burning

24 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 6. 25 Ruby B. Rich, "New Queer Cinema". Sight & Sound 2 (May 1992): 30-39 26 Michele Aaron, New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University

Press, 2004), 3.

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(1990), My Own Private Idaho (1991), and The Living End (1992) "had few aesthetic or

narrative strategies in common" except as Ruby Rich pointed out that they shared an attitude

which can be characterized as "an attitude of defiance."27 Just as the protagonists of New Queer

Cinema were 'proudly assertive,'28 Muslim filmmakers boldly assert their Muslim identities in

front and behind the camera. Going beyond the concepts of "positive images," Muslim

filmmakers boldly proclaim themselves with their good and bad revealing what it means to be a

human with all of its complexities. Instead of shying away from their Islamic identity, these

artists not only assert their Muslim identities, but they also use them as a political platform.

Their identities reveal the nuances of juggling being Blacks, women, Americans, immigrants,

queers, and more. The pain and beauty lie in the act of creating constantly shifting identities. In

Muslim Diasporic Cinema, artists are in a dual process of creation and assertion. Their narratives

claim that they are not just Muslims, but they are Muslims and third-generation comedians, or

Muslims and Black and queer, or Muslims and artists and activists. This aptitude for embracing

multiple identities is the pillar of Muslim Diasporic Cinema.

For many Muslim filmmakers, filmmaking is an act of resistance. Ongoing

misrepresentations, distortions, and dehumanizing images were the primary reasons that inspired

them to pick up a camera. They shine a light on a spot that had remained outside the frame. For

many, their voices were unheard and their images unseen. Most of them grew up in an

environment directly or indirectly impacted by the September 11 attacks, and they were blamed

for the actions of a few. With a fire in their hearts, they felt an urge to twist the frame and change

the angle of the light by telling visual stories. For example, Nijla Mumin, the writer and director

27 Ibid, 3 28 J. Hoberman, “Out and Inner Mongolia,” Premiere (October 1992): 31, Quoted in Aaron, 3.

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of Jinn, tells the story of "a black girl who dances, kisses, and reads the Qur'an." Therefore, the

film is a way of fighting the erasure of the things Mumin loves. Unable to see herself and her

community on the silver screen, Mumin writes, "As a Black Muslim woman, filmmaking is my

resistance." Since the Islamic identity takes a stand against the prevailing Islamophobia, its

affirmation is a site to perform and politically resist.

However, this resistance does not follow the Third Cinema's contours of the 1960s, which

was revolutionary, bold, and assertive in its style, language, and contents. It aimed to disrupt

form, content, and the system.29 Instead, the politics in Muslim Diasporic Cinema is subtle but

savvy. These stories focus on normalizing the everyday lives of Muslims, historically seen as the

Other. Most of their messages remain under the radar and features the politics of everyday

people. More specifically, the political messages of these films are traceable through the humor

found in the ordinary lives of Muslims living in the diasporas. Unlike the films about religious,

historical, and political leaders, including the Prophet Muhammad, Malcolm X, or Muhammad

Ali, these visual narratives revolve around everyday people's lives and experiences. Just as Ruby

Rich suggests that New Queer Cinema "reinterpreted the link between the personal and the

political envisioned by feminism,"30 Muslim Diasporic Cinema uses personal narratives to claim

its resistance. These filmmakers continuously remind the audience that their work stems from

things that happen to them, people they know, dialogues they hear, and places where they live

and work. Whether it is Jinn, written and directed by Nijla Mumin,31 or Big Sick, written by

Kumail Nanjiani,32 all of this work speaks to Muslim filmmakers' personal experiences in a

29 Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. "Towards a Third Cinema," in Film and Theory: An

Anthology, ed. Toby Miller and Robert Stam (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000), 265-287. 30 Ruby Rich, New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut. (Durham: Duke Univ. Press. 2013) xv. 31 Nijla Mumin, Jinn, (Sweet Potato Pie Productions, et al., 2018): DVD. 32 Kumail Nanjiani and Holly Hunter. The Big Sick (Sony Pictures, 2018): DVD.

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variety of ways. The audience gets a glimpse into everyday Muslims' personal lives, which is

unknown to most non-Muslims. For example, through Jinn, viewers see a multifaceted narrative

of contemporary Black Muslims who live in upscale homes, have respectable jobs, attend

mosques and pray, have sexual relationships, and love their families. These activities are usually

not seen and depicted on film, especially by characters in Black communities. The creative

control on their narratives allows these artists to carve out spaces that have remained hidden up

until now.

By using personal narratives, Muslim storytellers take a political stand to reveal their

fleeting identities, which range from religious to spiritual, cultural, and secular. Here, the claim

to the political identity requires that "the author is [not] dead."33 These creative artists are not

only writing, directing, and producing, but they are also embodying those visions. These visual

stories are extensions of some pieces of the artists—part of the performance. Just as Naficy

notes, "Although many of their films are authorial and autobiographical, I problematize both

authorship and autobiography by positing that the filmmakers' relationship to their films and the

authoring agency within them is not solely one of parentage but also one of performance.

However, by putting the author back into authorship, I counter a prevalent postmodernist

tendency, which either celebrates the death of the author or multiplies the authoring effect to the

point of de-authoring the text. Accented filmmakers are not just textual structures or fictions

within their films; they also are empirical subjects, situated in the interstices of cultures and film

practices, who exist outside and prior to their films."34

33 Ronald Barthes, Images, Music, Text, Trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977). 34 Naficy, An Accented Cinema,4.

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Most of the Diasporic Muslim Cinema is financed outside the major studio system.

Unable to provide simple and clear narratives that are the bread and better of Hollywood's

blockbusters hits with special effects and glamour, marginalized filmmakers seek better control

of their message, form, and contents without thinking about winning over the audience and

profit-making. Fortunately, over the last twenty years, grass-root organizations, including

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Arab American Film, and many more, are trusting

these storytellers' visions and providing them with financial and mentoring opportunities. With

additional opportunities springing up everywhere, now the sky is the limit.

Journey of Muslim Diasporic Cinema

Most filmmakers of Muslim background entered the industry after the 1960s due to the

complex sociopolitical history of decolonization, immigration laws, wars, occupation,

displacement, conversations, and digital technology changes.35Among these included Mustafa

Akkad, a young Syrian who came to the United States to pursue his love for film with two

hundred dollars and a copy of the Qur'an in his packet.36 His first major feature film, The

Message (1976), provided historical background about the Prophet Muhammad's life and his

message for the world. His next major feature film, Lion of the Desert (1980), depicted the story

of Omar Muktar, a Muslim freedom fighter who fought Italy's colonization of Libya before

WWII. For Akkad, the purpose of his work was to "introduce the Western audience to his faith,

to dispel their apprehensions and misconceptions."37 Despite his passion for educating the

35 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 3-29. 36 Pat Twair “Honoring the Vision” The Middle East, (June 2007): 62-63. 37 Joumane Chahine, “Keeping the Faith: From the Prophet Muhammad to Michael Myers and

Beyond:The Unlikely Two-track Career of Director Producer Moustapha Akkad” Film

Comment, (May June 2014):56.

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Western world about Islam's beauty, his religious-themed films remained less popular. Akkad

made his fame in Hollywood by producing eight Halloween movies. A few other successful

Muslim filmmakers, including Dodi al-Fayad, produced films without any reference to

Islam/Muslims; they are Hook (1999), The Scarlet Letter (1995), and Chariots of Fire (1981).

Hollywood was not ready for Muslim narratives.

Kamran Pasha, a lawyer turned Hollywood screenwriter, immigrated at the age of three

from Pakistan. Passionate about writing, he sold one of his science fiction screenplays and

landed in Los Angeles before September 11. In 2005 he got an opportunity to write for an

episode of Sleeper Cell, for which he successfully developed a positive character of a Muslim

FBI agent fighting Islamic terrorists. Pasha enjoys writing screenplays about the golden age of

the Islamic empire, specifically Taj Mahal, Saladin, and Fatma Shajarat al-Durr. For him, such

narratives are significant since they can flip Hollywood's agenda about Islam/Muslims. Despite

his "God-given gift to write," Pasha believes that the industry underappreciates his work since

they see him as an "incredible threat to the [Hollywood] narrative of Islam." Despite all the

challenges, he wants to make a change by staying within the Hollywood system.38

While small changes are occurring within the industry, a bigger storm is brewing outside

Hollywood through independent films written, directed, and produced by Muslim filmmakers

about their respective communities. Specifically, after September 11, several standup comedians,

spoken-word artists, and writers/directors/producers felt that their personal jihad was to combat

the thick smoke surrounding them. At the forefront were the standup comedians. With bruised

hearts, they swallowed their pride and tears and "outed" themselves as Muslims. Just as early

American standup comedy rose out of the Civil Rights era and the minorities' quest for

38 Kamran Pasha, interview by Irum Shiekh, Zoom Recording, June 25, 2020.

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recognition in America,"39 self-identified Muslim comedians stood at the forefront, embraced

their Muslim identity, and incorporated their lives into their comedy. These included Ahmed

Ahmed, Dean Obeidallah, Maysoon Zayid, Maz Jabrani, and Aaron Kader. They toured the

United States and the Middle East with their comedy tour, Axis of the Evil. The tour was a local

and global success. Both Muslims and non-Muslims laughed with the comedians about the

absurdities of airport security rules, racial profiling, government surveillance, and much more.

For Ahmed Ahmed, "We can't define who we are on a serious note because nobody will listen.

The only way to do it is to be funny about it."40

Out of the standup comedy scene, several filmmakers emerged, including Kumail

Nanjiani. He incorporated humor and personal narrative in The Big Sick (2018), which he wrote

and produced with his wife, Emily Gordon. The plot revolves around his early courtship and

falling in love with Emily during her illness. Through this fictionalized personal narrative,

Nanjiani humorously juggles his Pakistani family's cultural expectations with Emily's family's

fears about Muslims after September 11. The film was nominated for Oscars in 2018 and

expanded Nanjiani's career in Hollywood. In one of his television interviews, he stated that he

wanted to show that "Muslims are having fun."41

On a parallel track, Sayed Badreya, Nijla Mumin, Qasim Bashir, and Lena Khan are

among many young self-identified Muslims who combined identity politics with personal

narratives. They address Islamophobia, racism, gender, and sexuality. In many of these films, the

characters are not from the Middle East or outside the United States, but they are from the belly

39 Najjar, “’There is Nothing Funny About Your People,’” 6. 40 Ibid, 3-4. 41 Lesley Stahl, “The Real-Life Love Story of ‘The Big Sick’” CBS News, Feb 11, 2018.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/the-real-life-love-story-of-the-big-sick/#x,

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of the beast. Born and raised in America, they are familiar with the ins and outs of what it means

to be American, Black, Queer, immigrant, educator, and Muslim simultaneously. Unlike

previous filmmakers' works, which tried to educate the North American audience, these young

filmmakers of the twenty-first century boldly claimed a space with their personal stories of what

it means to grow up in a community that is constantly asking you, "Where are you from really?"

Although the journey of Muslim storytellers to become agents of their narratives has been

arduous, since the early twenty-first century, the situation has been gradually improving. Several

filmmakers who previously worked on Modern Family and Outscored are creating content

focusing on self-identified Muslims' lives. With more audiences having a pull for diverse

American Muslim stories, more writers and directors of these communities are embracing the

moment. Many media outlets are recognizing the success of the Muslim storytellers.42 In her

article for the National Public Radio Station (NPR), Lelia Fadal states that "Muslims are having

a Hollywood Moment."43 Several other media articles suggest that Muslims' creative work is

gaining ground among the general public, hungry for more relatable stories. The growing

Muslim audience in the diaspora, starving to see their images on the silver screen, is consuming

these fictionalized personal stories.

Organizing and activism in local communities have helped these filmmakers to showcase

and distribute their work. Mahdi writes, "the growth of Arab and Arab American independent

film festivals, particularly in the United States, has provided Arab American filmmakers with a

42 Alex Cohen, “Muslim-Americans Try to ‘Write’ Hollywood’s Wrongs” National Public

Radio, March 27, 2011 https://www.npr.org/2011/03/27/134621891/muslim-americans-try-to-

write-hollywoods-wrongs 43 Leila Fadel, “Muslims are Having a Hollywood Moment” National Public Radio, October 30,

2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/10/30/654555060/muslims-are-having-a-hollywood-moment.

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valuable alternative to mainstream filmmaking."44 The Hollywood Bureau of the Muslim Public

Affairs Council (MPAC) is another organization that advises mainstream producers, directors,

and writers to improve Muslims' depictions. The team of consultants also works towards

creating more "opportunities for Muslim storytellers to tell their own stories" through networking

and mentorship programs. Its larger purpose is to change "the narrative of Islam and Muslims in

the entertainment industry so that audiences see Muslims as vital contributors to creating social

and cultural change in America and around the world."45 These organizations, along with the

recent powerful call for more diverse voices written and embodied by communities of color,

Muslim filmmakers are getting opportunities to widen doors of entry. The democratization of

digital media further provides opportunities to Muslim storytellers. Various streaming platforms,

including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others, have created more diverse perspectives and talent

opportunities. As a result, the talent and the audience are able to develop and watch films and

television shows that push their creativity to new limits.

After noticing these diverse stories' profitability, Hollywood moguls are slightly opening

the bolted doors of entry locked for over a century.46 These tiny cracks in the doors' shafts are

exciting for both the filmmakers and the Muslim communities living in diasporas. Vibrant and

optimistic Muslim storytellers, holding their digital technology in their hands, are marching with

their eyes on the prize. In the past, the call to promote diversity in front and behind the camera

generally fell on deaf ears. In public, Hollywood moguls made promises that fell short in

44 Waleed Mahdi, Arab Americans in Film, From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-

Representation (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press. 2020), 170. 45 Muslim Public Affairs Council, Hollywood Bureau, “Our Mission: Tell a Better Story”

Accessed March 27, 2021. https://www.mpachollywoodbureau.org/ 46 Sam Asi, “No Ban Here: Hollywood (Finally) Embraces Muslim and Middle Eastern Talent”

Golden Globe Awards, March 7, 2017 https://www.goldenglobes.com/articles/no-ban-here-

hollywood-finally-embraces-muslim-and-middle-eastern-talent

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implementation. For example, Muslim artists tried to work with ABC television to air the

adaptation of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America.47 The show never

went into production.48 In 2008, Fox television bought Little Mosque's rights on the Prairie, a

popular television sitcom about a Canadian Muslim community. Fox television never produced it

"despite the series' international syndication in sixty-eight countries."49 These setbacks further

fired Muslim filmmakers to gain better creative control over their message. With the ability to

crowdfund their projects, they saw the light at the end of the tunnel. There was no turning back.

Despite Muslim storytellers' success in shifting their narratives, little scholarly effort has

been made to examine Muslim creative work's significance in reclaiming their stories and

histories. Over the last decade, a limited number of scholars have published work on Muslim

filmmakers and media, including Rashid50 Echchabi51 and Mahdi.52 These and a few other

scholars have examined the significance of the emerging work of Muslims and Arabs in

changing the written and visual landscape through written media and blogs,53 documentary

filmmakers and production companies54 , and fictional filmmaking.55 Waleed Mahdi's work

"examines the post-9/11 rise of a new generation of Arab American filmmakers who are invested

47 Nabil Echchaibi, “American Muslims and the Media” from Safi, Omid, and Juliane Hammer.

2014. The Cambridge companion to American Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

119-139. 48. Echchaibi, “American Muslims and the Media,”120. 49 Echchaibi, “American Muslims and the Media,”120. 50 Hussein Rashid, “Muslims in Film and Muslim Filmmaking in the United

States.” in The Oxford Handbook of American Islam. ed. Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad,

(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014), 459-473. 51 Echchaibi, “American Muslims and the Media” 119-139. 52 Mahdi, “Arab Americans in Film,” 169-205. 53 Echchaibi, “American Muslims and the Media” 119-139. 54 Rashid, “Muslims in Film” 459-473. 55 Mahdi, “Arab Americans in Film,”

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in self-narratives of Arab American cultural citizenship."56 He acknowledges the value of

Arab/Muslim filmmaking and how it "contributes to a burgeoning Arab American filmic trend

rooted in an emerging urgency to self-narrate contemporary issues in the Arab American

community, particularly in relation to their post- 9/11 struggles and aspirations." His book

chapter chronicles three Arab American films to examine the role of "Arab American Cultural

Citizenship in Film" through showcasing three films: The Citizen (2012), Amreeka (2009), and

American East (2007).57

Moving away from the concept of "American cultural citizenship," this essay uses three

visual narratives to focus on the inner conflicts of diasporic Muslim communities. Through this

inward focus, artists are allowed to pay close attention to Muslims' intimate lives and their

relationships with family and community members living in diasporas. This inward focus allows

the filmmakers to go beyond the binary relationships of us versus them. Building on the strategy

of I and us, the audience becomes more familiar with the inner conflicts of Muslim cultures and

societies outside the mainstream culture's purview.

Although personal experiences inspire the three case studies discussed in this article, they

are fictionalized to tell political, humorous, and entertaining stories. By using the artistic

permission of fiction, filmmakers use their power of imagination to envision a space that they

want to create. In this fictionalized personal narrative, they are liberated from their current

locations. They make a world of possibilities unbounded by the limitations imposed on their

thoughts and bodies. They can capture the impossible, the desires, and the longings that may not

be possible in real life. This imaginary space is an oppositional site in which Muslim filmmakers

56 Mahdi, “Arab Americans in Film” 57 Mahdi, “Arab Americans in Film”

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use personal experiences to reveal the experiences of living in a hybrid space that is constantly

shifting between home and abroad.

Methodology

This essay combines personal interviews with textual analyses to examine three films

written, directed, and produced by diasporic filmmakers. The subjects are their Muslim

communities in North America: Mooz-Lum58 illustrates the diverse lives of contemporary Black

Muslims and their diasporic lives at the intersection of race and religion, Signature Move59

features strong female protagonists from communities of color with diasporic queerness, and

Ramy60 claims an oppositional space by using humor to focus on the everyday lives of young

Brown men growing up in Jersey City.

In writing this article, I conducted personal interviews with Qasim Basir (the writer and

director of Mooz-Lum) and Fawzia Mirza (the writer, producer, and star of Signature Move). I

read and watched Ramy Youseefʼs countless interviews available on YouTube and newspaper

articles. He is the creator, writer, and star of Ramy). These interviews allowed me to listen to the

voices behind the camera and document the inspirations, motivations, and visions of these

filmmakers.

58 Qasim Basir, Mooz-lum (2011, Mongrel Media), DVD. 59 Fawzia Mirza, Brian Hieggelke, Jennifer Reeder, et al. Signature move (New City, 2018)

DVD. 60 Ramy Youseef, Ramy, (Hulu, 2019-2020)

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Finally, I locate myself as a Muslim documentary filmmaker in analyzing the fictional

work at hand. Having produced several documentaries, I am familiar with filmmaking

technology and storytelling techniques. As an immigrant with limited connection to Hollywood,

I am intimately familiar with the cloud of nepotism that surrounds the filmmaking industry. This

background allows me to recognize Muslim filmmakers' sense of determination. They trusted

their artistic inspirations and did not take no for an answer. Through these self-narrated visual

stories, the audience gets a glimpse into the lives, dreams, challenges, joys, and struggles of

diasporic Muslim communities.

Mooz-Lum: A Case Study of Black Muslim Diasporic Narratives

Black Muslims "account for a fifth of all U.S. Muslims;"61 however, they continue to

experience multiple layers of marginalization. The overwhelming majority of Western media

focus on Arab Muslims as an emblem of Muslimness. This orientalist gaze silences the presence

of the Black Muslim diaspora. Unfortunately, this invisibility does not end here. The mainstream

Muslim communities within North America also continue with this tradition of suppression.

Scholars Aminah Beverly McCloud and Jamila Kareem, and others are among many scholars

revealing racism and colorism within immigrant Muslim communities.62 Moreover, many of the

traditional African American academic disciplines do not include Islam in their analysis of the

Black diaspora, further obscuring their presence.

61 Besheer Mohamed and Jeff Diamant, “Black Muslims Account for a Fifth of All U.S.

Muslims, and About Half Are Converts to Islam.” The Pew Research Center, January 17, 2019,

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/black-muslims-account-for-a-fifth-of-all-u-s-

muslims-and-about-half-are-converts-to-islam/ 62 Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam. (New York: Routledge 1995); Jamillah

Ashira Karim, American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender within the

Ummah. (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

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Due to this multilayered invisibility, Black Muslims' narratives, especially the stories of

contemporary Black Muslims' everyday lives, are seldom seen on the silver screen. This

invisibility applies to both multigenerational Blacks with legacies of slavery who converted to

Islam at the turn of the twentieth century and immigrants/refugees from Africa. The absence of

these images has created an erasure of their histories. Qasim Basir, director, and producer of

Mooz-Lum, remembers that in his film's initial production/distribution, Hollywood executives

could not recognize his experience since they had not seen or heard contemporary Black

Muslims.63 However, the absence of Black Muslims in mainstream cinema is not an exception.

Judith Weisenfeld's monumental work, Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in

American Film documented that the Hollywood industry historically has participated in

constructing caricatures of African American religions, furthering the racialization project.64

In his article "African American Muslims in Film," Bill Chambers lists a handful of films

produced over the last hundred years: Hate that Hate Produced (1959), Roots (1977), Malcolm X

(1992), and Ali (2001).65 None of these films is written, directed, and produced by Black

Muslims. However, they are significant because they depict Black Muslims.

For example, Spike Lee's Malcolm X,66 produced in 1992, is a classic for its ability to

document Malcolm X's life and his transformation from a young Black man from a working-

class neighborhood into a charismatic political leader who was also a Muslim. Basir watched the

63 Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau, “Black Muslim Narratives in

Entertainment” a panel discussion on September 19, 2019, accessed August 21, 2020,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17IW-33g1-o 64 Weisenfeld, Judith. Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film,

1929/1949. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2007). 65 Bill Chambers, "Black History Month: African American Muslims in Film- Part I." Muslim

Journal, (Feb 15, 2019): 12. 66 Spike Lee Malcolm X (Warner Bros, 1992).

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film in his youth. Afterward, he became so inspired that he tried to stand straight and act like a

leader like Malcolm X.67 Nijla Mumin, a Black female Muslim filmmaker, traced Malcolm X's

influence in her career and called it her favorite film with a "beautiful representation of Black

Muslims."68 Both Mumin and Basir are not alone in realizing the film's impact; it has been hailed

by many as a window into how the Nation of Islam resisted systematic racism in the twentieth

century. However, Chambers is critical of a secular Malcolm. He states:

The film includes the first positive portrayal of an African American Muslim leader in

popular film, but it still is an example of the trend to deny African American Muslims

their identity as a religious people. The movie reinforces the image of Malcolm X that

remains to this day, i.e., [a] fiery Black Nationalist leader who broke away from a Black

Supremacist group and finally embraced a more acceptable and inclusive worldview

somehow related to global Islam. 69

Roots,70 a mini-television series based on Alex Halley's book, is another dramatic story

that features Kunta Kinte, a brave young man who is kidnapped from Gambia and enslaved in

North America. However, Chambers argues that the miniseries ignored Islam as an integral part

of Kunta Kinte's identity.71

Black Muslims' contributions in the making of the United States have yet to be better

documented and taught through texts, documentaries, and fictional stories. Prince Among Slaves,

a PBS documentary, is a docu-drama based on the life of prince Abdul-Raham from Futa-Jallo,

67 Basir, Interview. 68 Najila Mumin, Interview by Irum Shiekh, Zoom Recording, July 2, 2020. 69 Bill Chambers, "Black History Month: African American Muslims in Film- Part II." Muslim

Journal, (Feb 22, 2019): 18. 70 David Greene and Alex Haley. Roots. (Burbank, CA: 2002) Warner Home Video. 71 Chambers, "Black History Month: African American Muslims in Film- Part I."18.

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West Africa.72 This documentary and other texts and photo exhibits have documented many

Muslims' experiences of being kidnapped and enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade.73

More work needs to be done on this topic.

Over the last two decades, young Black Muslim filmmakers are taking advantage of

digital technology and crowdfunding as they embrace and celebrate their stories. Aminah Bakeer

Abdul-Jabaar, Qasim Basir, and Nijla Mu'min are among many who comprise Black Muslim

filmmakers using their narratives to resist the ongoing silencing of their histories. Much of this

work is independent, an oppositional space that provides them with an opportunity to articulate

their vision. In these narratives, Black Muslim filmmakers further widen these hybrid identities.

They use the lens of religion to examine diasporic identities in motion and address the legacies of

slavery and racism that continue to haunt and complicate traditional definitions of diasporic,

postcolonial, and ethnic filmmakers.74

Written and directed by Qasim Basir, Mooz-Lum75 is a personal narrative of a young

Black Muslim who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Basir learned about filmmaking in high

school but never knew that he could make films. Growing up, he never saw anyone making a

living by filmmaking; neither did he see himself on the silver screen. However, after coming out

of a near-death experience from an auto accident in his twenties, filmmaking became therapy for

72 Andrea Kalin, Mos Def, and Terry Alford. Prince Among Slaves. (Alexandria, Va. 2011): PBS

Home Video. 73 Michael Angelo Gomez, Black Crescent; Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims

Enslaved in the Americas. (New York: New York University Press, 1998) 74 Anjali Prabhu, Contemporary Cinema of Africa and the Diaspora. (Corby: Oxford University

Press, 2014) 75 Basir, Mooz-lum

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him.76 Weeks and months of solitary healing led him to pick up the camera and claim his

presence since everybody has a story to tell.77

Basir recalls that he and his family did not fit in with the non-Muslim Black community

around them growing up. As Muslims, Basir's family had different clothing, holidays, rituals,

and food practices, such as no alcohol and pork. This always made them stand out even within

the Black neighborhood. However, mainstream immigrant Muslims also did not fully accept

them. A young immigrant Arab child called him "a second-class Muslim" after reading Basir's

first name, "Muhammad," listed on his ID card. Basir stated that such name-calling was pretty

common in the immigrant Muslim community.

Mooz-Lum is a coming-of-age story that gives voice to the diasporic experiences of Black

Muslims. It depicts Tahir Mahdi's life, revealing the alienation that many young Black Muslim

males face. The title of the film, Mooz-Lum, is a mispronunciation of the word Muslim. It

captures the essence of the misunderstanding that surrounded him growing up whether he was

living in a house with a protective and disciplinary father or attending a school and later a

college, he was experiencing institutional racism. He joined an Islamic school to learn the

"authentic" version of Islam from immigrant Muslims. Unable to be accepted into any of these

diverse worlds, Tariq embodies living in multiple diasporas and struggling with Muslim identity.

The film recognizes storytelling as a form of resistance in a world that can accept neither his

Muslimness nor his Blackness.

Tariq's father, Hassan, is an overprotective father filled with the revolutionary spirit of

the 1960s. He wants Tariq to be a strong Muslim man; however, he is a cold disciplinarian and

76 Qasim Basir, Interview by Irum Shiekh, Zoom Recording, July 8, 2020. 77 Basir, Interview

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ritualistic in his approach. He forces Tariq to wear a kufi (Muslim hat) to school and later sends

him to an Islamic boarding school to instill a love for Islam and the Qur'an. Unfortunately for

Tahir, his disciplinary father and parents' divorce exacerbates his alienation and converts his

house into a diasporic space. Unable to openly communicate and share his experiences with his

father, Tariq feels alienated even at home.

The public school and the classroom are not spaces where he can enjoy and respect his

Muslim heritage. Teachers mispronounce his name, and his classmates laugh at his "Mooz-lum"

name. Other kids in the class, including a Black kid, call him "salami bacon," an offensive

reference for Muslims to pork. He removes his kufi as soon as he enters the school since he just

wants to fit in.

The Islamic boarding school, administrated by immigrant Muslims, is also another

diasporic space for him. Unfortunately, a strict disciplinarian teacher, Daud, beats him violently.

The violence leaves scars on his young body and mind. The absence of his mother and sister at

home and a lack of open communication between father and son do not allow Tariq to get help

with his physical and emotional abuse.

Unable to be accepted within his home, public school, and the Islamic institution, Tariq

turns away from Islam temporarily. Going away to college is an escape and an opportunity to

shape his own identity. As Tariq drives his car away from home, he enters into an open space in

which he can escape his disciplinary father, nagging classmates, and abusive teacher. No longer

a victim. He asserts and claims a space for himself. He snatches the kufi from his head and

throws it on the ground. Later he enters the college and asks others to call him "T." Here, he

embraces his Black American identity.

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The centering of race in Black diaspora highlights his racialized identity linked to his

Blackness, the way outsiders see him. The film gives voice to the complex and nuanced

identities of a Black Muslim, seldom discussed in the cinemas of both mainstream Black and

Muslim diasporas. The film depicts the centrality of race within Black diasporic communities

and its intersections with religion. This personal narrative reveals that race is one of the

determining variables that haunts him. Outsiders see his skin color first; it is the primary signifier

in his day-to-day activities. Tariq tries to fit in with the African American students based on his

socially constructed Blackness; however, being unable to articulate his Islamic identity further

leaves him unsettled. His Black Muslim consciousness remains repressed. The color of his skin

has become a signifier that overshadows the multipolicy and hybridity of his identities.

Mooz-Lum, however, is a story of resistance. The attacks of September 11 and the hate

crimes toward Muslims force Tariq to affirm his Muslimness—a political act of resistance. When

an angry mob, ready to avenge the September 11 attacks, chants "that the Muslims are going to

pay," Tariq stands up to defend his sister, Taqua, and her friend Ayanna (both practicing hijab).

His love for his sister and the underdog, the basic Islamic teaching principles, allow him to face

the angry mob. At that watershed moment, Tariq embraces his Muslim identity. This Islamic

identity fuses a spirit of resistance, his political stand to the Islamophobic world around him.

This Muslim diasporic identity incorporates scattered fragments of his Black, American, African,

and Middle Eastern parts. The film symbolizes this convergence through Baaba Maal's song,

Dunya Salam,78 that Tariq listens to in the United States. The music is not in Arabic but in

Pulaar, an African language that incorporates Arabic words and praises to Allah and the Prophet

Muhammad. (Islam is in both Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.) The song reveals the spirit of

78 Baaba Maal, “Dunya Salam,” track # 1 on 1 Giant Leap 2001.

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resistance that continues through arts, music, and storytelling. Basir states, "Our culture and

religion were beaten out of us, but somehow we survived. When I hear that song, I remember my

heritage and my religion" 79 that exists somewhere between the continents of the Americas,

Africa, and Arabia. His Black American Muslim identity is of convergence and renewal of all of

those places and more. The film claims and celebrates Muslims' lives and experiences, which are

as American as they are African. The film also illustrates Tariq's transformation from a Black

Muslim to a Black American Muslim living with multiplicities. By embracing his Islamic

identity, Tariq also embraces his African and American identity.

Mooz-Lum is significant in illustrating multilayered conflicts of reconciling hybrid

identities living in between continuously shifting spaces. They are erroneously bifurcated in

simplified categories of home and diaspora. By focusing on young Black American Muslims'

diasporic experiences, the film challenges the traditional meaning of displacements, home, and

belongings. The film reveals that full acceptance may not be possible for a hybrid identity

encompassing multiplicities.

Tariq grew up in an urban American Black Muslim household. Tariq's diasporic identity

is not linked to where he was born; instead, it is associated with the ongoing legacies of slavery,

structural racism, and his traumatic experiences at his parents' home, public school, and as well

as a private Islamic school. In his case, a physical space called "home" does not exist. Tariq's

hybrid identity is constantly being battered at the margins. He must create his home from the

edges of his multiple overlapping identities, including self, family, friends, and community.

We need more complex narratives that can highlight issues of color and race that plague

our society and discriminate against Blacks and dark-skinned communities. Scholars, including

79 Basir, Interview.

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Aminah Beverly McCloud, Jamila Kareem, Edward Curtis, and many others, have been

documenting and examining racism within the Muslim ummah (community); however, up until

recently, these issues have remained less discussed on the screen. For example, Mooz-Lum does

not directly address issues of racism within the ummah. In the film, Tariq's roommate, a second-

generation child of an immigrant family, is an observant Muslim with compassion and love.

Other than the disciplinary teacher in his Islamic school, the rest of the immigrant community is

inviting and accepting. Airing dirty laundry in this Islamophobic climate could be challenging.

Basir indicated that he was not ready to tackle this issue in his first feature, but his future work

will consist of such conflicts.80 He is also interested in branching out from independent

filmmaking to the studio system. It provides him with more opportunities for production and

distribution without sacrificing his message. 81

Signature Move─ A Case Study of Diasporic Queerness

Signature Move is a classic example of an independent film written by a "postcolonial

ethnic filmmaker." Fawzia Mirza, a Canadian, American, Pakistani, celebrates diasporic

queerness, focusing on strong women of color. The film challenges the heteronormative

narratives of Americans and Muslims using a personal story to claim an oppositional space. By

doing so, it weaves together a tale of a young woman living at the intersections of being a queer

American wrestler and a daughter of an immigrant Pakistani-Muslim family. Instead of

suggesting the impossibilities of living with multiplicities, the film normalizes hybridity. It also

80 Basir, Interview. 81 Basir, Interview.

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opens many more possibilities for Muslim sexual identities to perform and operate without

sacrificing family and cultural ties, the backbone of diasporic identities.

Mirza started her film career as an actress; however, she soon found acting limiting. No

one else could write a character who was a queer, Muslim, and South Asian woman. Frustrated

by the visionary limitations of the filmmakers around her, Mirza wrote a compelling narrative

that included all of her. For Mirza, writing the film validated her multi-hyphenated identity.

Growing up in Canada and the United States, she hardly saw herself on the screen. She

stated that there are power and beauty in seeing yourself on the screen. It allows us to "reflect

upon our own experience and our truth."82 Motivated by the desire to create such images for

other young queer women of color, she used writing and film. Art emboldened her. By publicly

sharing her life, she allowed herself to be heard. She stated, "I said, it is out there. Someone is

going to see it. It is there that emboldens me to say that it is okay to be who you are and okay to

be queer, Muslim, and brown all at the same time. It is possible, and it is beautiful. The art is

living, the art allowed me to live, and my living allowed me to make art. There is a bit of a cycle

here."83

Signature Move's female protagonist, Zaynab, is a young community lawyer with a heart.

Immersed with helping the local community, Zaynab works at Diwan Street in Chicago. She

speaks Urdu with her clients, hangs out at a bar, and falls in love with Alma, a queer Mexican

American woman, and local bookstore owner.

Before Signature Move, a limited number of films written, directed, produced, and

embodied by Muslim storytellers claimed and celebrated their queer relationships in the

82 Fawzia Mirza, Interview by Irum Shiekh, Zoom Recording, April 20, 2020. 83 Mirza, Interview.

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diaspora. Examples include Touch of Pink84 and Appropriate Behavior.85 However, in these and

other fictional stories, the narratives contrast two types of families—one Muslim and

homophonic and the other White and not. In Touch of Pink, young Alim, an Indo-Canadian

Muslim man, moves to London to claim his queer relationship with his British boyfriend, Giles.

Running away from his critical mother, Nuru, who is obsessed with the perfect public persona of

a Muslim family, Alim becomes an exception in the sea of homophobic Muslims. Contrastingly,

Giles's parents have no objection to Giles's gay love.86 In Appropriate Behavior, Shirin, a young

Iranian-American, bi-sexual woman, faces a dilemma in claiming her bisexuality. Her sexual

partners throughout the film do not have those family obligations.87 In other words, queer

Muslims in these films are the exception rather than the norm. Without any space to navigate

their queer identities, these Muslims are escaping from their traditional suffocating families.

White American families, on the other hand, seldom have reservations about queer relationships.

Such binary depictions continue to center Whiteness with its ongoing imperial and savior

attitudes and contrast them against the traditional, authoritative Islamic culture. Signature Move

bypasses many of these outdated imperial depictions by focusing on queer love between two

communities of color.

Signature Move claims queerness within Muslim and Latinx cultures. Both Mexican and

Pakistani families have various degrees of hesitations toward queer love. Alma is passionate and

open in her display of queer love. She believes in being transparent with her partner in public and

private. She also has a close and honest relationship with her mother, Rosa, and can share her

84 Ian Iqbal Rashid and David Makin, Touch of pink. (Culver City, Calif.: Columbia TriStar

Home Entertainment, 2005). 85 Desiree Akhavan, Appropriate Behavior, (Parkville Pictures, 2015). 86 Rashid and Makin, Touch of pink. 87 Akhavan, Appropriate Behavior.

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love life with her mother. Alma's mother accepts her daughter's queer identity. However, they

have a playful relationship; however, Rosa occasionally longs for her daughter to be with a

Mexican man and frowns on her one-night stands.

Zaynab's relationship with her mother is built on the concept of respect. Both rarely

openly declare their love for each other, but they both know it's there and it's deep. Queer love is

not discussed in the house, but it is not denounced also. Zaynab's mother, Parveen, cannot

imagine anything beyond a traditional marriage for her daughter at a surface level. She wants her

to grow her hair and look more feminine. She also sits in her living room and uses a vernacular

to look for a husband for Zaynab.

However, Parveen embodies a Pakistani and Muslim identity that is traditional and

flexible, compassionate, and loving. In some ways, Parveen is the most evolved character in the

film. While the audience may see her as a widow living in her late husband's memories and

consuming Pakistani Urdu dramas, she is also grounded with contentment. She states, "I have

everything around me that I need." Her only desire and goal in life are to fulfill her responsibility

of having Zaynab get married. She may be surprised at the public display of gay love that she

finds through her vernacular; however, there is an acceptance of queer love and even threesomes.

After Alma visits Parveen in the apartment with Zaynab, she quickly understands her daughter's

love and respects her choices of being a lesbian and a wrestler. To accommodate her daughter's

love, Parveen decides to attend Zaynab's wrestling competition. Here she meets Alma and Rosa

and sits down with them to enjoy the match. Parveen's trip to the match symbolizes her

transformation led by compassion and love for her daughter. She moves out of the comfort of

home and walks on a less-traveled path. The audience is left with the thought that the co-

existence of Islam, Pakistani, Mexicanness, and Americaness is possible.

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In Signature Move, the primary conflict revolves around the struggle of coming out

within communities of color in the twenty-first century. Instead of suggesting a "universal" way

to claim a queer identity, the film suggests that queer love does not live isolated. Cultural ties,

family obligations, and mother-daughter love are as precious as queer love. Signature Move is

also a diasporic film that reveals the relationship between a mother and daughter cohabitating in

a Pakistani, Muslim, American, and queer space. Zaynab embodies the free, individualistic life

of an American queer. Zaynab may be uncomfortable hiding her lifestyle choice, being a queer

wrestler; however, she is closely tied to her Pakistani and cultural Muslim heritage. She is

comfortable being a caretaker of her mother and wants to cook dinner for her and bring pawn (an

appetizer) and Pakistani mangoes. It is unfathomable for her to consider placing her mother in a

nursing home or asking her to leave since she cannot live her preferred lifestyle openly at home.

The film's conclusion reveals Zaynab's love and respect for her mother as she walks home with

her after her wrestling competition, holding her arm around her mother, dressed in traditional

Pakistani clothing. Zaynab's love for her mother is as important as her love for Alma.

Along with being an example of the Diasporic Cinema, Signature Move is also an

example of the 1990s New Queer Cinema. Film theorist Ruby Rich characterized new queer

Cinema as depicting and revealing unapologetically flawed queer characters.88 "No longer

burdened by the approval-seeking sackcloth of positive imagery. . . . their protagonists were

probably assertive. . . . best described as defiance [defiant]. This defiance can be thought of as

operating on several levels, all of which serve to illuminate the characteristics of NQC."89 The

film combines many New Queer Cinema features, including Urdu and Spanish languages, music,

88 Rich, "New Queer Cinema". 30-39. 89 Aaron, 3.

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food, and cultural productions of Pakistani dramas and Mexican telenovelas. Zaynab is as

American as Pakistani; she communicates with her clients in Urdu and visits Pakistani wedding

stores. She performs in the wrestling ring, where she can channel her queerness and

Pakistaniness using Bhangra music.

By using her personal story of falling in love with a Mexican woman, Mirza

unapologetically claims a queer space within the Muslim community. Throughout her life, the

mainstream Muslim community told her that her queer identity does not represent them. She

responded, "my being queer does not invalidate my Muslim experience. It just makes it specific.

I find the personal very empowering because of my queer identity."90 In her film, Zaynab is not

seeking approval but claims her queerness.

Signature Move is also an example of a feminist film that focuses on the lives of several

strong women of color. Zaynab, a professional lawyer, falls in love with Alma, a bookstore

owner whose mother, Rosa, was a wrestler in her youth. Along with being a strong wrestler,

Rosa is a loving mother with a warm and open relationship with her daughter. Parveen is a

traditional housewife who is not afraid to walk at night to support her daughter's passion for

wrestling and queer love. Zaynab's wrestling coach is another strong female who is not scared to

advise on coaching and life. Just as queerness is not an exception in Signature Move, strong

females are not exceptions. They run the narrative in front of and behind the camera. Reversing

Hollywood blockbuster movies' sexism, the filmmaker presents no men in memorable roles: the

brothers of Alma and a few extras are the only male glimpses in the film. Unapologetically

feminist, the film creates a space for women to perform and shine both in public and private

90 Mirza, Interview.

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areas. Written, directed, and embodied by females, the film deconstructs the traditional male-

dominated storytelling method and opens many possibilities for new visions.

Ramy─A Case-Study of Everyday Brown Men

Ramy, a miniseries on the Hulu channel, depicts the coming-of-age story of a twenty-

something Arab-American, Ramy Hassan, raised in Jersey City, New Jersey. His Egyptian

father, Farouk Hassan, moved to the United States "to chase a dream that does not exist." Here

he met his Palestinian wife, Maysa, at a university. Together they raised Ramy and his sister,

Dena, in a traditional Arab and Muslim home—a diasporic space where they binge-watched

Arabic television dramas, smoked shisha, and celebrated Ramadan. The miniseries' overall plot

is loosely inspired by Ramy Youssef's personal life and experiences, fictionalized for

entertainment. Following a sitcom format, with twenty episodes, it addresses themes of family,

friendship, faith, mosque, Islamophobia, gender, intergenerational conflicts, alienation,

misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, greed, and much more. Although a few of the episodes

do not include Youssef, he is the center of the story. We learn about him and his life as he lives

with the contradictions of being a Muslim and an American.

Hulu, a streaming platform for alternative and independent filmmaking, aired the first

season of Ramy in 2019 and the second season in 2020. However, Ramy's success has exceeded

the alternative indie film community. After receiving a Gloden Globe award for best actor in a

comedy series in January 2020, Ramy has been watched, loved, and discussed both by the

mainstream and Muslim audiences. The New York Times (NYT) characterized Ramy as

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revolutionary.91 Aymann Ismail, a young Egyptian American Muslim writer for Slate, marked it

as "boundary-shattering."92 He stated that Ramy's "real power is showing how messy and

complicated Muslims can be to people outside the faith. But I think American Muslims have the

most to learn from it."93

Despite The Atlantic's criticism of its female characters' depictions,94 much of the

American Muslim community has been excited about Ramy. As soon as it aired on Hulu, it

spread like wildfire. Especially young American Muslim viewers, starving for the

representations of their everyday lives, related to it. The show allowed them to see themselves

on the screen—people struggling to place their feet on two paths, one leading to a mosque and

the other leading to a nightclub. Moreover, it is well-written and witty with good humor and

acting; the storytelling techniques do not disappoint millennials. This is a sharp, well-edited,

adult miniseries.

Before Ramy, Muslim storytellers had written, directed, and produced sitcoms that

depicted Muslim diasporas in shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie95 and Halal in the

Family.96 Zarqa Nawaz, a Canadian Muslim female, was a pioneer in depicting the Muslim

91 Sopan Deb, “‘Ramy’ Is a Quietly Revolutionary Comedy” The New York Times, April 18,

2019. 92 Aymann Ismail, “The Ramy Youssef Experiment: With the second season of his hit show, the

boundary-shattering star of Ramy will stun American Muslims. He’s ready. Are we?” Slate, May

29, 2020, https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/ramy-season-2-explained-muslim-criticism.html 93 Ismail, “The Ramy Youssef Experiment.” 94 Shamira Ibrahim, “What Ramy Gets Wrong About Muslim Women:

The New Hulu Series Cleverly Explores the Life Experiences of a Millennial Man Practicing

Islam in America. It Misses the Mark, however, in the Depiction of its Female Characters.” The

Atlantic, April 23, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/hulus-

ramy-misses-mark-muslim-women/587722/ 95 Zarqa Nawaz, Little Mosque on the Prairie. (Toronto, CBC Television, January 9, 2007-April

2, 2012). 96 Aasif Mandvi, Halal in the Family, (Webseries: 2015), https://halalinthefamily.tv/

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community's everyday life in her sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. The setting was

Saskatchewan, Canada. It used humor to reveal the lives of a mosque-going Muslim population

comprising business owners, doctors, governmental employees, and imams. Watched worldwide,

it was a successful sitcom that ran for six seasons with ninety episodes.

Halal in the Family exemplifies an American web series about the daily lives of a

suburban Muslim family. Asif Mandvi, the writer/director, described his character in the New

Yorker: "The whole joke is that [Asif] so is wanting to not be seen as Muslim, because he wants

to be accepted, and he wants to be seen as just a regular American, that in his regular

Americanness he ends up being more much racist toward Muslims. And in doing that, you get to

highlight the absurdity of racism and Islamophobia."97 As pioneers, both sitcoms highlighted the

funny and humane aspects of diverse Muslim communities thriving in North America. Well

received by the larger audience, it also signaled to Hollywood studios that there is a demand for a

Muslim sitcom. Diverse audiences will watch them.

Master of None98 is the next step in the Muslim sitcom genre with improved production

quality and witty skits. The sitcom was commercially very successful on Netflix, earning two

Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe award. Aziz Ansari, a standup comedian, turned actor,

writer, director, and producer, played a young secular Muslim man living in New York, dating

primarily white women. There was hardly any conversation about Islam or the protagonist's

conflict with his Islamic identity. In a world full of misunderstanding around Islam, the audience

was hungry for more funny skits performed by "authentic" practicing Muslims.

97 Sarah Larson, ‘“Halal in the Family”: The Sitcom We Need,” The New Yorker, May 11, 2016,

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/halal-in-the-family-the-sitcom-we-need 98 Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, Master of None (New York: Netflix, November 6, 2015-May 12,

2017)

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Ramy is different in some ways. It does not depict a secular Muslim man's life, but it does

reveal Ramy's conflicts with being a Muslim and American. He is trying to walk on the

righteous path of being close to Allah but always falls prey to worldly desires. The

overwhelming majority of Muslims could relate to that character, wanting to live a pious Muslim

life but falling short. In the end, he is a confused Muslim, wishing to walk on two diverging

paths with ripped legs in the middle. In an interview for the Los Angeles Times, Youssef stated,

"The stories I always see about a first-generation kid trying to erase where they came from, or

trying to just be white, I would watch those shows or movies and I was like, 'I don't get this,'

"This isn't how I feel. I really respect this culture and this faith, but I'm not perfect, and I'm

struggling. I've drawn my lines, and, yeah, I cross them. The best jokes and stories come from

that conflict and guilt, and I've never seen that talked about on TV."99

Ramy depicts the experiences and perspectives of second- and third-generation Muslims

brought up in the United States. Primarily consisting of Arabs, Iranians, and South Asians, these

ethnic groups have become the emblem of Muslimness. Most of them were born and raised in

America, the children of professional immigrants who moved here after the immigration laws

changed after 1965. Many of them are juggling living in multiple worlds, speaking numerous

languages, and carrying the traditions of a "homeland" that they have never seen. They are living

in a world that hardly cares about their practices, rituals, and values. Carrying the political

identity of being a Muslim, they are misunderstood and face discrimination for their looks,

names, and cultural and religious practices. Running on the track of hypervisibility, in opposition

99 Lorraine Ali, “Ramy Youssef on Making TV’s First Muslim American Sitcom, Hulu’s

Millennial Comedy ‘Ramy’” The Los Angeles Times, APRIL 19, 2019,

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-ramy-youssef-hulu-muslim-comedy-

20190419-story.html

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to the experience of invisible Black Muslims, they are continually juggling the identities that

Hollywood has assigned them: bad Muslims, who are committing violence, or good Muslims,

who are helping the U.S. government in abating terrorism. Hollywood tropes that Islam

inherently is oppressive toward women further create the binaries of the barbaric Muslim male

versus the poor Muslim woman who needs to be rescued.

Yousef, a second-generation Muslim American educated at western universities, as well

as many other filmmakers, have read and discussed theories of orientalism, representations, race,

gender, and sexuality. Therefore, they are familiar with the concepts of the Western and the male

gaze. Having been frustrated for years with Hollywood's depictions of Islamic terrorism and

female oppression, they have taken their narratives into their own hands.

Youssef, a standup comedian, has integrated conversations about his Islamic rituals into

his comedy routine before making a pitch for a show on Hulu. From the very beginning, he

found that his audience in the comedy clubs was eager to learn about the firsthand experience of

twenty-some Muslim Americans living in-between spaces, which are neither Muslim nor

American.100 Youssef decided to run with this idea for the show.

On a surface, Ramy is entertaining for providing a glimpse into the lives of young

Muslim males (Ramy, Muhammad, and Ahmed) who are hanging out at cafes, mosques, and

nightclubs while carrying the conflict of having to fulfill their family, community, and religious

obligations. However, the show is very political for the same reasons. The audience is embroiled

in these young Brown males' daily lives who previously had been seen as dangerous terrorists for

100

Imran Ali Malik, “‘Ramy’: A TV Show for Those who Still Care about Religion,” Religion

News Service, July 17, 2020, https://religionnews.com/2020/07/17/ramy-a-tv-show-for-those-

who-still-care-about-religion/

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decades. Watching a Muslim living an everyday life of having dinner with the family, praying in

a mosque, and coming home and falling in love, having pre-marital sex brings some people to

the question, "Can a Muslim do that?" It is a revelation for the American audience. Before Ramy,

a confused Muslim narrative trying to do Wudu (washing ritual before prayers) "between the

toes" on the silver screen hardly existed. They were either too busy praying or avoiding prayer.

Ramy does an excellent job of depicting that in-between space.

Ramy is also not the only one living with contradictions, and, therefore, he is not an

exception. The inclusion of Ramy's Brown friends, Mo, a local cafe manager, and Ahmed, a local

doctor in a hospital, further normalizes the peculiarities of young Brown Muslims attending strip

clubs and then going for a virtual hajj. In one of the episodes, they visit a casino. Ahmed loves to

gamble, but gambling is sinful in Islam. So he asks another person to push the button of a slot

machine and watches him win. Muhammad attends a strip club, and later, he hears a virtual hajj

to clean his sins. Without suggesting the "right way to be a Muslim," the series depicts several

young Muslims indulging in temptations and living in in-between spaces of desires and sins.

Going beyond the concepts of "positive images," Ramy and his friends boldly assert themselves

with their good and evil behaviors, revealing what it means to be a Muslim with all of its

complexities.

Ramy is also political for avoiding a discussion about the topic of terrorism. Like most of

the other diasporic films written and directed by Muslims, Ramy does not revolve around

terrorism and its aftermath. Instead, it reveals the impacts of September 11 on the lives of

Muslims with humor. In one episode, we learn about the experiences of young Ramy being

bullied by his peers in his middle school in Jersey City after the attacks.

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On September 11, 2001, young Ramy struggled with puberty but boasted about his

abilities to masturbate several times. After the attacks, when his peers call him a "terrorist," the

audience knows that Ramy cannot fit under that label. The earlier episodes have already

established a relationship between Ramy and the audience. We know him because the young

Ramy has been doing what ordinary people do in their lives—living with his immigrant family,

eating breakfast in the morning, walking with friends to a public school, and trying to masturbate

with a magazine. The audience can feel young Ramy's pain and connect with him, and this

bonding is a triumph for the show. The writing beautifully incorporates humor to negate the

hegemonic discourse of terrorism that has been surrounding Islam and Muslims. By diversifying

everyday Muslims' experiences on the silver screen, it dismantles Hollywood representations of

bad Muslims who are committing violence or good Muslims who are helping the U.S.

government abate terrorism.101

A television series, a film, literature, or a historical text provides a mirror to a time and

space. The popularity of a book or film, or television show reveals the acceptability of norms and

values at a specific time. Humor, a survival tool for marginalized groups, is an acceptable

channel, especially for Muslim males, to connect with the American audience. The success of

Ramy illustrates that this is what most of the audience wants from their Muslim characters—

someone funny and normal— not an action hero who uses their knowledge and intelligence to

save the day. Everyday depictions of Muslims falling in love, cooking, praying, drinking, playing

hockey with friends, running a cafe, going to a nightclub, wrestling, and dancing have become

engaging stories for the American audience in the twenty-first century. Things that we take for

granted in our everyday lives, which make us human beings, are considered political for

101 Tariq Ramadan, "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim." New Statesman 139, no. 4988 (2010): 22.

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Muslims. In other words, being human beings have become political for Muslims. The barometer

of being a Muslim has sunk to extreme lows.

Is comedy a rite of passage to create a space for more diverse Muslim roles emerging in

the future? On the surface, Ramy keeps American viewers in their comfortable chairs and makes

them laugh; however, cultural expressions can change that landscape. In early 2020, at the

Golden Globe award ceremony, Youssef accepted the award for best actor for his comedy show

and ended the speech with Allah Akbar (God is great). Aymann Ismail writing for The Slate

characterizes his expression as follows:

Wearing his fancy maroon suit and ivory white kicks, Youssef strutted up the stage,

hugged Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, and then said what I'd already been

chanting for him at home: "Allahu akbar. Thank you, God." He said it gently and

redundantly—praising God in first English, then Arabic, so as not to cause alarm at the

Beverly Hilton Ballroom—but that made a world of difference for us Muslim fans

watching from home. 102

For him to proudly claim an everyday Arabic/Islamic expression in his acceptance speech

on a stage that millions of people will watch is an act of resistance. It is a step toward

normalizing Islamic expressions and institutions like a call for prayer or a mosque. Just as the

western audience doesn't associate religious extremism with church bells, a call for prayer needs

to be connected with an everyday religious ritual among Muslims. With normalizing expressions

102 Aymann Ismail, “Ramy Youssef Won a Golgen Globe, Took the Stage, and said ‘Allahu

Akbar.’ That’s Big.” The Slate, Jan 05, 2020

HTTPS://SLATE.COM/CULTURE/2020/0 1/RAMY -YO USSEF- GOLDE N -

GLOBES -SPEECH-A LLAHU -AKBAR. HT ML

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like Allah Akbar, Ramy has the potential to revolutionize the Hollywood landscape and comes

close to the New York Times definition of "revolutionary."103

Conclusion

This article examines Muslim filmmakers' contributions in using artistic expressions to

articulate multiple identities, experiences, histories, and the day-to-day perspectives of their

communities. This documentation acknowledges these storytellers' role in carving out a spot for

Muslim storytellers to claim a space within the fabric of North America.

These artistic expressions reveal a world of possibilities that open up when marginalized

communities pick up pens and cameras to shape their narratives. The stories examined in this

article indicate that Muslims are complex human beings living with trepidation and

contradictions. Muslim storytellers are not trying to depict authentic, positive, or perfect

characters. Instead, these complex and round characters are going through transformations as

they evolve and navigate their path. They are trying to make a living while struggling to maintain

their understanding of the "straight path." For example, in Mooz-Lum, the audience can relate to

Tariq's struggles as he tries to fit in at college; he asks his friends to call him Mr. T. In Signature

Move, Zaynab is unable to communicate with her mother about her queer identity openly.

However, the film celebrates respect and acceptance of queer sexuality in its terms, which are

not solely American, Pakistani, or Mexican. Last but not least, Ramy and his friends are trying to

walk on a "straight path," but they are constantly giving in to their temptations.

The commercial success of these narratives reveals a market for diverse life stories; the

audience will watch them in theaters or streaming outlets. This success sends a signal to the

103 Deb, “‘Ramy’ Is a Quietly Revolutionary Comedy”

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Hollywood industry that there is a space for Muslim narratives; they are profitable, and investors

should invest in them. The Hollywood industry is responding. For example, Disney Plus is

producing a television series based on the comic book "Ms. Marvel," a science fiction adventure

series that features Kamla Khan's life. This superheroine grows up in Jersey City with her

Pakistani immigrant family. Written, directed, and produced by several Muslim artists, including

Bisha Ali, Adil El Arbi, and Bilall Fallah, the film features young Iman Vellani, a young

Canadian-Pakistani Muslim heroine. The series will be premiered in 2021 and will become the

first Muslim character to star in a Marvel series. Disney plus is not the end for this Muslim

superheroine. Marvel Studios is planning to star Vellani in the upcoming Capitan Marvel 2 film.

After Kumail Nanjiani's The Big Sick's massive success, his acting career is expanding in

Hollywood. After starring in several action films, he is featured in the upcoming Marvel film The

Eternals. Rizwan Ahmed, a British Pakistani Muslim actor, writer, activist, and rapper, is also

making waves for being nominated as the best actor for his lead role in The Sound of Metal.

Ahmed follows Mahershala Ali's footsteps, who won awards for best-supporting actors in 2017

and 2019. These actors' success in non-terrorist roles is opening doors for additional Muslim

artists to find a space within Hollywood that was unavailable just a decade ago.

Outside of Hollywood, these stories' success has been instrumental in inspiring a new

generation of storytellers. They are stepping into a place that in the past was guarded by layers of

nepotism and elitism. Innovative and creative work is emerging through grassroots organizing.

"Break the Room," a collaborative space in California, bypasses the established industry and "re-

imagines" a writersʼ room by bringing together emerging writers of impacted communities. One

of its recent projects, East of LaBrea, is a six-episode digital comedy featuring the narrative of

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Black and Bangladeshi Muslim women of working-class neighborhoods of Los Angeles.104

Breaking Fast (2020) is just another feature directed and produced by Mike Mosallam, a Muslim

filmmaker, about celebrating Ramadan with its multipolicy.

"Muslim Women in Film and Television" is another exciting social networking support

group inspired by "Black Women in Hollywood." It emerged over the last two years and

promotes capacity-building among Muslim women, and breaks the dominance of Brown male

Muslim storytellers.

More exciting work is emerging as we speak. Opportunities are also becoming available

through mentorship for younger writers, directors, producers, and actors. With more options,

more diversity of expressions in race, gender, sexuality, class, and opinions will become part of

Hollywood. With this multipolicy of views and characters, there is not just one voice to represent

Islam and Muslims. A cacophony of expressions is changing the landscape. However, as young

filmmakers tell their stories, it is critical to recognize which narratives are still out on the

margins? How can we invite more diverse voices to be part of this growing storytelling Muslim

wave? How can we reach out to communities still left behind?

Most filmmakers are second-generation Americans who tell stories that speak to their

experiences of living in between two worlds. These are important stories that need to be told.

Unfortunately, the voices of many marginalized groups are still unheard. Within the Muslim

diasporic communities, there are multitudes of complicated expressions, specifically the issues of

race and color. As a result, narratives of Black Muslims and persons with dark complexions .

Including South Asians and Arabs are still at the margins. Some activist filmmakers are taking

104 Jamilah King ‘“East of La Brea’ Is Changing How Writers Rooms are Formed,”

Pop Culture Collab, March 19, 2019, https://popcollab.org/east-of-la-brea-is-changing-how-

writers-rooms-are-formed/

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some steps. For example, the second season of Ramy (2020) featured Black Muslims without any

discussion of race and color. East of La Brea started a conversation about race and color, but

more work needs to be done. Women are making strides, but the fantasies of Brown Muslim

males continue to dominate the screen. The mainstream Muslim community continues to shy

away from accepting queer expressions. Prisoners and individuals with mental health issues are

still waiting for their stories to be heard. How can gifted Muslim writers, directors, and producers

continue to bring perspectives of the refugees, sex workers, undocumented youth, taxi drivers,

and laborers to the silver screen, thus widening the circle of storytellers so that more diverse

voices can be heard and seen?

Since the Muslim Diasporic Cinema is still emerging, it is unfathomable what the future

entails. We hope to see more diverse voices coming to the front. However, there is a fear that

Muslim filmmakers' work will become mainstream and lose its edgy politics. Will it follow

Hollywood's action-packed drama mainstream and showcase a Muslim male body filled with

adrenaline to targeting "bad" American bodies, as in American Sniper? Will it become virtual

equality, as Ruby Rich said—meaning, acceptance on the screen but not in the real world? Will

Muslim Diasporic Cinema take on bourgeois aesthetics and become an art-house film—without

affirming any political identity? Even with all these unknowns, the future looks a bit more

colorful than it did twenty years ago. I hope we continue to brighten our horizon by expanding

the rainbow.

Discussion of the Literature

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Primary Sources

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Links to Digital Materials

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Further Reading List

Alsultany, Evelyn, and Ellah Shohat. Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural

Politics of Diaspora. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

Echchaibi, Nabil. "American Muslims and the Media," in The Cambridge Companion to

American Islam Edited by Omid Safi and Juliane Hammer. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2014, 119-139.

Dabashi, Hamid. Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. London: Verso, 2006.

Desai, Jigna. Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. New

York: Routledge, 2004.

Foster, Gwendolyn. Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the

Gaze, Locating Subjectivity. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures.

Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Hassan, Waïl. Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American

and Arab British Literature. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. 2014.

Higbee, Will. Post-Beur Cinema: North African Emigré and Maghrebi-French Filmmaking in

France Since 2000. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

Karim, Jamillah, American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender within the

Ummah. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Kim, Jinah. Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas. Dunham:

Duke University Press, 2019.

Mahdi, Waleed. Arab Americans in Film, From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-

Representation. Syracuse, Syracuse University Press. 2020.

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Martin, Michel. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and Oppositionality

Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1998.

Martin, Michael and Marilyn Yaquinto. "Framing Diaspora in Diasporic Cinema: Concepts and

Thematic Concerns" Black Camera, 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2007), 22.

Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2001.

Naficy, Hamid, and Gabriel Teshome. Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the

Imagined and the Imaged. London, New York, Routledge, 2018.

Najjar, Michael. Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the

Present. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2015.

Omidvar, Iraj, and Anne Richards. Muslims and American Popular Culture. Santa Barbara, CA:

Praeger, 2014.

http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=Edinburgh&isbn=9780313379

635.

Prabhu, Anjali. Contemporary Cinema of Africa and the Diaspora. Corby: Oxford University

Press, 2014.

Rashid, Hussein, "Muslims in film and Muslim filmmaking in the United States." in The Oxford

Handbook of American Islam. Edited by Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad. Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 2014, 459-473.

Rich, Ruby. New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut. Durham: Duke Univ. Press. 2013.

Ricci, Daniela, Melissa Thackway, Alexie Tcheuyap. African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of

Reconstruction. East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2020.

Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Wright, Michelle. Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Notes