Happily Muslim: The Forbidden Media Trope

There’s this great show I’ve been watching. It features a trio of teenage girls, one of whom is Muslim. Her name is Ayah; she is the joker of her group and at home in her own skin. When it’s time to pray at school, she does so during her lunch break and uses an empty classroom. Her two best friends, who aren’t Muslim, stand watch at the door to make sure she doesn’t get disturbed. After school, we see her chatting to her parents at her kitchen table as she does her homework. Before bed, she prays ‘Isha and submits a crucial application to the school of her choice, and hopes for the best…

Let’s pause here for a second. If this all sounds unfamiliar, it’s not because you’re out of the loop. It’s because, not only does this show not exist, but no character like Ayah has ever existed in the history of American film and television.

Ayah’s story, and all it represents, is for the most part quite ordinary. Yet stories such as this continue to be unpalatable and disinteresting to television executives who cannot seem to conceive of a world in which someone is actually, happily Muslim.

Challenge yourself. Scroll through Netflix or Prime and you’ll soon discover just how rare it is to see a Muslim character (male or female), who wears their faith lightly; whose belief in Islam, although unwavering, is simply a minor plot point, as opposed to the entire axis upon which their character is built. That’s because when showrunners insert Muslim characters into their shows in the name of ‘inclusion’, they almost exclusively depict individuals who have a fraught and uneasy relationship with their faith — a faith which they either ultimately abandon entirely or choose to express through a fringe form of fanaticism. This is telling.

Television’s insistence on problematising an individual’s belief in Islam creates a paradigm in which Muslims cannot be seen as full, multifaceted human beings. You are either a practicing Muslim, and therefore a religious cyborg who speaks of nothing but the faith, or you are swinging from a chandelier renouncing God and his Messenger. In both cases, the character’s relationship with their religion — or lack thereof — is the thing that’s front and centre. In film and television, to be Muslim or be associated with Islam, is to leave no room for anything else.

The question of what “counts” as representation here is undoubtedly a tricky one. Because to say that these depictions are entirely misrepresentative is false. The stories of Muslims who struggle with their faith, those who ‘rebel’ or veer towards radicalism should not be erased. Muslims are not a monolith, and the ways in which people adhere to the practice of Islam, of course varies. Yet, for some reason the stories of contention, angst and extremism as they relate to the Muslim experience, are disproportionately represented. These are the stories that consistently get greenlit, receiving funding, awards and critical acclaim. They are also the stories that are most often written without Muslim writers or consultants present.

We see this in other places too. It’s no coincidence that major production studios relegate stories that highlight the joyful, everyday experiences of black identity, in favour of those that rehash black trauma and black pain. In the same way that non-Muslim executives sit in a room and write a script about a Muslim man praying in a toilet cubicle or a Muslim woman breaking her fast with a shot (two things that believe me, are very rare), non-black TV execs default to stories of black people facing and/or overcoming racism, because the only concept of blackness they can conceive of is one that is intrinsically linked to racial injustice and suffering.

Those who make the case about the necessary entertainment value of these more “hard hitting” stories should look towards shows that have broken this mould successfully. Issa Rae’s Insecure is a perfect example. This show does more than offer light-hearted storytelling, it humanises its characters by allowing them to simply be normal. The drama they experience isn’t tied to their relationship with their race or how the world perceives them. Their blackness is neither erased nor obfuscated, it sits at the forefront of their lived experience; but the scope of their humanity exists in tandem with this blackness, not in spite of it.

Shows like Insecure are few and far between, but the stories they offer are vital and revolutionary. They show us that even in a predominantly white society, people of other races and faiths don’t have to constantly be depicted as at odds with who they are. When the right people are given a seat at the table, people of underrepresented backgrounds can be depicted as multifaceted, ordinary and most importantly, happy in their identity.

Does any of this really matter? Although most people would rightfully assert that television is not real life, I think few of us can deny the fact that the content we consume shapes our perception of the real world in subtle and insidious ways. People who don’t meet or encounter Muslims in their day to day life, are forever being told through television and film, not only how different Muslims are to themselves, but how incompatible and out of place they are in a ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’ society. As hostility towards Muslims is growing (and has been growing for years), across the US and Western Europe, we have to question in earnest, the extent to which reductive media tropes help to entrench this bias — building upon, subverting and often warping our understanding of communities that are just trying to get on with their lives.

Depicting someone who is happily Muslim is not about putting identity politics over entertainment value. Nor is it about robbing film and television of vital plot devices. It is about stepping into the reality that Muslim characters (like Muslim people) can both be at peace with their religious identity, whilst also transcending the bounds of that religious identity — particularly as it is seen and caricaturised through the lens of the white gaze. It is about offering these characters, and those watching them, wholeness — a space to be, and be seen, as nuanced, human, mundane and ordinary. Mostly, it is about unlearning the idea ‘representation’ needs to be sensationalistic in order to be palatable, interesting or worth watching.