Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Little Mosque on the Praire

We watched the premiere of Little Mosque on the Praire last night.
I hadn't heard a thing about it, but my husband who is up on his pop culture had read about the show.
Briefly the show is about Muslims living in Sasketchewan, a prairie province of Canada, trying to assimilate into the small town Canadian culture where there is much distrust of foreigners, especially Muslims.
While there were funny points to the show, overall I don't think it's very believable in that it takes ignorance and prejudice to extreme levels by having people respond to the Muslims with outlandish and stupid conclusions. While you may laugh at the first ignorant remark, several in a row brings boredom. Also, not surprisingly, the Muslims are portrayed as nice people who just want the freedom to worship like everyone else and are capable of living in a pluralistic society. Is that realistic? I think past current events(yep) and time will show the Islamic religion to be as intolerant as Christianty is now being made to appear. Which leads me to my next point, actually my husband's, but I saw it too, that Christianity on the show is not evangelical Christianity, but the more liberal mainline denominations who seek unity above all else. Church leaders who spout cliche phrases and speak almost irreverently of the One whom they supposedly serve.
The show reminded me of 7th Heaven. Long on religious culture, short on any true message.
When you take the heart of out of Christianity, which is the cross of Jesus Christ, you are left with feel-good pastors and priests who want to help everyone be whatever they think they should be. Compromise is the word of the day.
So seems that is the way this new Canadian show will go.
I may tune in for further episodes, but my expectations are low.

2 comments:

  1. Having spent several years living in a culture with a strong Muslim influence, I have found that like Christianity, it holds many of the same variations of devotion. While I had students who were "true believers", the majority of them rarely went to the mosque, rarely participated in the fasts but almost always attended the celebrations. Of course we always hear of the extremists, just like it is the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Fallwells who paint the public portraits of Christianity.

    The funniest example was a young lady who would always wear her headscarf and long dress, normally with a black T-shirt or long sleave. One day I noticed her new shirt had a Playboy bunny on it. Like so many, she just had no idea...

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  2. Jonathan, thanks adding your experiences.
    From my perspective, people who claim a religion as their own, yet do not practice it, are content to be in a pluralistic society.

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