Sunday, May 18, 2008

TV's lighter side of Islam a hit but not everyone's laughing

"GO home, Osama," was not a particularly clever insult. "Go to hell, you educated pigs," was much better, although a little unexpected.

Waleed Aly, a counter-terrorism expert and founding member of the new SBS comedy Salam Cafe, reckons there came a point where the racist insults he received in the street stopped offending him and started making him laugh.

"The funniest thing is the one-liners you get," he said. "How can you compete with comedy like that? After a while it stops being offensive and just starts being funny."

Salam Cafe, the brainchild of the show's regular panel members Mr Aly, Ahmed Imam and Susan Carland, takes a rare look at the funnier side of the issues that affect Muslims.

The show includes regular comedy skits, panel discussions and, disturbingly for Australia's international image, vox pops providing viewers with an insight into some of the inaccurate perceptions of Islam.

A visit to Adelaide by the show's roaming reporter and stand-up comedian Nazeem Hussein revealed some of the misconceptions.

One respondent thought Islam was a country "somewhere in Iraq", while another wasn't sure what Muslims were, asking if they "eat people?"

Ms Carland, a politics academic and a convert to Islam, said she believed the show would appeal to a wider audience because it took the Australian approach of self-deprecation.

"People like the fact that we are willing to laugh at ourselves and our situations," she said.

"You either reclaim what can be a really grim situation with humour or you get frustrated, mad and dejected."

She said the panellists drew on real situations they had faced because of their faith.

"The show isn't about Islam but Muslims," Ms Carland said. "We are trying to show people the human side of the religion because they seem to think we're not human. There's so much ignorance and fear."

With characters such as Uncle Sam, a wildly boisterous tunic-wearing Muslim uncle, and Fatima "Teems", a teenybopper who has frequent clashes with her father, and with segments such as "Where's Osama?" and "Extremist Makeover", the show was bound to ruffle a few feathers.

Although most of the feedback on the show's website was positive, some viewers did not hide their distaste. One comment read: "ur guys just destroying the religion. allah should burn ur guys in hell fire. u bastards."

Another read: "I can't believe SBS are wasting taxpayer dollars on this religious propaganda."

Ms Carland said she was surprised that so much of the feedback was positive. "I expected it to be a lot more 50-50," she said. "We do get emails like, 'I can't believe you Muslims are laughing' but most of what we hear is a lot more positive."

Mr Aly, too, was pleased by the response. "There are a lot of people who are just happy to see Muslims on TV that are not terrorists."

Salam Cafe debuted with 165,000 viewers, slightly more than Newstopia, which previously occupied the Wednesday night timeslot.