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Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?

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Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Ruqayyah
05/09/02 at 23:47:22
[slm]

So did anyone catch the PBS program on Muslims tonite? I only saw the 1st hour, but what i saw was pretty good! I was especially inspired by the ob/gyn physician from malaysia!  :-*

[wlm]
Ruqayyah
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
bhaloo
05/10/02 at 01:00:57
[slm]

I saw the program yesterday, I thought it was pretty good, I liked how they had some intelligent people on the show.  I didn't like the group they had from New York though.  It was a very positive program, explaining the Muslim concern.   I liked the Muslims they had in Turkey explaining what they are going through.  It makes me mad to see how screwed up Turkey is, preventing Muslims from practicing their religion, banning women from the Univeristy because they wear what they are commanded to wear, hijab.

The people they had in Malaysia and NIgeria were wonderful as well, alhumdullilah.  
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
jannah
05/10/02 at 01:15:15
salam,
umm question to the albanyians... was this show preempted here or something??? what was on was some stupid thing about iran and terror...
?? what happenned to the thing.. or was i watching at the wrong time/day?? i donno anymore
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
counterplex
05/10/02 at 01:54:12
[slm]
Methinx it is a good idea to identify a few people from the forums with tv capture cards who can capture such tv shows and make them available on jannah.org.  I missed it and didn't know about it and so feel deprived :(

My $0.02
[wlm]
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
AyeshaZ
05/10/02 at 10:42:42
[quote author=jannah link=board=media;num=1021007344;start=0#2 date=05/10/02 at 01:15:15]salam,
umm question to the albanyians... was this show preempted here or something??? what was on was some stupid thing about iran and terror...
?? what happenned to the thing.. or was i watching at the wrong time/day?? i donno anymore[/quote]

Well I am not an albanyian but the whole Iran thing threw me off. There were certain things that really bugged me, the whole feminism ordeal.. I really loved the Malay OB/Gyn , the Turkish sisters but the other Malay feminist sister had some weird interpretations. The New york group  :(
I felt that some of the people were picking and choosing. However, it did remind me of the precarious situation Muslims are living in and the deviation from Islam.
It was kinda sad when they said that Nigeria was a Center of trade and now it is just the opposite.

Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Saffiyah
05/10/02 at 11:28:19
[slm]

I did post something up at the House of Kabob about this programme even though I am in the UK and haven't seen it  :D...If u have missed it I think it will be shown again

Check out the webpage http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/
for more info...I think u can find out when it will be shown again in ur local area...there's also a transcript that will be available 7-10 days after the show. Theres a lot of other features on this website..u can watch parts of the interview by downloading it and theirs all these other links that i haven't had time to look at..Hopefully u won't feel so deprived counterplex  ;)
Inshallah I hope that helps

Your Sister in Islam
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Ruqayyah
05/15/02 at 12:35:55
[slm]

I got to watch the 2nd hour of the show the other day (my dad was nice to tape it for me  ;D) The new york group, consisting basically of that one saudi woman, was interesting, b/c I have to admit that i kept thinking if my opinion of her would have changed had she worn hijab. Because what she was doing, by going out to schools and talking to kids about islam and breaking down misconceptions is a great thing, mashallah. And it seems, by watching her conversation w/ her father that she cares a great deal about Islam. And it's true that people can just look at a woman and b/c she wears hijab, it's assumed she's religious whereas a woman who isn't wearing it, isn't and everyone knows exceptions to that "rule".  

They referred to the new york group as a group of "professionals" and part of me wished that they had showed women who covered as part of of the "professional" group, just so people could see that you can still be covered and professional, like they did w/ the Malaysian woman doctor.

The other person who i thought was interesting was the young African American girl who was the daughter of that lady aminah mccloud? (i think that's her name) who expressed a lot of anger over the fact that the other muslims a generation or so ago didn't help out the african american muslims in this country, and so she felt like, why should we help them now?  A little sad to see that she couldn't just put that behind her and choose to make the first step towards bridging that gap and just help the muslims out now. What good does it do to continue that cycle of disunity?

Those are my 2 cents for now, i'll be expectin the albanyians to reply tomorrow night  ;)
[wlm]
Ruqayyah
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Ruqayyah
05/15/02 at 18:48:05
[slm]

Oh the other thing i forgot, was that I did NOT like how the saudi woman from NY said that "hijab wasn't required, it's a choice". That was my one big complaint about that segment. If she's going to be out there telling people about islam then she should get her facts straight and not let her personal biases play into it. She could have just as easily said that covering is part of the faith and it's a woman's choice whether or not she'll do that, just as it is her choice to pray and fast, etc.

[wlm]
Ruqayyah
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
salik
05/16/02 at 15:38:23
[slm]
I received an email from Astrolabe media saying this program is avaiable for sale. It available either in 2 VHS casettes or 1 DVD. Astrolabe media website is at http://www.astrolabepictures.com/
[slm]
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Ruqayyah
05/17/02 at 02:25:00
[slm]

I went to the pbs website to look at the additional resources they had about their program, and there's a discussion board, and what i saw really saddened me. there were a number of people who posted on there, saying that they were disappointed in pbs showing "propaganda" that islam is a peaceful religion.  there were quite a few who could not believe that pbs would be so "soft" on islam. :(  

I think it might be a good idea to add our own thoughts on the message board about what Islam is really about, or at least send a note of thanks to pbs for showing the program.

[wlm]
Ruqayyah
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Kathy
05/17/02 at 12:04:40
[quote author=Ruqayyah link=board=kabob;num=1021090981;start=0#9 date=05/17/02 at 02:25:00] I think it might be a good idea to add our own thoughts on the message board about what Islam is really about, [/quote]
[wlm]
I could not find it- could you please post the url?
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
Saffiyah
05/17/02 at 19:55:17
[slm]

The discussion Sr. Ruqayyah was talking about can be found here...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/talk/

Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
mwishka
05/17/02 at 22:07:37
hmmmm.......    i had a rather different take on that show.  i didn't care for it.  i found it to be a sort of underhanded and circuitous means of expressing an overall negative impression of islam.
 
what i think they did with it was kind of what thomas friedman does in his columns - constructs every article he writes along an identical framework in which he thinks he tricks people into thinking he just presented both sides of some issue.  i believe that HE believes he manages to set some people up to think maybe he just gave them something new or substantial to think about.  i think that's what this show thought it did, too.
 
i was looking forward to seeing lots of different kinds of muslim people from around the world.  hmmm...did i?  almost, but not quite.  though i really enjoyed seeing the families they showed, it was only a select representation.  somebody chose the countries and people represented quite carefully, leaving out a lot of people and places.  and when in the beginning it seemed they were trying to give a real perspective on islam as a body of knowledge and experience, what i think they were really setting up was a perspective on islamic law only, almost in the western sense of a legal system, leaving out the idea that islamic law is lived from the inside out.  (i'm trying to say this as best i can, without getting into things i don't know very well....)    

then the show wove its way through the lives of a small range of muslim cultures and ethnicities.  but, always, it was the conflicts these individuals and groups of individuals had with islamic law that was the thread being followed.  in the end, i felt i had been led through not an experience of the richness of muslim life through the practice of islam, but through a bunch of court cases, strung together in a script written by lawyers.

it's a little bit hard for me to go back to remember what i thought about islam before i knew even as much as i know now, but i think it was more of a blankness, a lack of any kinds of ideas about what it meant as a practice and an essential way of life.  but i tried anyway to imagine what people in my lab, or in my family, who seem to be in that blank place about islam, would think after watching this.  i think that the general impression they would get is that there are only small areas of cohesiveness to islam as a religion, and that it is a fractured religion in which even those who practice it can't agree on what it means to be muslim.

well, this is just how it struck me.  i guess i'd been hoping for something deeper and more beautiful, aesthete that i am.   ;)


mwishka
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
sofia
05/18/02 at 14:12:01
As-salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullah -

I only saw the first half at a friend's, but I have to agree with mwishka.  Seemed pretty good on the surface...

Although I agree that the African-American sister had extremely valid points to make about the divide between African-American Muslims and immigrant Muslims, I hope we can move beyond the "You didn't help me, so I'll walk on by and not help you either" mentality.  

Did anyone notice the recurring (trying to be subtle, but not really) theme of how negatively the West is seen in Muslim countries?  That topic was the only part of the Malaysian (I think) imam's khutbah that was translated...it seemed that was the real message that was trying to be conveyed.
05/18/02 at 14:12:51
sofia
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
siddiqui
05/23/02 at 13:19:52
[slm]
The show was a disappointment as a whole, projecting a negative image of Muslims (no wonder it got so much   money from 'charitable ' foundation's)
It   focused on The Muslim worlds 'antipathy' to the west while fleetingly touching on the causes for it.
It did provide an opportunity for retrospection at least regarding the portrayal of the  state of Muslim women by the media , coming from the Indo pak region some of this wasn’t a new thing and atrocities are quiet rampant even in Muslim societies though not limited to them, and also the various facets and repression Muslims go through in their own countries
I think the highlight was the joy of seeing so many brothers and sisters around the world ,and of course the malay and Turkish sisters.


I think the time has come for us Muslims to be MOMIN's too.
Please pray for me
[wlm]
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
jannah
05/23/02 at 13:45:54
salam,

yup i didn't like it at all either.. i found it very problematic on the whole. It seemed to be an examination of how Muslims are trying to implement shari'ah across the world in opposition to western "modern law and culture".  It included the usual questions of how to interpret laws in modern times and all that modern vs traditional, islam vs "liberalism" vs all that wack stuff some ppl do in the name of islam all mixed in there for good measure. it had minimal information on islam and what muslims believe and how average muslims are trying to practice their religion as mwishka mentioned.   anything positive was cancelled out by something else i noticed... strange

on the whole i think we can learn 2 things from this show. one that the "western" world is watching the Muslim world quite closely. two is that they know nothing about the greatness of islamic law and how it works (i think they are quite terrified of it because they just don't understand it).

i sometimes wonder if non-muslims will ever be able to understand/portray islam the way it really is since they are always coming at it from an outside worldview. i think it takes a complete shift of one's mindset from the beginning or complete objectivity --which i think they attempted but were not successful because maybe they don't even realize their own prejudices/misunderstandings.
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
bhaloo
05/24/02 at 09:19:30
[slm]

[quote author=jannah link=board=kabob;num=1021090981;start=15#15 date=05/23/02 at 13:45:54]i sometimes wonder if non-muslims will ever be able to understand/portray islam the way it really is since they are always coming at it from an outside worldview. i think it takes a complete shift of one's mindset from the beginning or complete objectivity --which i think they attempted but were not successful because maybe they don't even realize their own prejudices/misunderstandings. [/quote]

This is exactly one of the reasons why i try and avoid ALL books written by non-Muslim authors when it comes to Islam because they don't understand or have a clue.  
Re: Anyone catch PBS-Muslims tonite?
jannah
05/24/02 at 17:37:28
I wouldn't go that far... I think that an outside view is important so that we can get a fresh prespective now and then. We can't live in isolation forever. It's interesting that 9/11 has forced us to be out in the open now instead of always 'lurking' in society...


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