The Perils of Reality TV (2) - Make Me a Muslim

I wrote earlier in the week about my apprehension about the channel 4 TV mini-series Make Me a Muslim. The media and politics focuses too much on the ideology and theology of Islam, the programme makers had told me. This causes confusion and discord. They wanted to open a discusion about what it is like to live as 'ordinary people' together. I found this stance quite refreshing. As a writer and commentator, I'm very interested in how we can all get along together in this ol' world of ours.

I thought that offering people the chance to live as Muslims, and gaining insight and context about what Muslims do and why might be a Good Thing. I pinned my hopes on the discovery of a shared humanity. Real experiences are much more impactful then dry theory. Alas, this lofty goal was not to be.

The show took several participants from the Harrogate area in Yorkshire, four mentors and three weeks of proposed ritual obedience as its foundations. I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for a journey to unfold. Reality TV is about watching human change, that is why it is so annoyingly compelling. But the participants refused utterly to embark on any kind of voyage, either physical or spiritual. Poor Ajmal Masroor (despite the overhyped goal the voiceover set him to 'restore the moral backbone of Britain') spent most of his time trying to get the participants to live up to their role of participating, rather than being able to offer them insight.

The programme threw the participants into a barrage of physical ritual and practice, without seeming to set the framework for these actions. The basic building blocks of Islam - to believe in a Creator, to aspire to be a better person through physical and spiritual actions, and to build a strong, just, compassionate society - did not appear to feature in the teachings. No wonder the dress code, prayers, fasting, washing and so on, were challenging. Ritual and physical actions are only impactful retrospectively or prospectively i.e., they must look back towards a framework of belief, or they must look forward to achieving change. Otherwise they are meaningless irritants that require effort and change for no reason. And of course human beings utterly dislike doing things for no reason. What became obvious is that as a nation we desperately need context and insight, not parody and ritual.

There was a sense of childish rebellion about the whole thing. Some of the participants protested wilfully, and objected vehemently every step of the way. I don't want to do that, they stamped their feet, on many occasions. Why on earth did you agree to be part of the programme, I thought to myself, when the whole point was to try things out?

Karla, half of a mixed race, mixed faith couple led the rebellion. She had been with her lapsed-Muslim partner for two years, and was still not accepted by his family (a case not uncommon, stemming from cultural reasons more than anything, where families often don't even accept Muslim partners of the same ethnicity. Muslims are not alone in parental disapproval of partners) Despite her partner's lack of religiosity, religion still seemed to lie at the root of problems between them. One imagined that she had agreed to participate just to prove that she was making efforts and that despite this she was still rejected. She screamed at every occasion, showed little effort to gain insight or try things out with the hope of understanding (if not changing herself).

I'm sure no-one, neither the programme makers nor the participants, had any objectives to actually, Make a Muslim (despite the rather tabloid title). It was, rather, an experiment to see what it might be like to live as a Muslim. With this goal in mind, it seemed that other than Luke (a remarkably likeable and charming gay hairdresser with a natural wit) and Hayley (a reflective, thoughtful and considered skin therapist), and a liberal family who wanted their children to experience new things (but who featured little overall), the participants hadn't really grasped that they had signed up to try something new. They appeared to come out of the experiment unchanged, mainly because they hadn't bothered to try. The voiceover gloss at the end of the programme suggesting any changes, was misleading.

It's a shame that an opportunity to create dialogue and connections on a real human level between Muslims and the wider nation we are part of was not milked to the full, and for this I feel saddened. On a lighter note, however, I do have two eye-brow raising hopes. There were some amusing scenes with the 'aladdin's jug' and its uses for bathroom hygiene - whatever did Middle Englad make of this?. (if you're confused, check this post). And I'm also wondering, when will Mohamed and Suleyman, the two supporting Imams, get their own spin-off comedy series?