Little Mosque on the Prairie

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Little Mosque on the Prairie
Little Mosque on the Prairie logo.
Format	Comedy
Created by	Zarqa Nawaz
Starring	Zaib Shaikh Carlo Rota Sheila McCarthy Sitara Hewitt Manoj Sood Arlene Duncan Debra McGrath Derek McGrath Neil Crone
Country of origin	Canada
No. of episodes	28 (as of March 5, 2008)
Production
Running time	22 mins. (approx)
Broadcast
Original channel	CBC Television
Original run	January 9, 2007 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Little Mosque on the Prairie is a Canadian sitcom on CBC Television, created by Zarqa Nawaz.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Characters 3 Production staff 4 Themes 5 History 6 DVD 7 International syndication 8 United States version 9 Awards 10 Production notes 11 References 12 External links

[edit] Plot

Main article: List of Little Mosque on the Prairie episodes

The series focuses on the Muslim community in the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan (population 14,000). The primary institutions of the community are the local mosque, presided over by imam Amaar Rashid and located in the rented parish hall of the town's Anglican church, and Fatima's Café, a downtown diner run by Fatima Dinssa. The community patriarchs are Yasir Hamoudi, a construction contractor who originally fronted the money to establish the mosque under the pretense that he was renting office space for his business, and Baber Siddiqui, a college economics professor who served as the mosque's temporary imam until Amaar was hired.

The town of Mercy is governed by Mayor Ann Popowicz. Sarah Hamoudi, Yasir's wife, works as a public relations officer in Popowicz's office.

The title alludes to the classic American book and drama series, Little House on the Prairie. The two series are not related (the original true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder's family and writings were Christian based) aside from the direct, albeit slightly modified version, of the title logo.

[edit] Characters

• Amaar Rashid (Zaib Shaikh) - a Toronto lawyer who answers an ad to become the imam at Mercy's mosque, much to the dismay of his family. He tends to support liberal movements within Islam, sometimes putting him in conflict with the more conservative Muslims in the community. Amaar tends to be sarcastic, which he blames on his work as a lawyer.
• Yasir Hamoudi (Carlo Rota) - a contractor who runs his business out of an office at the mosque, he is a practical man who seeks compromise. He puts in an effort to observe his religion, mostly when pressured by his wife or daughter or when he can get something out of it, but he tends to slip up. It is implied that the only reason he helps out with the mosque is because he does not want to lose his free office space. Yasir is a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party of Canada, although more for the networking opportunities than out of any particular interest in being politically active.
• Sarah Hamoudi (Sheila McCarthy) - a former Anglican who works as a public relations agent in the mayor's office, Sarah converted to Islam to marry Yasir. Like her husband, she struggles with Muslim customs and regulations, and is often shown up by their more pious daughter Rayyan.
• Rayyan Hamoudi (Sitara Hewitt) - Yasir and Sarah's 25-year-old daughter, a doctor. She follows Islamic feminism, keeps the sartorial hijab, and takes her religion very seriously. Her Western medical treatments are met with disapproval by Fatima, who uses traditional Nigerian remedies. She is occasionally foiled by her own ambition — in one episode, she insists on being named as the mosque's representative to the local Interfaith Council as her price for letting go of an argument with Amaar, only to discover at her first meeting that the council is really little more than an interfaith bake sale committee.
• Baber Siddiqui (Manoj Sood) - a divorced college economics professor and the most conservative member of the Muslim community in Mercy. His conservatism often conflicts with the wishes of his teenage daughter Layla. He constantly rants and raves and complains about everything, to the point where most of his acquaintances consider him obnoxious. He calls most non-Muslims "imbeciles" and "infidels" and acted as the imam prior to Amaar's arrival in the pilot episode.
• Fatima Dinssa (Arlene Duncan) - A conservative Nigerian immigrant and the widowed owner of a diner, she often conflicts with Fred Tupper, and she hates the Mercy Diner, her competition. She has a son, Jamal (Demetrius Joyette), who appeared in two of the first-season episodes. She is also sarcastic and enjoys engaging in verbal sparring matches.
• Rev. Duncan Magee (Derek McGrath) - the priest of the Anglican Church which also houses the mosque, he is a good friend of Amaar and the two religious leaders often turn to each other for advice. He is liberal, once offering to perform a gay marriage at the church, and is often willing to stand up to the church hierarchy when he believes that it is acting inconsistently with the true message of Christianity. He often laments the sad state of his church and congregation.
• Mayor Ann Popowicz (Debra McGrath) - the mayor of Mercy, who supports the Muslim community in return for their vote. She is primarily concerned with maximizing the perks of her office and minimizing the amount of work that she actually has to do. She has an uncharacteristically wild streak for a woman in middle age, having been known to date members of the Hell's Angels.
• Fred Tupper (Neil Crone) - the local bigot and the host of a talk show on the local radio station, he often equates Muslims to terrorists who want to take over the country. However, at times he finds himself in the awkward position of siding with the Muslim community, as evidenced in the first season. When he isn't on the air, however, he is much more able to interact with the Muslims as individuals — he can be a bit condescending, but he's like that with everyone whether they're Muslim or not — and has had an unrequited crush on Fatima.
• Layla Siddiqui (Aliza Vellani) - Baber's daughter and a representation of an average teenage Muslim girl struggling to find the right balance between her desire to be a good Muslim and her desire for the lifestyle of a regular Canadian teenager who's into music and clothes and boys. She can be rebellious and sarcastic, especially at her father's foibles (she refers to their home as "Baberistan"), but is also very perceptive and insightful.
• Junaid Jaffer, also known as J.J (Stephen Lobo) - Son of Yasir's friend Karim, and possible fiancée of Rayyan, who remembered him as a geeky childhood playmate whom she once pushed out of a tree. She wasn't expecting to meet a handsome, wealthy engineer when first told that Yasir was inviting him over for dinner.
• Joe Peterson (Boyd Banks) - a local farmer and a perpetually troublemaking sidekick of Fred Tupper. Basically a stereotypical hoser, he mostly trades cheap insults with Fred and occasionally causes mayhem by going for a joyride on his tractor.

[edit] Production staff

In addition to Nawaz, the show's writing staff includes Al Rae, Dan Redican, Susan Flanders-Alexander, Rebecca Schechter, Paul Mather, Rob Sheridan and Jackie May. Mather and Sheridan were previously writers for Corner Gas.^[1]

[edit] Themes

While the show does derive some of its humour from exploring the interactions of the Muslims with the non-Muslim townspeople of Mercy, and the contrast of conservative Islamic views (held primarily by the characters of Baber and Fatima) with more liberal interpretations of Islam (as represented by Amaar and Rayyan), at its core the show is essentially a traditional sitcom whose most unique trait is the simple fact of being set among an underrepresented and misunderstood cultural community. Nawaz herself has stated that the show's primary agenda is to be funny, not to be a political platform. She has also stated that she views comedy as one of the most valuable and powerful ways to break down barriers and to encourage dialogue and understanding between cultures.

This is represented by the show's current promotional tagline, "Small town Canada with a little Muslim twist" — the religious angle, while always present, is largely tied to and sometimes even secondary to standard and universal sitcom themes such as family, friends and the humour in everyday life. For example, while the show sometimes tackles storylines with a political edge, such as a character being unable to attend a conference in the United States after being wrongly placed on a no-fly list or the mosque being raided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, even these situations are explored as much for their humour as their politics. The show much more commonly explores purely comedic issues such as whether a Muslim woman still has to cover her hair if the only man who can see her is gay, whether Muslims can curl, whether to haggle with the carpet salesman when buying a prayer rug, or whether a Muslim woman's head scarf is enough to mitigate a bad hair day.

Notably, the series also sidesteps issues of stereotyping by having characters in both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities who cross the entire spectrum of political opinion. Baber and Fatima, who represent conservative views within Islam, are balanced by conservative radio host Fred Tupper among the non-Muslims, while Amaar and Rayyan, who represent Islamic liberalism, are balanced by the liberal Anglican Rev. Magee. The more moderate Yasir and Sarah, who try to be good Muslims but aren't particularly strongly defined by their faith, are balanced among the non-Muslims by Mayor Popowicz, who doesn't care what anybody's religious beliefs are as long as they vote for her on election day.

Television critics have also credited this very combination of an attention-grabbing premise with conventional and familiar sitcom themes as one of the primary reasons that the show successfully retained an audience after its debut.^[2]

Hewitt's character of Rayyan Hamoudi, in particular, has been singled out in the media as a strong and unique role model for young Muslim women — both for her ability to reconcile a commitment to her Muslim faith with a modern, feminist-inspired Western lifestyle and career^[3], and as a fashion icon who dresses in outfits that are religiously appropriate yet stylish, professional and contemporary.^[4]

[edit] History

Unusual for a Canadian television series, Little Mosque received extensive advance publicity in international media, with stories appearing in The New York Times^[5], the Washington Times and the Houston Chronicle, as well as on CNN^[6], NPR^[7] and the BBC^[8].

The show premiered on Tuesday, January 9, 2007, at 8:30 p.m. It airs Wednesdays at 8:00 and repeats the following Monday at 9:00 (all times half an hour later in Newfoundland). The Monday, January 15 broadcast was a repeat of the pilot.

The series premiere drew an audience of 2.1 million^[9] — an exceptionally strong rating for domestic programming in the Canadian television market, and on par with Canadian ratings for popular American series. It was, in fact, the largest audience the CBC had achieved in a decade for an entertainment program. By comparison, Corner Gas, one of the highest-rated Canadian TV shows, attracts just under a million and a half viewers for a typical episode. The second episode, airing against the second night of the much-anticipated season premiere of American Idol in most markets, had 1.2 million viewers^[10], a sharp drop but still a high rating for a Canadian sitcom, and very high for the CBC, which has had trouble garnering large audiences for its scripted programming in recent years.

At the end of the show's season on 7 March 2007, the show attracted 1.1 million viewers, or an average of 1.2 million for the season. CBC Television renewed the show for a second season consisting of 20 episodes, which began airing on October 3, 2007 and continued to attract an average of one million viewers per episode.

CBC renewed the show for a third season on March 7, 2008, which is expected to air in the fall of 2008. No episode number has been released yet.

[edit] DVD

On November 13, 2007, a DVD set containing the series' complete first season was released. The DVD set contains two discs, and retails for $21.99. The set has a few special features such as extended cast interviews and two featurettes, Under the Veil and Behind the Mosque.

The series logo used for the cover art of the DVD does not use the mosque imagery of the televised version, thus rendering it identical to that used by Little House on the Prairie except for the use of the word "Mosque" instead of "House".

[edit] International syndication

On May 8, 2007, it was announced that the show would be airing in France, Switzerland, and Francophone (French-speaking) African countries beginning in July. The French television company Canal+ Group will distribute the show's first season in July to non-subscribers of Canal+, a channel to which viewers must subscribe in order to watch. French voice-actors will dub the show.^[11]

On September 26, 2007, CBC announced that the show would soon air in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Dubai, Finland and Turkey. ^[12] On October 2, 2007, Al Jazeera English confirmed that both the United Arab Emirates and Finland had signed deals to begin airing the series in 2008. ^[13]

According to a promo, starting on June 12, 2008, SRC, CBC's French-language station in Canada, will be airing the show in French under the title La Petite mosquée dans la prairie.^[14]

[edit] United States version

On June 10, 2008, FOX announced that it plans to adapt Little Mosque on the Prairie into a American setting. The show's production company, Westwind, will partner with Fox Television Studios on this version. The deal won't affect the Canadian version if it were to be picked up in the United States by another distributor or network^[15][16].

[edit] Awards

The show was nominated for Best Writing at the 2007 Canadian Comedy Awards. The episode "The Convert" was nominated for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Program or Series and Best Direction in a Comedy Program or Series at the 2007 Gemini Awards. The show was also nominated for Best Television Series - Comedy at the 2007 Directors Guild of Canada Awards.

Internationally, Little Mosque won awards for Best International Television Series and Best Screenplay at the 2007 RomaFictionFest. Canadian federal Member of Parliament Rahim Jaffer, a Muslim, and director Michael Kennedy introduced the program screening.

The show also won the Canada Award for media representation of multiculturalism at the 2007 Gemini Awards, and the 2007 Search for Common Ground Award, an international humanitarian award whose past recipients have included Muhammad Ali, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter.

[edit] Production notes

Although the show is set in Saskatchewan, the actual production is split between Saskatchewan and Ontario. Episodes 1 and 2 were filmed in Regina, but the rest of season one was filmed in the Toronto area. The Novia Cafe, the front of which is used in the show as a stand-in for Fatima's, is located in Regina.

Zaib Shaikh and Aliza Vellani are both Muslims in real life. Sitara Hewitt (Rayyan) is also of partial Pakistani Muslim descent, but was not raised as a practising Muslim. Manoj Sood (Baber) is Punjabi.

Derek and Debra McGrath are not related to each other.

In the episode "The Archdeacon Cometh", the archdeacon mentions having to "shut down a church in Dog River", referencing Canadian sitcom Corner Gas on rival network CTV. Carlo Rota and Sheila McCarthy, in character as Yasir and Sarah, also later appeared in a crossover with Brent (Brent Butt) and Hank (Fred Ewanuick) from Corner Gas on the sketch comedy series Royal Canadian Air Farce, debating the location of Mercy and Dog River (both fictional towns) in relation to each other after Yasir and Sarah bought the gas station and fired Brent.

Guest actors who have appeared on the show include Colin Mochrie, Dan Redican, Samantha Bee, Dave Foley, Maria Vacratsis, Sam Kalilieh, Peter Wildman, Hrant Alianak, Veena Sood, Kathryn Winslow, Patrick McKenna and Tom Jackson, as well as hockey player Darcy Tucker and sportscaster Ron MacLean.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• "Little Mosque on the Prairie" at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with creator Zarqa Nawaz (altmuslim.com)
• Globe and Mail interview with series creator Zarqa Nawaz
• Share your Little Experiences ...
• Little Mosque on the Prairie Forum