Every Sunday night at 10 p.m the new hit show All American Muslim appears on TLC.  Since its first premiere I have tuned in and watched the show and so far so good, I just have a few complaints about it .  Now just to give you guys a bit of background information for those who have never seen the show.  It takes place in Dearborn,  I like to refer to it as Arab central in the United States.  In the show we are introduced to different Muslim families who invite us into their homes and lives to see what it truly is to be a Muslim citizen living America.


 What I found to be disappointing in the show would be the fact that some actors gave off the impression that they didn't care about their religion and rarely followed it. Now I'm not saying they should follow it, in the end it's their own decision however the way they are approaching the subject I found to be quite wrong especially on national television. This to me didn't show the difficulties a Muslim citizen has, it only reinforced the stereotype already made by other people. On another note, the show helped the viewers see just how it is possibly to follow Islam while participating in every day events. For example the high school football team at Fordson, the boys decided to fast during their game and practice late at night when they were actually able to eat. This shows how they altered their schedules in order to play an American sport but still stay true to their religion. 

  All in all the only reason I was disappointed in the show is due to the fact that I personally don’t live exactly like some of those actors and I have a different point of vu on Islam.  I now feel as if this show has given a chance to the world to stereotype Muslims even more but in the end everyone is entitled to live their life how they please. The show does show two sides to Islam and how every one chooses to follow it living in America, and that is the only reason I will continue to watch it.

Terry Jones

September 11^th 2010 a Florida pastor found it to be his duty to make an international burn the Quran day where he and others would burn multiple copies of the Quran. Every time I hear the name Terry Jones I associate it with a selfish man planning to burn this sacred document for no reason. Even if Terry used the excuse of 9\11 to do this sinful act, I still don’t see just how this tragic event of 9\11 should lead to the destruction of the Quran. Just like the Bible is a holy book, so is the Quran and just like all Catholics would be offended if someone even mentioned to burn the Bible so would Muslim for the Quran. Therefore it’s clear to see that just the idea of burning this sacred document would lead to many more problems in the world.

Now personally I’ve read the Quran and I do follow my religion, when I hear of a man planning on doing such a horrible thing I was definitely furious. We can take the middle eastern war as an example here, Muslims and Catholics in Lebanon were killed by Israelis and vice-versa however none of these two parties have ever thought of burning one another’s Quran or Torah. When it comes to religion there should be respect no matter what, you’d be surprised as to how much you could offend a person when you decide to disrespect their religion.

What I found to be funny with this whole situation would be how the White House was worried more about what would happen to their troops in Afghanistan if Terry was to go through with the burning of the Quran. This was funny since they worried more about that then how offending this act would be to America’s Muslim society. What was even more ironic was that a pastor was the one committing this sinful act... a pastor.. someone who should find it within himself to respect religions since they strongly believe in their own. All in all Terry Jones did not complete the burning of the Quran, however it doesn’t take an act to offend someone, sometimes all it takes is a thought.

* Might I add in the picture above it's clear to see that he didn't even spell Quran right even though in the picture below he's holding the holy book with the title written correctly on the front... found that to be kind of funny..

Mosque at Ground Zero

                                                                      
The Ground Zero Mosque project has always been a topic that has caught my attention since it was presented in 2010. Initially the mosque was meant to be built two blocks away from the two collapsed twin towers in New York City. Just like a church, a mosque is where Muslims go to pray and reunite in the 'House of God'. This idea to build an Islamic cultural center stirred up a lot of controversy that I personally found unnecessary.

As I mentioned in my previous blog on 9\11 the twin towers were targeted and brought down by a group of Arab extremists. This ties into the Ground Zero Mosque project since the whole debate on whether to build the Islamic cultural center or not revolves around respect. Many find that it would be disrespectful to build a mosque entitled to the Muslims around this area because it was a group of Muslims who had caused this tragedy of 9\11. Now, being a Muslim I don't really see how exactly building a mosque would be disrespectful to the families of 9\11 victims or the society.

A mosque is a pure place where one goes to ask for forgiveness, just because this building will reunite a big group of Muslim shouldn’t be a factor that scares the rest of the people in New York. With that being said I still do understand as to why some people might have negative attitudes towards this project. Clearly 9\11 is still a very sensitive issue to many people and perhaps the medias perception of Muslims made it harder for people to accept the idea of this new building. Although the Ground Zero Mosque project wasn’t put into works, I find that people should stop living in the past and accept changes. The mosque would have been built two blocks away from the twin towers therefore there is still a great distance between both, hence respecting the feelings of those against the project.