From
rich housewives to hoarders to the Kardashian clan, practically every kind of family has received the reality TV treatment — except for American Muslims.
That changes Nov. 13 with the premiere of TLC’s “All-American Muslim.” Advertised with the tagline “One Nation, Under Suspicion,” the eight-part series aims to be an antidote to Islamophobia, documenting five Muslim families in Dearborn, Mich., home to one of the nation’s largest Muslim communities.
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The show’s real-life “cast” features people from diverse lifestyles and viewpoints. One family, the Amens, includes hijab-wearing conservatives and a tattooed woman engaged to an Irish Catholic.
Also featured are a party planner who wants to open her own nightclub despite reservations from a traditionalist male business partner, and a high school football coach who changes his team’s practice schedule to the middle of the night to accommodate the holy month of Ramadan.
All five families in the show are of Arab descent — a choice that Orstein said was deliberate so the show could focus on a microcosm within Dearborn where all the families intersect. Walid, however, thinks the decision was shortsighted.
“That segment of the community is not the sole representative of American Muslim life,” he said, citing the African-American Muslim community that the show neglects.
