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Comedian Aasif Mandvi is attempting to challenge stereotypes and misinformation about Muslims with a new web series called “Halal in the Family.” A parody of the quintessential American sitcom “All In The Family,” “Halal” follows the lives of an “all-American Muslim” family, with Mandvi starring as the dad. Each of the show’s four planned episodes focuses on a different challenge facing the American Muslim community today – like government surveillance and spying; online bullying and hate networks; media bias; and “the use of anti-Muslim prejudice for political gain.”
Mandvi, who has raised $35,121for the production through indiegogo.com, is now trying to crowdfund money to cover the costs of promoting the new show. He wants to make sure the show reaches Americans who have “little to no exposure” to Muslims. “By using satire,” wrote Mandvi in his Indiegogo appeal, “we will encourage people to reconsider their assumptions about Muslims while providing a balm to those experiencing anti-Muslim bias.
“In order to change the conversation about Muslims in American media we need a diverse, unified movement of people who are willing to take a stand against anti-Muslim bias,” Mandvi further wrote. “By fueling a portion of this project with donations from across the country we will demonstrate that thousands of people are fed up with the treatment of American Muslims.”
Unfavorable views of Islam and its followers are at an all-time high, Mandvi says, citing a 2014 survey by the Arab American Institute which reports that only 27 percent of Americans have positive views of Muslims.
In his Indiegogo appeal, Mandvi uses other data and surveys to drive home the point. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a special NYPD unit monitored Muslims across the New York region for over 10 years. However, this spying led to zero leads, the center said.
Meanwhile the 2014 Arab American Institute survey, found that Americans who say they know either Arabs or Muslims have significantly higher favorable attitudes towards both.
The web series traces its roots back to a “Daily Show” skit called “The Qu’osby Show,” a parody of “The Cosby Show.” That parody first aired in 2011, and was originally called “The Qu’Osby Show.” Starring Mandvi and Sakina Jaffrey, it crammed all the elements of American comedy into one Muslim package -nosy neighbors, ugly sweaters, lots of pork, and country music, NBC News reported.
Later, Mandvi was approached by community organizations to create something they could use to combat racism and bigotry towards Muslim Americans. So he revamped the original parody as a web series, renamed it “Halal in the Family” after the controversy around Bill Cosby emerged, and took the project to Indiegogo to build a broad base of community support across the country.
“We wanted to create the web series to use satire and comedy as a way to shed light on some important issues and make people laugh,” Mandvi told NBC.
In an earlier interview with HuffPost Live, Mandvi admitted he isn’t the most devout of Muslims. Still, he said, religion will always be a part of his identity.
“Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it’s culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with,” he said.
