Cure for 'Islamophobia'? Fox Orders Pilot of Muslim Family Sitcom

Here it is at last: the long-desired Muslim family situation comedy that is going to cure “Islamophobia” by showing racist, ignorant, xenophobic Americans that, hey, Muslims are just like us. Deadline Hollywood reported last week:

Fox has given a late pilot order to Chad: An American Boy, a single-camera Middle Eastern family comedy co-created by and starring Saturday Night Live alumna Nasim Pedrad and directed by Jason Winer.

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[A] 14-year-old boy (Pedrad) in the throes of adolescence is tasked with being the man of the house, which leaves him with all the responsibilities of being an adult without any of the perks.

Pedrad is actually a 34-year-old woman. She made the intention of the show abundantly clear:

I’m thrilled to be able to portray a Middle Eastern family not working for or against Jack Bauer on network TV.

This show has been a long time coming. Katie Couric called for it during the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, saying that America needed a Muslim Cosby Show. Now that Bill Cosby is so resoundingly discredited, Reza Aslan, with his typical clumsiness, called for a Muslim All in the Family, apparently not realizing that the central character of that show was held up as a bigoted object of ridicule.

But clearly both calls meant the same thing: if Americans could just see Muslims outside of the context of jihad terrorism, they would love them, and “Islamophobia” would evanesce.

Then Barack Obama said last week at the Islamic Society of Baltimore:

Our TV shows should have Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security.

The fallacy of this reasoning? When The Cosby Show aired, there were no international black terror groups mounting terror attacks in the U.S. and around the world, boasting of their imminent conquest of the country. The suspicion that Americans have of Islam comes from jihad terror and Islamic supremacism, not from racism and bigotry.

Americans know this distinction despite the best efforts of Couric, Aslan, and others to obscure it, to make people feel guilt for opposing jihad terror. Some slick TV show depicting funny, warm, attractive, cuddly Muslims would not end jihad terror, or blunt concern about it — it would only serve to further the idea that resisting jihad violence was somehow “bigoted.”

Nonetheless, now we have it. Will it work? Will it make Americans drop their concerns about jihad terror? Unlikely. The whole idea that Muslims are threatened, harassed, and discriminated against in the U.S. is a creation of the Islamic advocacy industry, which knows well how well it pays to be a victim in the U.S. today.

Those groups — Hamas-linked CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, and the rest — will still need to play the victimhood game even while this sitcom is running, and after its run has ended. So we will continue to see fake hate crimes and claims of discrimination, and the failure of this show to stem the tide of “Islamophobia” will be touted as a reason why Muslims deserve special privileges and the further weakening of counter-terror measures.

Meanwhile, how a 34-year-old woman is going to be convincing playing a 14-year-old boy is an open question, but whether or not Nasim Pedrad can pull it off, it is noteworthy that this Muslim sitcom will feature a 14-year-old boy who has to serve as the man of the house. That suggests that it will not feature the individual who is the center and dominant figure of most real Muslim families: an adult male.

That makes it likely that the show will not depict in any remotely realistic manner the way women are treated in observant Muslim homes.

Given the purpose of this project, that is not surprising at all. The point of the show is not to be realistic, but to convince Americans of a certain point of view. To make them think that the real victims of the Fort Hood, Boston, Garland, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino jihad terror attacks, and so many other failed jihad terror plots all around the country, are Muslims, and that they need to be treated with a particular solicitude in the face of the rising tide of “Islamophobia.”

If it is successful, it will have the effect, as all anti-“Islamophobia” initiatives, of intimidating Americans into thinking it somehow wrong and “bigoted” to oppose jihad terror. Meanwhile, the jihadis will continue their work.