ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 takes interest in the processes of alternative media transitioning to mainstream media and gaining access to the realm of popular culture. It focuses on the ways in which the media interventions of Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker and television producer Zarqa Nawaz “talk back” to dominant discourses about Muslim identity. Whereas Nawaz began her career as a filmmaker in the margins, she was able to infiltrate mainstream television with her sit-com comedy Little Mosque
on the Prairie, which has challenged dominant portrayals of violent Muslim men and oppressed Muslim women. Nawaz’s work emerges in the context of a renaissance of Arab and Muslim cultural productions post-9/11. Her interventions circulate in the current paradoxical climate of Islamophobia and renewed interest in Islam. Using a textual and visual analysis, as well as excerpts from an interview conducted with Nawaz, the chapter presents the discursive “tactical interventions” that appear in the show (including resignification and using positive images). It addresses the question of lack of self-representation – given that the production staff, the writing staff, and the directors of the show are predominantly non-Muslim, and the ways in which the popularity of the television show carries implications for the emergence of alternative content.
