What’s up?!?!? After 8 years.

It Will Take More Than a Muslim Cosby Show. Couric’s instincts are right when she draws parallels between Islamophobia and racism. And she is correct in focusing on the role of media and cultural production in that fight. But her Cosby Show proposal is misplaced, both historically and socially. Perhaps what is needed more than another Cosby Show are the lessons learned from the first one.

My latest for Our Shared Future. What’s So Threatening About All-American Muslim?. What the show really is is a threat to the FFA. Here is a popular show that anyone can watch at any time, and it shows that Americans are Americans, regardless of their faith. It’s not very scary. The other option that makes the FFA’s case is to believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in the production of the show for TLC are complicit in a cover-up that millions of Americans who recognize their stories in the episodes are going along with.

The reality of the ‘All-American Muslim’ reality TV show | Wajahat Ali | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. The portrayal of Muslims living their daily lives is not only a welcome relief from the usual tawdry caricatures of Muslims as terrorists, extremists and taxi cab drivers, but it also helps defuse the deep-seated fears and bias that unfairly lumps 1.5 billion members of a faith in with the perverse criminal actions of a few.