Me and the Mosque By Zarqa Nawaz, author and director (National Film Board of Canada, 2005. 52 minutes.)

Abstract

Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian Muslim filmmaker who lives with her family in
Regina, Saskatchewan. There are any number of comments that could be
inserted at this point. Having spent time on both the Saskatchewan and
Manitoba prairies, I note only that Zarqa is developing a television series for
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation entitled “Little Mosque on the
Prairie.” She has made two earlier short films, BBQ Muslims and Death
Threat. Information about those films, as well as about Zarqa, can be found
on her website, Fundamentalist Films, available at www.fundamentalistfilms.
com.
Me and the Mosque, her first documentary, is distributed by the National
Film Board of Canada. The film is directly related to her own concerns as a
Muslim woman, namely, as to space available to her in the mosque. The film
begins on a light-hearted note (as does her web site, with the tag line of “putting
the fun back into fundamentalism”) with Muslim comic Azhar Usman
joking about the lack of appropriate space available in mosques for Muslim
women.
The documentary traverses mosques in Canada and the United States,
such including places as Aurora, Illinois; Mississauga, Ontario; Winnipeg,
Manitoba; Regina, Saskatchewan; Surrey, British Columbia; and Morgantown,
West Virginia. It includes the voices of established scholars, among
them Asma Barlas, Umar Abd-Allah, and Aminah McCloud, alongside the
newer scholarly voices of Aisha Geissinger, Jasmine Zine, and Itrath Syed.
In addition, there is a wide range of interviews with people from the Muslim
community, from such activists as Asra Nomani and Aminah Assilmi to such
scholars as Abdullah Adhami and Tareq Suwaidan.
As mentioned above, the film begins on a humorous note with the comedy
of Azhar Usman (of “Allah Made Me Funny” fame). However, what he
jokes about, the nice “dungeons” that many people mention when they talk
about the basements where some mosques give space to women, is no laughing
matter. The film then moves to the mosque in Aurora to begin its discussion
of these issues. I would like to think that this is Zarqa’s subtle homage
to another Canadian filmmaker, Mike Myers, who bases his fictional character,
Wayne Campbell, in Aurora. Zarqa then mentions her upbringing in
Toronto and contrasts the mosque that she attended (the Jami’ Mosque) while ...