Next Sunday is the season finale of All-American Muslim, the TLC cable show that hit the headlines when the Florida Family Association successfully pressured some advertisers not to run commercials on it. I suggested last month (“Be careful about boycotts” and “Empires striking back”) that it wasn’t smart for a minority group, biblical Christians, to push boycotts, because the strategy is likely to turn around and bite us. I didn’t write anything about the program itself because I hadn’t seen it.
Now I have watched it—last night. It would be great to have a falafel of a show, high in protein, complex carbohydrates, and fiber. All-American Muslim, instead, is junk food, full of sugary sentiment. It doesn’t deal with tensions within the Muslim community, as many embrace American freedom but some want to set up Sharia tyranny. Nevertheless, it’s wrong to exert pressure on advertisers to force the show off, for two reasons.
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