In what is being billed as "the most nuanced and complex view about the [9/11] terror attacks from the American Muslim perspective ever seen on television," TLC's All-American Muslim series -- targeted by some far-right and fundamentalist groups -- on Sunday will explore the direct impact on the lives of Muslim families in Dearborn, MI in the decade since the attacks. Commenting on the episode, titled "The Day the World Changed," the Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson, president of Auburn Seminary in New York, said that it reveals "the pain and suffering [Muslim Americans] have endured, not just once, but twice. ... The first time because terrorists attacked their country on 9/11 and the second time because some fellow Americans turned on them, simply because of their religion, which is absolutely unacceptable." And in an article published by the North Country Gazette in upstate New York, Charles C. Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at Washington's Newseum, called the decision of the Lowe's home-improvement chain and the Kayak travel site to pull their commercials from the program the climax of the "story of the year -- anti-Muslim bigotry in America. In 2011, the anti-Muslim narrative migrated from the right-wing fringe into the mainstream. It's gone so far that even an innocuous television show created to fight stereotypes loses a sponsor because it doesn't portray the very stereotypes it attempts to dispel."

29/12/2011