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Ottawa Students Use Satire to Battle ISIL and Highlight Plight of Arab Women
Their Internet show has poked fun at ISIL extremism and parodied a well-known Arabic Tide commercial with bearded men in the washerwomen roles.
See the video <a href=”http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawa-students-use-satire-to-battle-isil-and-highlight-plight-of-arab-women”>here</a>
Their satire has targeted sexual harassment and social degradation of women in the Arab world.
But not everyone in the audience has been amused.
“May God hand me your neck,” wrote one disgruntled Syrian viewer.
And why, wrote another, are you insulting men?
The three young Muslim students who created The Weekly Show all came to Canada in their late teens after living in various parts of the Arab world.
Director Maher Barghouthi, 23, was raised in the West Bank city of Ramallah; the host Anas Marwah, 22, was born in Syria and raised in Saudi Arabia (“because the Syrian regime didn’t like my father”) and the main actor Nader Kawash is a Palestinian raised in Syria.
Inspired by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, the trio and half a dozen occasional cast members are attempting to bring satire into places and minds that have never experienced it.
“We are trying to take the best of this world and introduce it to the Middle East and bring the best of the Middle East and introduce it to this world,’ says Barghouthi, a Carleton University biology student.
Prime among the trio’s target audience are Canadian Muslims in their own age group – the same young western Muslims that ISIL has in its sights.
“ISIS has been able to get wide attention across the world by using very slick videos made by highly qualified people,” says Marwah. “By making people laugh we hope our message will sink in.
“Our message (to young Muslims) is that ISIS is using Islam in a sick way – using it as an excuse to kill people,” says Carleton political management student Marwah. “They are going after your emotions. Canada is a beautiful country, don’t let this stuff spoil it for you.”
Marwah says he has seen no evidence in his circle of friends that the ISIL message is resonating.
“For all of us, I think to know that someone would want to kill people in the name of our religion is frustrating,” he says.
Young Muslims who are members of street gangs are the most susceptible, he adds.
“They get to go to Syria, where there is no law and get to be part of a gang and kill people using real weapons.”
But any message delivered to young people is lost if it isn’t delivered through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or other social media, says Kawash, an electrical engineering student at University of Ottawa.
“This is the easiest way to send the message that ISIS is extremist and you can’t kill somebody just because they don’t agree with you.”
None of the three claims to be an Islamic expert but, adds Kawash, “perhaps we can cause Muslims to ask questions of those who are.”
The Weekly Show, available on YouTube in English and Arabic, grew from a pre-ISIL political satire they began a year ago to ridicule the ruling Syrian regime.
Their most-watched episode reached 150,000 people – most, likely Arab diaspora, in Canada and the United States. But people in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon have also been tuning in since The Weekly Show first aired two months ago.
None of the group has any formal film or broadcast training and have learned – are learning – the finer points of production as they work.
And while someone threatening beheading might be unsettling to some, the three take it in their stride.
“We take negative feedback as constructive criticism,” says Barghouthi. “It means they are getting the message. By spotlighting issues such as sexual harassment, which is high in the Arab world, we hope it will make people change.”
But the Weekly Show’s bottom line is to make people laugh, adds Marwah: “If people choose to take it so seriously, it’s up to them.”
Photographs of Jon Stewart and his set adorn the basement wall at Marwah’s Barrhaven home where the trio does its production work.
It’s for inspiration.
“We usually ask ourselves, ‘What would Jon Stewart do?’” he says.
The trio’s ambition is to have a TV show that beams directly into the Arab world where they figure a potential audience of millions could be there for the taking.
Egyptian TV satirist Bassem Youssef who drew audiences in the tens of millions is their Arab world inspiration. Known as Egypt’s Jon Stewart, Youssef’s show was cancelled earlier this year after official and unofficial complaints that he was, among other sins, insulting Islam.
“Satire is not known in most of the Arab world,” says Barghouthi. “We are trying to bring something to the Middle East that didn’t exist before.”
Marwah points to the Stewart studio on his wall.
“And we would like a set like that,’ he says.
Chris Cobb
Ottawa Citizen