TLC has cancelled All-American Muslim, its reality series about an interconnected group of Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan. The show pulled relatively low ratings—even as the show’s buzz reached its height, fewer than a million people were tuning in on Sunday nights. And members of the cast told the Detroit Free Press that TLC explained that the ratings were the reason All-American Muslim wouldn’t be coming back for a second season.
The show was also the subject of a campaign by prominent Islamaphobes. Pamela Geller insisted that the show was offensive because it refused to portray Muslims as extremists, terrorists, and criminals. The Florida Family Association, essentially a one-man front group with a history of running boycotts rather than advancing family values, convinced hardware giant Lowe’s and travel discounter Kayak to drop their advertising on the show. Lowe’s tried to hide behind claims of negative buzz for the show on social media, though there was little evidence of any such chatter that wasn’t inflected by anti-Muslim sentiment, and Kayak’s founder wrote an incoherent attack on the show in response to criticism. Both companies were subject to intense pressure to reinstate their advertising, and music executive Russell Simmons offered to buy up spots on the show, only to find that they were sold out.
I personally believe that while America certainly needs more of the message that Muslims are perfectly normal, average Americans, the fact of the matter is the show was exploitative in a way and I'm not sad to see it go, either. What if the show was called "All American Mixed-Race People" or "All American Jews"?
The fact is that the people who needed the message that Muslims are Americans and proud of it will never, ever listen to them. Putting them on a reality show is at best horribly misguided, and at worst it was guilty of treating Muslims as anything but normal.
Not sorry to see it gone.
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