By Adem Carrol, NY Writer and founder of Muslim Consultative Network
A play about a Pakistani American Muslim family after 9/11 has opened at New York’s Nuyorican Poets Café to considerable acclaim. “The Domestic Crusaders,” by Wajahat Ali, an active Muslim blogger and attorney from Fremont, Calif, unfolds in one day but includes stories that span the lifetimes of three generations of family members.

The action takes place on the birthday of Ghafur, the youngest son, who has come home on college break. He takes the opportunity to announce that he is leaving premed studies to become a history teacher so that he can help correct the lies being spread about Islam.
“You will get the blessings of my work,” the younger son tells his parents.

“We have enough blessings,” says his mother. “You can bless us by becoming a surgeon. You like kids? Become a pediatrician. Teach them Islam as you give them their lollipops.”

As in a sitcom, the family depicted in the play contains compellingly diverse character types. The oldest son Salahuddin is an unmarried playboy, Fatima the daughter has become a student activist who wears a hijab is dating an African-American Muslim. There are the parents and the grandfather. All sorts of hot button topics are discussed and argued-- in amusing and somewhat lawyerly fashion—indeed, the playwright is an attorney at law and one senses this as the play’s argument unfolds.

Exploring cultural expectations and generational divisions within the Muslim family, the play seems to especially resonate with Muslims from immigrant communities. Reviewing the performance, Rabea Chaudhry, Associate Editor of Altmuslimah, has written, “Suddenly, characters that looked like me, talked like me, and even thought like me portrayed the inevitable struggles and triumphs that encompass all human experiences. Suddenly Ali’s play had transformed my personal history into something approachable and relatable, something “universal.”

Though this is hardly Shakespeare or Sophocles, the catharsis provided by this play is nevertheless powerful for some playgoers. Yet some may ask: does this experience of the play depend on one’s relationship to the cultures depicted?

Press releases and the theater program overflow with praise from well- known authors and celebrities, Muslim and non-Muslim, though not as much is heard from newspaper critics. Lorraine Ali writes that the play is “the only one of its kind” and Dalia Mogahed, the White House Advisor on Faith, calls it “a rare window… social and cultural phenomenon.” There are also vague comparisons to “high art.” The playwright’s mentor, Poet Ishmael Reed, asserts Wahajat Ali is “right up there with the best… the Domestic Crusaders should be ranked with family dramas written by Tennessee Williams and Eugene O Neil.”

Be that as it may, and taking into account that we live in a culture of relentless hype, Muslims may take pride in knowing that there is indeed a boom in plays by South Asians, Arabs and other immigrant minorities, as has been the case previously to some extent with the African American community ever since classics like Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun”. Theater groups like www.SouthAsianPlayWrights.org, Shobak, Silk Road Project and the Nibras Theater Collective play important roles in nurturing many talented Muslim performers.

Moreover, Arab American playwrights like Betty Shamieh, Nathalie Handal, Yussef El-Guindi, and Heather Raffo, have discovered that dealing with issues in fictional form, in less intellectual or ideological tems, can reach and inform the Muslim and the wider community more effectively. Many writers are bringing up important issues for discussion –such as Guantanamo, Alienation, and Domestic Violence (as in Meri Kahani (My Story in Urdu/Hindi)—that many mass audiences would normally avoid like the Swine flu, or the FBI.

This cultural explosion is natural response to cultural tensions arising more publicly since the 9/11 tragedy—to use a theatrical expression. And while some of the work is naïve, American Muslims are also beginning to rediscover the amazing richness of literary traditions arising both east and west. The modern mosaic of human expression can be Islamic and profoundly human, at once wise, instructive and questioning. Moreover, most plays add the dimension of immediate human experience—and this direct contact, ranging from a magnetic storyteller in a traditional bazaar, to Western Opera or Rap performance, offers something that the internet cannot, that television will not, convey.

Wajahat Ali has spoken in interviews about looking for universal experience and to reach audiences from all backgrounds. The play itself provides opportunities for discussion and reflection but also lovingly explores the push and pull that takes place in families, with constant shifts in argument, social roles, strategy and relationship taking place among siblings and parents. The play honestly and humorously untangles the crazy spaghetti of family dynamics. It appeals to a mass audience while providing a gently human portrayal of what it means to be an American Muslim. The current run extends through October. Muslims who choose to be there will hear how many different sorts of laughter it elicits. Be there—whoever you may be-- and recognize yourself.

(for more information please visit www.domesticcrusaders.com)