Intercultural Education,

Vol. 18, No. 4, October 2007, pp. 379–382

An interview with Zarqa Nawaz

Jasmin Zinea*, Lisa K. Taylorb and Hilary E. Davisc
aWilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada; bBishop’s University, Quebec, Canada;
cAtkinson College, York University, Toronto, Canada
JasminZine
jzine99@yahoo.com
Intercultural
10.1080/14675980701605378
CEJI_A_260389.sgm
1467-5986
Original
Taylor
402007
18
000002007
and
&Article
Francis
(print)/1469-8439
Francis
Education (online)

Born in Liverpool, raised in Toronto and now living in Regina with her husband and four
children, Zarqa has worked as a freelance writer/broadcaster with Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC) radio, and in various capacities with CBC Newsworld, CTV’s
Canada AM, and CBC’s The National. Her radio documentary The changing rituals of
death won first prize in the Radio Long Documentary category and the Chairman’s Award
in Radio Production at the Ontario Telefest Awards. In 2005, Nawaz’s documentary entitled
Me and the mosque, a co-production with the National Film Board and the CBC, was
broadcast on CBC’s Rough Cuts. Zarqa is creator of Little mosque on the prairie—an
award-winning series that explores the dynamics of Muslim and non-Muslim relationships
with a comedic twist. She has been recently named one of the ‘ten young visionaries shaping
Islam in America’ by Islamica Magazine and is a recipient of the Outstanding International
Achievement Awards, presented by Women In Film and Television—Toronto.

Jasmin Zine: Have you felt you had to struggle as a female author filmmaker in your
field?
Zarqa Nawaz: For me it was a struggle more with my role as a mother and trying to
find the time to write and create. Because in this career you have to
work until you reach a certain point where you actually start making
money. It’s not like you become a doctor and you start working and
immediately make money. You have to work for a long time in the
field to get credibility and enough skills before you can start either
writing or directing films or creating television shows. So it took
10 years of working, working, and working and making short films
and learning the basics of writing and directing to get to the point
where I am now. And while I was doing this, I was having kids and

*Corresponding author. Department of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University

Avenue, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Canada. Email: jzine@wlu.ca

ISSN 1467-5986 (print)/ISSN 1469-8439 (online)/07/040379–04

© 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14675980701605378
380 Interview

that meant being very disciplined in finding the time. It was so easy
to procrastinate and never let it happen. I had every excuse in the
world because I have four children. So I developed the ability to write
very quickly because unlike some of the male writers—who have the
luxury of time—I never had that luxury. . .So you end up developing
the skill of being able to write very quickly ‘cause you’ve gotta write
it. . .the school bus is coming around the corner at four o’clock. . .there
will be no more time no matter the deadline! There’s no weekend
when you have don’t have a family to look after so you have to learn
to write between this time period when the school bus picks up your
kids in the morning and comes back in the afternoon. . .That’s all the
time you have. You gotta make it work.

JZ: As a documentary filmmaker and television sitcom creator, what would

you say has been the inspiration for your recent work?
ZN: I grew up in Toronto and then we moved to Regina, Saskatchewan
where I have lived for another 10 years. This experience of living in
a small community influenced me. In Regina, the whole commu-
nity has to go to one mosque and everybody has to get along and
has to deal with each other. . .there’s none of this we’re all going to
another mosque. . .I’ll go here, I’ll go there. . .there just isn’t any
alternative. . .So you just have to keep going and you have to perse-
vere and deal with the imam and the men. . .and work towards
change. . .and that was really hard for me. In our mosque we had a
curtain go up in the prayer hall after almost 15 years of women
being able to pray behind the men. So I felt that it was time to
examine the issues of sexism and misogyny within the community
itself as opposed to looking outward. . .at racism projected at the
community. So I traveled the country for a few years and made a
documentary called, Me and the mosque where I talked to Muslim
women about the issue of segregation and separation and how that
was affecting and preventing women from being integrated in the
community. Many of the men who were leading the mosques had
their cultural upbringing in countries that tended to be very patriar-
chal and they came to Canada with this cultural baggage and it was
affecting our mosques. So while I was making Me and the mosque, I
began thinking about what would happen if there was an imam who
didn’t come with that baggage and who was born and raised here in
this country and could relate to the women in a different way and
that’s what inspired Little mosque on the prairie. I wanted the imam
to be born and raised in Canada and who felt he could bring change
to a community because he could understand the people.
There would still be the basic challenges of conservative immigrant
men. . .but this would be balanced with the concerns of first-
 Interview 381

generation Muslim-Canadian men and women. The imam would

have to be diplomatic to deal with both groups and Little mosque
would look at how he does that. So it’s a comedy but deals with real
issues. . .like polygamy or dating or religious accommodation—
these are the issues that the community is struggling through. . .It
isn’t pure comedy; it has drama in it as well. . .it has issues that you
know there are stakes involved in solving in the community. I think
that means there is more heart and more soul to it. . .because
people care about the characters and that gives them an authenticity
that reflects the community where they are coming from.

JZ: Muslim women have to deal with Orientalism and Islamophobia on one
hand but also have to deal with patriarchy within our communities. So do
you find that a constant tension that you’re trying to address?
ZN: Yeah, a lot of people bring up ‘oh you know why are Muslim women
so oppressed’ but, I don’t really feel Muslim women are any more
oppressed than any other religious group or that Islam has been
singled out by men anymore than Christianity or Judaism is. . .I
think any organized religion suffers from the same problem: men! I
think that it’s universal to interpret things in order to maintain tradi-
tion so that it’s a struggle that all women in all religions go through.
But the pervasive notion is that only Muslim women are oppressed
and everybody else is emancipated and this is very false. You have to
bring up statistics and facts in order to get women from other
cultures to realize that it’s the same across the board.

JZ: How has your documentary Me and the mosque been received?
ZN: You know that’s really interesting. . .There has been more silence
to Me and the mosque than for the Little mosque on the prairie. I think
Little mosque has been far more controversial ‘cause it is going places
where Muslims have never gone before whereas, Me and the mosque
uses Muslim men as the authoritative voice. I think because I had
male Muslim scholars comment [in support of women’s rights in the
mosque] that as a result, [conservative] Muslim men had to stay
quiet because they realized that I had covered my bases. I had to be
strategic in not using women [scholars] because conservative
Muslim men could always complain that ‘oh well, she’s not really a
scholar’. So, I specifically went after the men that they recognized as
scholars and that they felt spoke for them. . .It worked because they
were men and they were talking to a very patriarchal conservative
society that only would listen to them. So conservative Muslim men
had to stay quiet because it was clear that I had covered the bases
from the Quran and sunnah and the men had brought up the issues
to bona fide Islamic scholars. So there was this silence because there
382 Interview

was nothing that could be said to challenge it. . .You asked if I made
a deal with patriarchy to do this? Yeah, exactly and I was fine with
that!

JZ: Have you heard of any ways that the documentary might have affected
change in some of the communities you featured?
ZN: I think so. I know one man came up to me because he had ordered
approximately 20 copies because they were building a mosque in
Ohio or somewhere else in the Midwest, and he wanted the men to
see it. So I think that it’s penetrating at a grassroots level in the
community. These men wanted to talk about it and understand
women’s point of view so when I heard this story I thought wow,
people are talking about it and it’s opened up dialogue.