Nouman Ali Khan – Using Creative Media to Spread Allahs Message – World Quran Convention
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the challenges of creating creative media and the importance of creating a culture of creativity and innovation. They stress the need for more focus and research on the content to improve its quality and attract audiences. They also discuss the challenges of creating a platform for social media content and the need for a culture of peace and non-resistency. They emphasize the importance of learning the language and creating compelling content for Muslims, writing scripts, and creating a culture of peace and non-resistency. They also discuss the importance of sharia compliance and the need for female-led performance. They encourage viewers to download Durial+ for a better understanding of the Q Delta and encourage them to join them for a journey on bay prep.com.
AI: Summary ©
I wanted to meet filmmakers and producers that,
you know, they have advisors on their panel
before the script writers put a script together.
I wanted to be a secret advisor that
gives Qur'an input into TV shows that
secretly inserts Qur'anic messaging in a show
about a hospital or a show about whatever,
right?
So even if my name isn't out there,
but the Qur'an messaging is sneaking its
way in somehow.
Qur'an Messages Bismillah, wassalatu wassalamu
ala rasulillah, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma
'in, amma ba'd.
I know as you guys are settling back
down, I'm responsible for creating that chaos, but
that's okay, I enjoy chaos.
This session is going to be...
I'm actually really looking forward to this session.
I'm the moderator for this session, and I
will be warning my esteemed panelists that I'm
going to be very annoying and interrupt you
and ask you all kinds of questions, just
so you're mentally prepared not to give a
speech.
I will not allow myself or you to
give a speech.
We're gonna have a conversation, inshallah.
I also, personally, because I've been on many
panels before, and the moderator gives these introductions
to each of the panelists, I'm terrible at
that.
Also, in the spirit of the same hadith,
I would not want to subject you to
that kind of torture that I have been
a part of many years of my life.
One of my favorite memories was when somebody
said, and now I'd like to introduce my
dear Mufti Menk.
And...
I've also been introduced as Brother Luqman before.
Brother Luqman Ali Khan, I didn't know.
And the guy, he was nervous, so he
said, Brother Luqman Ali Khan will be talking
about Surah Nu'man.
So, what I'd first like to do to
kick things off is to have each of
our esteemed panelists, just 30 seconds, say something
about yourselves, not your official bio, just something
about yourselves, inshallah, that I think will get
us started.
As-salamu alaykum, good morning, good afternoon.
My name is Fahmi Fadil.
I'm 42 years old.
I love it.
I run a ministry of communications and digital.
I'm 42, I run a ministry.
Okay, yeah.
As-salamu alaykum.
I'm from Turkey.
My name is Ibrahim.
I'm 42 years old.
I have an experience more than 20 years
in media and my ambition always was creating
content like the dramas.
I have created too many dramas, documentaries, cartoons,
animations throughout my career and I'm trying to
expand my career in this area.
And inshallah, I am very excited to be
a part of this convention from the idea
that President Lokman told me.
Yeah, thanks.
Okay, bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
As-salamu alaykum.
My name is Dan Ismail.
Obviously, I'm from Malaysia.
Basically, you introduced us as Dodo Place but
I would like to share we are also
the founders of Omar and Hana.
Right?
Alhamdulillah.
Credit goes to the team.
An amazing team, alhamdulillah.
Just to share.
Some people don't know.
No, no, no.
I didn't say you could discuss your favorite
episode of Omar and Hana right now.
That time is over.
Let the man speak.
Just to share, it has created huge impact
for Muslims globally.
More than 5 billion views on YouTube, alhamdulillah.
But we see a need for our own
platform and that's why we did Dodo Place.
It's kind of like your Netflix for our
kids, inshallah.
Inshallah.
Excellent.
As-salamu alaykum.
I've moved from here to here.
That's the first thing to notice.
Secondly, my name is Sherif Hassan Al-Banna.
I'm from London.
I'm here in a different hat on the
media panel.
I accidentally became a media entrepreneur.
I don't know how many of you have
heard of a company called Awakening.
Awakening Media.
I...
I'm the founder and CEO of Awakening.
Many of our projects have been received very
well in Malaysia.
Media projects like Sami Yusuf, Maher Zain and
others.
It's a pleasure and honor to be with
you all here.
Alhamdulillah.
Now that I've introduced or they've introduced themselves,
I guess I'll introduce myself.
My name is Norman.
I don't have a real job.
They told me that Hassan is fired so
I took his place.
This conversation, I want it to be as
productive and as insightful as it can be.
I'm going to get right into the questions
that I had pre-prepared and I made
our panelists aware of so they'll share some
of their thoughts.
Let's begin.
What do you believe are the primary challenges
in presenting Islam-inspired messaging through creative media?
Anybody?
Not all at once.
I'll go first.
I think the first thing is they own
it.
I'm talking more on a kid's perspective but
the bigger picture.
We don't own most of them.
I can say a few.
Al-Jazeera, but for kids, name one media
company which we own as Muslims.
Like the equivalent of a PBS Kids or
something like that?
Nickelodeon?
Nickelodeon.
Okay.
Cartoon Network, we don't own any of them.
There are basically 400 million Muslim children in
the world who are consuming content from them.
It's their story.
It's still okay but their narrative doesn't sit
well with us.
I think that's basically I can't blame them
in terms of their narrative because they own
it.
Do you think that the reason for that
is because I know Muslim entrepreneurs all over
the world.
Is this just an area where Muslims haven't
realized this is not just an area of
public responsibility but a really powerful area of
investment?
I believe so.
I think the challenge is a lot of
us, kids, but I guess they saw it
earlier.
They saw it as a market share.
As a market share and implementing the ideas
and agenda.
We have to take control of that.
That's very true.
From that, what it gets me thinking about
is the fact that we often think of
Islamic objectives when we think of them outside
the world of business.
There's our business objectives and then there are
the Islamic objectives.
The fact of the matter is many of
our objectives can have a business outlook.
In fact, they should have a business outlook
because my personal take on this is that
when you do have a business outlook, you're
constantly looking to improve your product, enhance your
product, to understand your consumer, to look at
the trends, to look at what works, to
look at what doesn't work.
If you're only driven by a principle and
you don't take any of that into consideration,
then you cannot see a growth in quality.
There's a stagnation and there's no creativity and
new ideas being tried.
That just comes from the entrepreneurial side of
this.
I do think this is a really powerful
insight that you bring to this conversation.
There isn't investment in this space at least
in creative media.
Children's entertainment media, for example.
There isn't really any serious investment being made
in that space.
You're right.
I would like to give a concrete example.
Before the example, let me explain what I
think about the primary challenges.
I think there are two ways.
One from the audience perspective.
The audience perspective is that we have a
culture of consuming the media and we understand
the media as entertaining, which we don't think
that entertaining is Islamic.
As you say, we separate it from our
daily lives.
It's entertaining, it's media, we consume it.
It's an audience perspective.
That's the culture we consume, the media.
The other point is, from the producer's point
of view, there are two aspects.
One is the level of creativity and the
quality of production.
As a Muslim community, we have a way
to go.
That's for sure.
Our quality of production is low.
The second thing is the shallowness of the
market.
There is no sustainable market.
I used to be the Director General and
Chairman of the TRT.
When I joined, TRT is the Turkish public
broadcaster with 14 TV channels, 6 radio stations.
We created too many content, including TRT for
TV channels and also other dramas.
When I joined TRT in 2013, I decided
to create a drama.
The drama was about the Ottoman history.
No one believed in TRT that it would
get a rating from the audience.
People believed that if it was about good
deeds, only certain people would watch it.
There was no market for it.
No one believed in it.
I asked someone I knew before, who was
a student at that time, to write a
script about it.
Then we asked him to find a producer.
It's a long story.
Then we created that series.
Maybe you have heard of So that was
what was produced.
No one believed that it was going to
be successful.
Because it had never been done before.
If it was a good deed, only certain
people would watch it.
There's almost a supposition that Islamic will probably
be boring.
Yes.
Other thoughts?
I have some thoughts on this too, but
I want to hear from the two of
you.
I'd like to add to that.
I think I think personally, in our own
journey, I think there's a lot more focus
required on the content, not just the platform.
I think we need more reimagination, more reframing
of content, and we definitely need to be
a lot more innovative.
The issue of reimagination, somehow, when it comes
to Islam, and I know we might discuss
this later on, but the aspect of theology,
somehow limits, I believe, our creative horizon.
To link it to Surat al-Insan, the
first verse starts off with essentially evoking our
imagination.
The idea is can you think of a
time?
It's already getting us to think and reimagine.
The issue of repositioning content, sometimes, and I
say this, let's say, from a music label
perspective, a song or a music or a
lyric isn't a mutbah or a book to
be translated into a music video.
This is sometimes how Islamic content is seen.
The focus, yes, it's on the message and
the content, but it also should be on
the way we are framing this content and
the way we're approaching it.
The third is pushing the limits, pushing the
bar.
Although theologically we have a phobia with the
word bid'ah and innovation and we shouldn't
engage in innovation, creatively there is no creativity
without innovation.
I think to reclaim the Quranic paradigm of
innovation, being an innovator is actually resembling or
mirroring a sifat of Allah, of bid'ah,
of bringing things into existence.
Things that didn't come into.
This notion of, I think, our emphasis, again,
because of certain hurdles of why somehow when
it comes to Islamic content creation or value
driven content creation, there seems to be a
mental block around this content and a lot
of it is also around this ideas around
imagination, creativity and innovation.
I don't believe that there is a problem
in creation, but the problem is there is
not enough economic space for entrepreneurs to come
into this space.
Don't you think that's been interrupted now?
TikTokers are making millions of dollars now.
They can create creative content sitting with a
webcam and garner enormous amounts of revenue and
attention, and then they're getting studio deals.
Like there are, for example, comedians that start
their career on social media and then they
get contracts from major producers after they've already
reached the following of the million.
So, there is some disruption happening in this
space too that I think we need to
acknowledge.
But on your note, do you have any
thoughts on this?
Just a quick one.
I think there's a question of content, there's
a question of platform, there's a question of
markets and audiences.
There's also a question of, I think, how
the content gets produced.
I think the challenge for an entity like,
say, Durio Plus, like they came to see
me and then asking for some help.
I think in the Malaysian context, for example,
sometimes the limitation is not in the imagination
that goes into creating the content but it's
where the content can go.
So, I think when you mentioned Omar and
Hana, for example, you know, it's not just
a Malaysian audience, it's a worldwide audience.
So, it's really how do you match some
of these things and also from a regulatory
standpoint, it's making sure that we support in
the Malaysian context the creation of these kind
of platforms but there's got to be more
people, I think, in the Malaysian context, particularly
those who want to challenge this paradigm.
I think there are not enough platforms but
maybe it's not about platforms, maybe it's about
the content and then the content can be
on any platform but the question of our
platform, I think that's an interesting...
One of the things that bothers me about
this is that okay, so we produce content,
you know, even in my work in Bayyina,
there was always conversations, it's been a decade
now, we've had conversations about producing short films,
producing documentaries, producing creative material inspired by the
Quran, even fiction material inspired by the Quran.
One of my crazy, I have all kinds
of crazy thoughts, but one of my crazy
thoughts was I wanted to meet filmmakers and
producers that, you know, they have advisors on
their panel, before the script writers put a
script together, I wanted to be a secret
advisor that gives Quran input into TV shows
that secretly inserts Quranic messaging in a show
about a hospital or a show about whatever.
Right, so even if my name isn't out
there, but the Quran messaging is sneaking its
way in somehow.
But even after all of that, many of
you may be familiar with my work or
the other gentleman in the work that they've
put together, probably on YouTube or some platform
that's owned by not us and that generates
revenue and generates more resources for others and
only partially generates something for ourselves.
So the lack of having our own platform
is actually a pretty serious problem.
I would argue to add to this conversation,
this first question, for me, I think the
biggest challenge is the sustainability of such a
thing.
I'll share this crazy idea which will lead
into the second question.
I'll start with my own.
Back soon after 9-11, there was all
this conversation about Islamic extremism in America and
Europe and Asia and in Central Europe and
Australia, etc, etc.
And all this conversation about are all Muslims
extremists and masjids were being monitored in the
West and all kinds of stuff.
At the time I was like, we need
to discuss these topics, topics like jihad, topics
like da'wah, topics like how is the
Qur'an talking about non-Muslims, topics like
wala and barat.
These are heavy topics and they're very politically
incorrect topics.
So if anybody decides to talk about them
right now, they might get a free one
-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.
It doesn't matter what they have to say,
they'll just get jailed up.
But maybe if this was a TV, because
at the time, astaghfirullah, I watched a movie
and it was 12 Angry Men.
I don't know if you're familiar with 12
Angry Men, a classic film.
It was remade also.
It's 12 jurors.
The whole movie was filmed inside of one
room.
And, you know, 11 of them find the
person guilty and one of them says, I
don't know, I'm not sure.
And by the end of the hour, everybody
believes he's not guilty even though in the
beginning they're very angry at that one person.
And I said, wow, what if we had
a movie or a TV series where a
bunch of people get arrested for terrorism charges,
some correctly arrested, some falsely arrested, and they're
all in the same jail cell, and they're
having a conversation about what Islam means, and
what jihad means, and they're having unfiltered conversations
because they're actors and this is fictional, so
there's no censorship.
It's just let them say whatever they want
to say.
And they can echo the sentiments of all
kinds of groups that are having these conversations
about Islam, and let that all be debated
out in 12 Angry Men style, and how
powerful would that be for young people that
are heading towards an extreme path, and it
would de-radicalize that just by watching these
episodes.
If the script is written well, and it's
taken into consideration from scholars, from psychologists, from
real case studies, from talking to people that
went down an extreme path, and what an
amazing...
But then I thought, okay, where am I
going to find these actors, where am I
going to find the producer, where am I
going to find the crew, and if we
put together a semi-okay product, nobody's going
to watch it if the lead character is
my cousin.
So, to me, that is the obstacle, which
leads me to this next question.
What kinds of creative media would you like
to see emerge for the benefit of both
Muslims and non-Muslims, that further an understanding
of Islam and Muslims?
What kinds of creative media?
I'd like to see that your imagination actually
be realized.
That's just one of my ideas.
I'm sorry I can't fund you, but it's
a great idea.
I think what would be very interesting is,
I've written scripts before.
I've written in my early...
I was in the US when September 11
happened, so I understand completely that mental block,
or that sense of, oh gosh, we should
be talking about this.
I think, if there's one thing, probably, that
would be most interesting is, perhaps we've got
to, how do you say, without it sounding
like, we've got to infiltrate or we've got
to indoctrinate, or we've got to change the
minds of those who write scripts, because fundamentally,
everything that you see, the basis is, it's
still that written someone's writing the script.
So perhaps, what you need is some kind
of like a big, you pull together all
of these very influential writers or thinkers about
writing, and then you convince them that, hey,
look, we've got to change the way people
watch and expect.
You've got me thinking, I'm sure all of
you in your spaces know scriptwriters.
How did they become scriptwriters?
Did they go through, what kind of education
did they get to become scriptwriters?
I was, if I can just, I was
a very cheap scriptwriter.
So...
Is that about your cost?
Cost, I mean, economics.
Okay.
Okay.
For the, again, Ertugrul example, the scriptwriter was
his first drama script.
What did he do before then?
He was trying before.
I knew him, because he's a Muslim guy,
he was trying before, he make any, he
may have had a drama before, but he,
I...
But my question is, what was his professional
background before?
Now, he's coming from media.
For the scriptwriters, the most important thing is
the trial.
So you need to have chances that you
write something, someone put it on the screen,
and then you develop yourself.
Someone needs to invest in you.
I mean, the similar mindset, invest in a
similar mindset will happen.
But, aside from that, there are professional scriptwriters,
script doctors, let's say, so they can go
over every script as a doctor, and then
they change your script.
I want to see a show of hands.
How many of you are in university?
A few of you.
Okay.
Graduated from university already?
Okay, the rest of you.
Okay.
Great.
How many of you studied or pursued your
education or career path that had something to
do with the media?
There's a few hands.
Okay.
This is higher frequency than most countries.
Let me guess, technology careers?
Finance?
Okay, more hands.
What are the rest of you doing?
You can't all be doctors.
My point was, if we're saying creativity is
blocked and the source code for so much
of it is scriptwriting, are we generating a
pathway for young people to say, I can
develop and fine-tune this talent that eventually
I can become a scriptwriter?
Yes, go ahead.
I've been in the industry for quite a
number of years.
We have a lot of talented writers, artists,
the whole spectrum.
The problem, again, goes back to the platform.
Yes.
I'd like to segment this.
Why did Omar Khanna make it?
YouTube is a platform.
You can just put anything and nobody controls
the narrative.
If you put content, it will grow and
the algorithm will pick it up and if
people like it, it can fly.
But, I always ask this question to myself.
There's so many Muslim, and how do you
know there's Muslim writers and producers?
Because if you look at credits in the
movies in Hollywood, there's a lot of Muslim
names.
So there are people there.
But why aren't they doing Islamic content?
Because there's no economic sustainability to it.
And that comes back to the platform.
A Two Girl was by TRT, fine.
They're big, they're huge.
But besides TRT, who else has that power
globally?
Was it easy to get investment for it
to grow?
TRT is a public podcast.
It's fine.
You budgeted.
Was it easy to fight for that budget?
Was it easy to get the budget for
the show?
Yes.
It was easy.
I was deciding.
Oh!
The thing is, only TRT had opportunities at
that time to invest in that kind of
shows.
But, just to add one thing, I think
that rather than trying to create Islamic content,
your ambition has to be to create compelling,
entertaining content as a Muslim.
If you're a Muslim person, you will certainly
embed the values in the content.
The problem is, when we start by thinking
we need to teach Islam, we need to
teach values of Islam, and then create a
content, it becomes a content that is sometimes
boring.
It has to be more creative, engaging, and
compelling content.
Within Islamic messaging, subtext at most, but it's
not overtly Islamic.
My criticism of Islamic creative media is we're
either too Islamic, like it looks like an
Islamic show meant for Muslims, or it's just
really badly done.
For example, there are Islamic TV channels, or
Islamic programs on television, etc.
They all have this really boring overtone to
them.
They'll have the same nasheeds playing all the
time.
Ehhhhhhh.
You already know you don't want to tune
in the rest of the time.
It's not actually entertaining.
It's not entertaining at all.
Our kids, whether it's Ramadan or not Ramadan,
they want to watch the next episode of
the anime show, or they want to watch,
I don't know, a Demon Slayer, or an
Attack on Titan, or something.
You'll see, you're making my point.
But if that wasn't, we're not thinking along
the lines of really getting creative with our
media, with the Islamic messaging embedded.
I'd like to just give one example before
I listen to you.
One of the shows I was very entertained
by, astaghfirullah, was a TV drama called House.
And, yes, astaghfirullah indeed.
So, the reason I really enjoyed House, was
because the premise is a doctor who can
diagnose a problem like no other doctor can.
And all of the other doctors are religious
in some way or the other.
And all of the patients are typically religious
in some way or the other.
And he's constantly making fun of their religion
and their faith in a god.
And he's, like, it was the most successful,
brilliant da'wah campaign for atheism I've ever
seen.
And I should literally observe his dialogue to
see, how is he going to make fun
of the Mormon, the Muslim, the Jew, how
is he gonna come at god in this
episode?
Right?
And because you've already set the premise that
he's smarter than everyone else, then atheism must
be the smartest outlook than any other outlook.
It's brilliant.
Like, for a kufr campaign, it's brilliant.
Right?
And I was like, if that's the house,
what's our version of that?
Because no lecture I do or anybody else
does, no conference, no speech, nothing's gonna reach
the level of viewership a TV show is
going to reach.
That's never going to happen.
We're comparing two different things.
Muslims get happy if a video has a
few hundred thousand views or a million or
two million views.
One single episode of some of these things,
even a music video can have 80, 90
million is low for them.
500 million is low for them.
Like, it could go so much further.
Right?
So, we do have to think about breaking
that barrier.
Hassan?
Actually, your thoughts first?
Just a quick one.
So, in the time that that exchange was
taking place, we were talking about scripts.
So, I just asked Chad GPT to write
me three scripts.
So, I'll just give a write a short
one-minute script for television about a man
and a woman in a room with a
table, a gun, and they're most likely going
to kill each other because of some unknown
previous vendetta.
And then, Chad GPT came up with something
called Shadows in the Past and it wrote
the script.
So, then I said, okay, write a short
one-minute script, same thing as above, but
in the end, one of them declares that
he or she is a Muslim.
So, then it wrote a different iteration.
So, I think what is interesting in today's
world is we haven't even spoken about AI
and the ethics or the challenges or the
opportunities that's presented by some of these, at
the moment, seemingly innocuous, relatively I wouldn't say
neutral, but interesting technology.
And some of the work that's happening, for
example, in some of these areas.
So, I think in terms of writing, may
not be so much of a problem.
I think maybe it's the willingness or the
will to try and take some of these
risks and make this content.
Hassan, you were saying something?
Yeah, I was just going to point on
the actual question in regards to what kind
of creative I don't know why your mic
is cutting out.
Can we check into his mic?
His mic comes in and out.
Is it coming out?
Yeah.
So, the question on what kind of creative
media content platforms we'd like to see in
terms of engaging or Islam-inspired content is
what I understood the question.
And there's a couple of issues that have
just come out which is, A, on defining
Islamic content versus value-based content, which we
always come across.
So, just to respond to a couple of
those.
Firstly, I think in terms of the creative
mediums, the three most powerful medium for creative
content, again, in my opinion, would be music,
films, and animation.
I think the reach of each one of
these sectors is huge.
Untapped potential in a lot of these.
And there is significant potential for sustainability.
That's a different discussion around sustainability.
The second issue around content and Islamic versus
non-Islamic, I think because of our own
experiences give us perspective on what we mean
by faith.
For example, Ibrahim Abe and also Sinan Abe
are in sort of Muslim-majority countries.
But to create Islamic content isn't much of
a sort of an attachment or a need
or a thing because they live in a
Muslim country.
It's about content that is inspired by values.
Coming from Western Muslim perspective, growing up in
whether it's Toronto, San Francisco, London, there is
that vacuum of identity.
And cultural content like this is not just
about generic content that makes us feel good,
but it's about, no, I really want to
see my values, my teachings, my worldview, my
whatever it may be, reflected in this media
content.
So I think there is this sort of
tension between the Muslim majority spaces when we
speak when we look at creating content and
sort of coming from a not necessarily a
diaspora or a minority I'm going to disagree
with you on this one.
Of course, you have every right to do
so.
Totally going to do it.
Thirdly, just to build on that, and I'll
come back to that, I think I probably
I personally, on a marketing level, I see
the marketing value of the word Islamic content,
but on a philosophical level I disagree with
the word Islamic when it comes to content.
Explain.
What I mean is this, is that I
think the adjective Islamic is more an expression
of how modern economies work, especially in our
creative space to start labeling and segmentize audiences
and content.
Islamic content is for Muslims.
Islamic content is for Muslims, Islamic content is
religious, Islamic content is X, Y, and Z
demographics.
Islamic, I speak of the experience of, let's
say, in the music space or the Shiite,
etc.
Music is music.
Although we frame our work as Islamic music,
I actually don't agree with Islamic on this
music side.
Islamic simply because of marketing considerations, because of
positioning considerations.
When we define it as Islamic, I think
Islamic is quite an adjective that has come
to use now, that is used quite widely
around different sectors, Islamic finance, Islamic banking, and
I know Malaysia is home to a lot
of this.
But I think if we mean by Islamic
just Sharia compliance or the fiqh side, then
we're limiting the power of what we mean
by Islam.
So for me, if you're saying, I would
say any content out there that inspires truth,
goodness, beauty, is Islamic, on a philosophical level.
But that kind of proposition doesn't work on
the marketing level, doesn't work on the market
segmentation, sustainability model.
You need to categorize yourself.
Who is your audience of the whole world?
It doesn't work, unfortunately.
It worked with Ertugrul.
The audience was lots of non-Muslims too
for Ertugrul, isn't it?
Yeah, there are many non-Muslim audiences for
Ertugrul.
They were wearing crusades.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had an Alp hat.
Especially from South America.
Yeah, for the people of oppressed countries, let's
say.
They connected with it.
Yeah, they're connected.
So on the note about Muslim minority versus
Muslim country, I've come to Malaysia many times.
I love coming here.
I've been to other Muslim countries.
Something became clear to me after a while.
And what became clear to me is, even
though culturally Islam is the accepted way of
life here.
So a hijab is not weird.
The adhan is not strange.
The food is halal and everybody knows that.
Even the non-Muslims know what halal and
haram is.
But at a psychological level for the youth,
the things that non-Muslim youth go towards
are not very different.
I would argue they're the same that the
Muslim youth are going towards.
And the media that's being consumed by non
-Muslims is actually practically the same media that's
being consumed by Muslims.
I threw out Demon Slayer and a bunch
of people got slayed like, oh!
Because because we're part of a globalized world
now, right?
So my argument is that we have to
expand the scope of Islamic or Islam-inspired
content to be that the messaging is there
and it's abiding by our principles, which is
going to lead me to this.
I'm going to skip a question and come
to this really difficult question.
Issues around music.
Issues around having actors and actresses.
Issues around animation.
And there are Fatawa related to this stuff.
And there are sensitivities around this stuff from
a Sharia perspective.
And for a lot of those reasons, Muslims
will produce cartoons for example with no eyes.
Right?
And you have a kids show with no
eyes.
Which as an adult when I look at
it, I'm terrified.
But I'm trying to convince my child that
this is really good for you.
Right?
Or they've been cartoons of myself, but it
would be un-Islamic for me to be
drawn so my head is floating above my
shoulders.
Because once you draw the neck, it's just
too human.
this kind of thing is something that we,
I think, need clarity.
Because the public you know, you can't expect
the market, the Muslim audiences to consume something
when they feel there's an element of haram
in it.
There's an element of something, it's a sinful
thing to do.
Right?
And I can have my personal fiqh opinions
on it, my own discourse on it, but
until there's a public elaborate conversation on these
few subjects that are, to me, one of
the main obstacles in creative media is actually
what some people consider the Islamic restrictions on
this stuff.
Right?
And I think that needs to be taken
head on but the only way, in my
opinion, the only way that can happen is
not if I give a speech on it
or you give a speech on it or
we write an article about it, that the
only way that can happen is like round
table discussion, debate, unfiltered, let's look at all
the evidences, let's try to understand if somebody
at the end of it all says it's
haram no matter what, then at least we
understand how they arrived at that conclusion.
And if someone says your arguments are weak,
at least we know what arguments they use
and they didn't have a conversation at each
other, but they had a conversation with each
other.
Right?
Because we've become too accustomed to that kind
of a narrative.
This sounds like an episode from 12 Angry
Men.
That's right.
It is, but I do think it's one
of the main obstacles.
Yeah, so, and I'm sure you can all
share stories of when you produced your creative
content, some of the backlash you must have
received because you're entering into creative space that
somebody thinks it's a violation of Islam itself.
I had many, to be honest, I'll give
you one or two of them.
I remember that in 2001, I decided to
produce at that time I started producing cartoons
and animations by the way in a simple
way with Flash and other things, and Islamic
CD at that time and I asked my
very close friend who studied in Turkey if
I can draw cartoons and he said no,
you can't it's haram.
So I changed my friend and found another
friend who said it is halal.
This is how I started.
At PRT, I remember the days that still
there is no fatwa about depicting a woman
that non-Muslim woman in a series with
non-Muslim thoughts on it.
Halal or not?
Usually it says haram.
So when it is your limitation it's impossible
to say anything about the bad things.
And another example from Islamic content which is
a competition Quran Tilabe competition.
It was the first time it happened in
Turkey during my tenure at that time.
But people from the Muslim community were very
against it because we are using Quran as
a way of rating God's talent.
Who is the best Qari?
Who is the best Qari?
Because our teaser was very close to it.
It was close to America's God's talent?
But I had many challenges when creating those
kind of...
What are your thoughts on this, Hasan?
How do we overcome this kind of Sharia
-fiqh based discussion and how do we deal
with it?
I'll respond in two ways.
I'll give you some anecdotes from our own
experience.
And I'll share some thoughts as well.
Two anecdotes.
One over music.
Again, in different parts of the Muslim world,
there's different reactions to music.
Generally speaking, in this part of the world,
Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., there are a lot more
accommodating of the music.
But generally in the world that we navigate
or that we've been navigating, music was taboo.
Music was haram.
Music was one of the grave sins.
Music is outlawed in Bukhari.
The kind of narrative around this.
So that's why it posed us a difficult
challenge as content producers where theologically we didn't
hold that opinion.
We adopted the opinion that it is permissible
within whatever guideline and framework there was.
But the audience wasn't ready.
So the journey that we had actually showed
that it wasn't necessarily the scholars but actually
the content producers that can guide a conversation
even around fiqh and Sharia by the content
that we produce.
To give an example, the first ever album
that we produced 20 years ago now, in
2003, was purely a percussive album.
No music but the full range of percussive
instruments, about 18 different types of percussive instruments.
We went for the limit for the halal
in the conventional sense.
Then we realized with our artists that, you
know what, this is just killing our creativity.
Why can't we use music?
Our issue wasn't the theology of the fiqh
personally but it was the audience, the market,
the standability.
So we decided to produce two versions of
the second album.
This is an album by Sami Yusuf.
A halal version and a...
not so halal version.
Fake, fake.
Anyway, a percussive version and a music version.
We thought and we priced the music version
more expensive than the percussive version.
It costs more to produce with music.
We thought there would be a boycott of
Muslim shops.
We thought there's these mediums by which you
reach the audience.
But because of the demand that was created
by the content, because of the integrity that
the label had in terms of they do
care about Islam.
This company, this brand does try to maintain
some degree of compliance.
There was a degree of confidence in the
market that, look, whatever they bring out, somewhere
they've probably got some backing.
What happened was that we actually ended up
destroying the percussive version, more or less, and
the bookshops only wanted the music version.
These are the same bookshops we would never
have thought.
I'm not going to name any bookshops or
music stores, etc.
So here there is this sort of tension.
The other issue was around music videos and
acting.
What do we put out there?
Do we just put this sort of idealist,
utopian image of what religiosity means, or do
we actually visually express reality as it is?
The reality as it is will have female
without hijabs.
So what do we do?
Instead of trying to seek fatwas for this,
we thought, let's just produce it.
Let's produce it.
Take it with a few scholars that we
have.
It's like a Malaysian saying, do it first,
say sorry later.
Is that a thing here?
We did this.
We did a song called Asma Allah Al
-Husna.
There were different people singing Allah's name, and
there were people of different races, class, hijabis,
non-hijabis, black, white, etc.
We showed it to a Syrian, a leading
Syrian scholar at the time.
We didn't ask him the question.
We just told him to look at it.
And he said, yeah, what's the question?
So the fact that he didn't even pick
up on it.
We didn't seek a formal sort of guidance
on is this allowed?
Can we put non-hijabis on?
So here, I would contend from that that
yes, there is a need for guidance in
terms of fiqh, in terms of sharia, but
I think the way forward for that is
not to create sharia books.
It's not for creative people to go to
sharia experts and ask them, because I think
creativity is about expanding horizons, not limiting.
Fiqh is limiting.
Fiqh ultimately is about boundaries.
So, not that there isn't a fiqh question
here.
There is definitely a fiqh question but part
of that I think is also by...
But maybe the production of that media and
its popularity will force a deeper and richer
fiqh conversation, not the other way around.
Absolutely.
Ismail, what's been your experience with Umar and
Hanna and some of the, perhaps because it's
animation, I'm sure you received some concerns about
it being haram and things like that.
How did your project navigate that?
I'll answer that and then I have points
which I want to bring up.
So, I'll keep this one short.
They have very, very minimum backlash.
Umar and Hanna, alhamdulillah, I guess it's with
the right intentions, right way, we have the
sharia compliance behind us.
Probably the worst thing is probably music and
no music.
But again, we also have both versions available
on YouTube.
Oh, okay.
So, I just want to bring back to
a few points.
One is Islamic versus non-Islamic.
I mean, you mentioned about House and all
these other big content produced around the world.
And you say that the Muslim ones are
kind of like behind and la la la,
which I do agree.
But the main question is why?
And it comes back to budget.
How much does it take to produce a
Pixar movie versus made by Muslim?
And even with AI or whatever you want
to call it, I mean, there's technology that
can help.
But still, the budgets for the Muslim or
maybe the Islamic product, or again, Islamic, but
in terms of the one produced by Muslim,
is very much different.
And again, that comes to my point of
investments into this industry, investments into the platform.
And I think this, to be honest, being
on this panel at the World Quran Convention,
I think is amazing because there's such a
key that creative media has a part to
play in educating the Muslim globally.
And we need to go beyond the amateur
or this one-off kinds of projects, which
I do encourage.
I think content producers that are just amateurs
and they're doing it on their own are
actually starting to do some pretty amazing work
and it's emerging.
But if we're going to play with the
big boys as it is, then we're going
to have to...
Which leads me to the last two questions.
I know somebody in the audience...
Oh, your thoughts.
Regarding the Islamic interpretation that you mentioned just
now, I agree with you that again, Rodeo
Plus is a Netflix for Muslim children.
It's not an Islamic streaming platform.
And when we say that, we have content
from all around the world, from Korea, from
the US, UK, used by non-Muslims.
But again, they have good values.
But we filter the narratives which are not
suitable for us.
And again, another point I would say that
we have a few examples and there's not
many more beyond this.
You have the Awakenings, you have Ertugrul, you
have Omar Hana.
Name a few more, I'm not sure.
But if you look at all three projects,
what you can see is Ihsan.
It's done beautifully.
It's done professionally.
You see the storytelling or the work behind
it is done in a very professional way.
And that's why it worked.
And of course, you'll see the budget for
it.
It's not like the others.
So I think we need to look at
the foundation or what the core of the
problem is.
Again, understanding that, hey, creative media can make
a big impact to the Muslim world.
And we collectively need to invest into it
together.
So takeaways, as we reach the conclusion of
this, what do you folks feel are the
primary takeaways?
Like, how do we get this kick-started?
What are the first steps?
And what can our audience take from this
discussion as far as, okay, I personally see
the value in creative media.
I hope you guys see that to an
extent.
How much creative media is impacting us anyway?
But what are some things that we would
consider first steps to get this process started
and to bring a new age of creative
media to the Muslim world?
I think, just a quick one, that whole
thing about not having the hang-up of
labelling your own work as Islamic or not
Islamic, and just doing it, and then finding
a market and audience for it, I think
that's an interesting organic approach.
Because I think sometimes we maybe become too
defensive.
If you were to ask me, maybe the
content is not only for Muslims, but if
it were to be da'wah, then it
should be talking to non-Muslims and drawing
them in.
So if you were to ask me, one
is that whole principle of just do it,
and then resolve the contradictions as you go
along.
But also, as an intellectual project, probably having
a kind of intelligentsia, having a kind of,
you know, like a group of people who
are in positions to create a little bit
of influence, to seed these Islamic notions without
needing to say, as such perhaps, and then
you get, you know, the kind of content
just suddenly appearing.
I think that would be, to me, the
most interesting subversive approach.
Insha'Allah.
I know our time is up, but I
need to wrap this up, but I'm just
going to ask, I'll just pick any one
of you, whoever answers this first.
If you were to look at Surah Al
-Insan, and for yourself, you'd say, hey, this
would be, which ayah or which theme in
Surah Al-Insan would be the inspiration of
a creative work?
What would it be?
And we'll end with that, insha'Allah.
I have some ideas about, I think there
are several ayah that can create movies about
it.
The first ayah, as you say, you can
create a planet of apes, based on that
first ayah, that there's a man, there's a
time, there's a man, but I would pick
up the ...
...
...
And I would probably produce, let's say, a
movie called Coincidence ...
So, and we, and I pick different people
from different time, different geography, and they go
in a kind of similar journey, but then
some coincidence happens with some of them, so
this is the ...
Right.
So that kind of movie can happen.
You remember the movie of, like, what was
the name?
It's about the fate and destiny, but that
destiny changes based on your decisions, but very
small decisions, like butterfly effect.
So I would probably, that I had to
make a, when we say coincidence, it's probably
Allah's ...
...
So yeah, this is probably I would choose.
And for another ayah, lastly, the ayah about
the ...
...
...
Yes.
I would probably do an anime about it.
An anime, like a fantasy world that a
group of old people for centuries helping people
for sustainable development, and then one turned to
the dark side, then there's a new era
began, and other people who are also helping
people, but not for ...
So two kind of groups are those kind
of creative ideas, but I would pick probably
coincidence.
That would be an interesting question for all
of you too, inshallah.
I know some people had questions, but I
guess we'll off the stage, because now we're
in a break.
We'll get to share some of those thoughts
with you.
I'd love to hear from all of you,
inshallah.
But what I'd like to end with as
we wrap up this panel, I think this
is an amazing start to a conversation.
I think everybody would agree.
And I think there's a lot more to
unpack here that the ummah is in need
of, from the scholarly perspective, from just understanding
the needs of the audience perspective.
I'm sure the young people here have many
ideas about what kinds of media there can
be.
I can just tell you, as far as
creativity is concerned, so much of what I
do in giving my lectures of the Qur
'an is informed by creativity.
And if I wasn't, because to me, to
be a teacher, to be an effective communicator,
you cannot do so without creativity.
There's no way to accomplish that without creativity.
I'm very grateful to all of you guys
for your thoughts.
Yes, Ismail?
I just want to hijack you and get
the message across, right?
I think one thing which we talk about
and orang Melayu kata takut kosong.
We need to take action.
So, just taking this opportunity to be here.
You can go back, get your kids back
on YouTube, on Netflix, on Disney+.
But I want to take this opportunity to
try and ask you to download Durial+.
Get it to your kids.
This is not marketing, this is for the
player.
Spreading the message, right?
Try it on your kids.
We have kids and parents who have paid
impact.
And I really want you to try.
You have, you can contact me on LinkedIn,
give me the feedback if it worked, if
it doesn't work.
Because this is a marathon, this is a
mission.
We want to build a better Ummah inshaAllah.
So, please, please try to do that.
Thank you everyone.
I hope you guys enjoyed that video clip.
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