Tom Facchine – Muslims In The Public Eye

			representation is a tricky thing. It's not what we call an inherent good, like, not all
representation is good you can be as the Muslim community, especially in North America and Europe,
we can be represented, we might have tons of representation, and we might be bad representation
might look, make us look horrible might misrepresent us. Or it might be coming from a place of power
that is trying to represent us in a certain way, right, that has an agenda behind it. So we just
have to be super careful. And it's hard, because there's a, it goes back even to how we think about
art, right? Somebody wants to make a movie or a TV show or something like that were an animated
		

			series. And on one hand, we have describing reality and relating to people, right, because as
Muslims, we're not perfect people, especially converts, you know, we all had a life before, you
know, and not even just like the narrow definition of who's a convert, but the broader definition of
somebody who was even born in a Muslim family. And at some point, something clicked, and then they
changed their lives around, you know, we all have a story. And we all come from somewhere, right?
And we can't necessarily pretend to be just like only pious people, and like, we didn't have pasts.
And we didn't like learn lessons or things like that. So there's something to be said for being
		

			relatable, and being able to relate to people who are in a certain situation. Now, maybe they're
caught up in the gang life or drugs or a certain state, maybe they're just far from the deal. But
it's always got to be connected to trying to bring them out of that, it's always got to be a
transformation story, right? Something that's going to call them to something greater. And that's
where if you look at media, and you look at art in North America, it's like if you were to put on to
polls description, right, or being descriptive of what's real, and aspiration, right, what should be
okay, the scale is tilted. Right? We got all these shows and movies and series about and it's like
		

			super real, and like blood and gore, and all this other stuff. And all the horrible tough things
about society. We've got it covered. Yeah, I mean, it's that is well represented in media. But where
are the role model? Where are the examples? Where are the stories of transformation where somebody
can see themselves in somebody and say, well, that's where I want to get to, that's where I want to
become. So as Muslims become more and more in the public eye, and we start to get more and more
media representation. And we even start to as a great thing, start to take control of that media
representation by producing things ourselves, and having even our own platforms is all the things
		

			but we need to think very carefully about that balance and bringing it into balance, not just
because because at a certain level, the real pays, right? You want to put all the things that like
relate to absolutely everybody, if you it pays, and you might unintentionally give the message to
people that this is okay, you can glorify and I can relate to this as an Italian American because we
got all the mafia movies, right. And so in the mafia movies, there's always this, this sort of
thing, well, does it glorify it? Or does it describe reality? Sometimes it does both. Right? So is
it something that we have to be we have to think very, very carefully about as a Muslim community
		

			when we represent ourselves to a broader audience, and we want to tell real stories, we want to tell
them real and we want to be able to relate to people who are in a certain situation or in a certain
demographic, but we also want to call them to something better and call them to something higher and
ask them and show them a way forward to change