Now streaming on the documentary Channel
and CBC Gem
A GAPC ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH documentary CHANNEL
PRESENTS
So You Want to Be a Muslim
A film by Hoda Elatawi
Becoming a Muslim is easy – you just say the Shahada (testimony of faith): I bear witness that there is no God but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger…and you’re in! But actually choosing to become a Muslim, especially in the West today, is not so easy. It can, in fact, present unique challenges.
So You Want to be a Muslim introduces viewers to five North American individuals who have left their respective faith traditions to embrace Islam.
For these five – Barbara, Stephanie, Rima, Johnae and Eli – the transition from one religion to another can be simultaneously enlightening and daunting. Each of the people profiled in the film takes us on a journey that, collectively, illuminates the striking diversity of the Muslim community.
Even as they find peace and meaning in their new faith, the varied experiences of these “new’ Muslims speak to the reality of the ‘West vs the rest’ mentality. Barbara, Stephanie, Rima, Johnae and Eli all reflect on what it’s like to live between two worlds, often feeling ‘othered’ both inside and outside of their communities.
With words like “extremist”, “jihadist”, and “terrorist” plaguing mainstream dialogue when the subject of Islam and Muslims come up in our Western society, the deeply personal stories revealed by the diverse group of people in this film help break stereotypes, challenge our preconceived notions about Islam, and reveal the struggles and truths around what it means to be a Muslim in the West today.
Barbara
Barbara was a musician in her early 20’s, studying to become an Anglican minister, when she met Abdollah, a young Iranian man, in a History of Christian Thought course at McGill University in Montreal. She left her “born” Christian faith and a possible career in music to marry Abdullah. They were both spiritually curious. “We went to a Hindu temple,” she remembers. “We went to pray at the Benedictine priory. And from there, we went to a Sufi zikr, and we went to a number of different things, looking for a spiritual reality.” Eventually, Barbara became a Muslim in 1987. Barbara & Abdollah’s story spanned 30 years and spawned six children, while constantly living on the edge of poverty. She gave up a lot and felt like she lost herself – that is, until a series of new beginnings, like filing for divorce and becoming the first-ever female Muslim Chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces. At 62 years-old, she has become a force to be reckoned with. “My journey into Islam was a spiritual search,” she says. “I went through a process of trying to find something that seemed to be missing, something that seemed to be authentic. And I didn’t simply leave my religion. I went more deeply into it. So, that involved looking at the contemplative traditions within Christianity, and that led me to the contemplative spiritual dimensions of Islam. Its beautiful spirituality supports the growth of an internal moral compass, of appropriate self-discipline as part of any kind of spiritual exercise. It’s got all of those elements, and I know it, I love it, and this is where I was led.”
Stephanie
Stephanie is a Millennial who was raised by a Catholic mother and agnostic father in an Acadian home in New Brunswick. Now living in Ottawa, she took the Shahada in 2012 and donned the hijab but decided against forsaking the parts of her life that she enjoyed before becoming a Muslim. In other words, she still drinks alcohol occasionally, enjoys going to a party once in a while, has tattoos, and remains a supportive activist in the LGBTQ+ community – especially to show support for her two gay dads. Stephanie decided to remove her hijab (despite loving it), fearing for the safety and peace-of-mind of her Hindu fiancée (now husband) Ombor, whose family is Bengali-Canadian. He is commonly mistaken for a Muslim man. She continued to debate whether or not to cover her head as she prepared for her wedding in her very homogenous New Brunswick hometown. About converting to Islam she says, “As a Catholic, it wasn’t that far-fetched from the belief that I’d already been brought up believing in. My main issues with the Catholic Church were with the hierarchy of the church, plus I didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. I believe that he was a prophet.” As for her somewhat unorthodox practice of Islam, she says, “The reality is that we all cherry-pick when it comes to any religion, but no, I don’t cherry-pick the same way other people cherry-pick. To me, my priority is my relationship with God.”
Rima
Rima revels in her intersecting identities. Born in South Africa and culturally Jewish, and more recently Muslim, she finds that each religion gives her a richness of experience beyond measure. “For me, the question really has always been what feels good in terms of connecting with the spiritual. I needed a place to go to speak to the Creator”. Rima’s grandmother, who came from a mixed Afrikaner Cape-coloured background, converted to Judaism to marry her grandfather. Growing up, Rima felt like she always got treated as somebody who was somewhat different or odd, and like she never belonged. Moving with her family to Canada as a child, Rima felt strongly about her Jewish identity and culture. “I lost extended family in the Holocaust. Those are stories that are part of who I am. And I experienced real antisemitism growing up in Montreal. Then I went and spent three years in Israel-Palestine, where I had a very powerful experience of walking into the Al-Aqsa, the mosque which is built in Jerusalem, and I just had a strong sense of feeling the divine in that space. It’s a very precious and powerful space.” She recalled her grandmother saying to her, ‘There is only one God, and he doesn’t care what kind of a building you go into to talk to him.’ “And I just thought, yeah, of course.” She moved to Toronto where she became a university lecturer and, later, an elected NDP Member for The Beaches of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. “For me, Judaism and Islam are so close to one another. They’re actually even closer than Judaism and Christianity. I decided to embrace Islam. For me, it was like adding a layer to an already very textured set of identities, not stopping being one thing and becoming another thing. For me, it’s really important that people understand that there is nothing inherently antagonistic about these two faith practices.” As a Muslim, her main inspiration was the liberal El Tawhid Unity Mosque in Toronto, which provided a notable counterpoint to the way Islam is understood by most people around the world. In it, men and women congregate together in a circle, and there are many LGBTQ+ members. Says Rima: “I did not become Muslim because I’m socially conservative or in order to be around people who are socially conservative. I do not experience the Muslim community as one that is socially conservative. Muslims are a diverse group of people, just like any other group of people are. And you can’t make assumptions about who they are exactly. There is no one monolith that’s Islam, and there’s no one monolith that’s Muslim.” Rima now lives and works on Canada’s East Coast.
Johnae & Eli
Johnae and Eli live in New York City’s borough, The Bronx. Both are of African-American and Puerto Rican origin. They both ‘reverted’ to Islam in 2021. Johnae and Eli were brought up Christian: “The first seeds of me questioning Christianity were from high school,” says Johnae. “They’d talk about the Trinity and I would ask for clarification because I didn’t get it. I’m genuinely curious and eventually I thought ‘I’m going to start doing research and I’m going to see what makes sense for me’. The reason why I chose Islam is because I didn’t have to mold myself to fit it. But like, my core, my– like, I’m still Johnae. You know, my physical appearance has changed. Some of my social interactions have changed, but only for the better”. As for Eli, he recounts, “I used to party a lot. A lot of nonsense. I was forced to revaluate my life”. Johnae was already interested in Islam. After they moved in together and learned Johnae was expecting, Eli felt “maybe I should ground myself more in faith. I feel that’s very important when you have a family.” So it was Eli who actually took the initiative and proposed that they take the Shahada and become Muslim.
Filmmaker Biography
HODA ELATAWI
Director/Producer/Co-Executve Producer, Co-Writer
Hoda Elatawi, Senior Producer and President of Ottawa’s GAPC Entertainment, has created award-winning films and television shows in Canada and internationally for almost three decades. Hoda’s passion for education, history, social issues, children’s programming, and the arts has united her with producers and writers from around the world and allowed her to work on a diverse range of television projects.
Hoda has created and produced award-winning concepts across a multitude of genres and platforms. Her directorial debut was with Muneeza in the Middle, a documentary about a young Muslim woman who faces the complex struggle between faith, family, fashion, and ultimately identity. Aired on CBC’s documentary Channel, Muneeza in the Middle was nominated in the Documentary Social/Political category at the Yorkton Film Festival in 2015, scooped an Award of Merit, Women in Filmmaking from the IndieFEST Film Awards, and won Best Director at the Ottawa Independent Film and Video Awards.
Hoda continues to explore identity, religion and intersectionality with her new, feature-length documentary, So You Want to Be a Muslim, an intimate look into the lives of several Muslim converts in North America, chronicling their individual journeys of transformation and spiritual exploration. It will air in October 2024 on CBC’s documentary Channel and also stream on CBC Gem.
Some of her other producing credits include: Christopher Plummer: A Man for All Stages and Oscar Peterson: Keeping the Groove Alive, both one-hour biographies for the CBC; The Letters: Rediscovering the Art of Courtship, an unscripted series for BRAVO!; The Great March, a two-hour docudrama for History Television (nominated for two Gemini Awards); Growing Up Canadian, a six x one hour doc series for History Channel; 20th Century Gals, starring Cathy Jones, for the CBC; The Secret Lives of Butterflies, for Discovery, and many more.
Hoda is currently developing, among other projects, a scripted comedy series, The Arranged Marriage, for CBC; Welcome, a series for and about displaced children, a live-action scripted series starring dogs called The Whiskers; The Polka Dot Way, a feature doc in development with TVO; and I Love Being Me!, a youth doc series for marbleKids and Blue Ant.
Premiere
Sunday, October 20 @ 9 pm ET (6pm PT)
repeats @ Midnight ET (9pm PT)
repeats @ 3 am ET (Midnight PT)
More Repeats
Following Tuesday (2 days after premiere)
@ 9am ET (6am PT)
repeats @ 2pm ET (11am PT)
repeats @ 7pm ET (4pm PT)
Premiere
Wednesday, October 23
Hoda Elatawi’s Documentary ‘So You Want to Be a Muslim’ is a Must-See Film
Posted: October 19, 2024 Category: Film, Reviews
By: Keith Whittier
Synopsis: The film profiles five diverse North American individuals who experience life in new and unexpected ways when they decide to become Muslim.
Director: Hoda Elatawi
Several years ago, I decided to grow a beard and kept it for a few months. An individual I was casually familiar with said to me, ‘I didn’t know you were a Muslim.’ To which I replied, ‘Is that a problem?’ The person got uncomfortable and stammered, ‘No, no, I just didn’t know you were one of them.’
The fact is that I am not and never have been a Muslim. I am simply a Black man who, at that time, had a beard, but that visual was enough to make that person slightly uncomfortable.
That brief experience I had is nothing compared to what actual people of the Muslim faith deal with regularly. It is one of the themes explored in the new documentary, So You Want to Be a Muslim, by director Hoda Elatawi.
Elatawi’s film looks at Islam from a point of view rarely discussed on screen. She examines the religion from within and presents cases of several people who have become Muslims. Barbara, Stephanie, Rima, and the married couple Johnae and Eli each discuss what led them to Islam. The film is shot over several years, so the audience gets to spend significant time with these individuals. It’s fascinating getting to know their relatives and their reactions.
Muslim people are often presented in films as outsiders or a threat to society. However, in this film, we meet mothers, daughters, and husbands, interesting people with very different lives, and the common denominator is their religion. Whether employed in politics, the military, or building a family, the film introduces us to people just trying to make their way through this thing called life.
Any good documentary provides multiple points of view, and Elatawi does not shy away from that. She documents family members’ scepticism about their relatives converting. She highlights the stereotypes society has around religion while also providing a close look at what being a person in the Muslim community deals with and some of the stigmas attached. The film explores Islamophobia and how even wearing a hijab can incite negative experiences for those wearing it.
In 2020, when George Floyd was murdered, it ushered in a discussion on what the Black experience was like. Similarly, this film opens a dialogue on what the experience is like for Muslim people and shows there is a lot more that unites us than divides us.
The film isn’t a pro-Muslim piece aimed at getting people to convert. Instead, it showcases why these specific characters chose Islam. Through unflinching experiences, we get to know them and why their religion is so important to them.
Some movies need to be seen in the theatre, and So You Want to Be a Muslim simply NEEDS TO BE SEEN. Elatawi has made a film that will foster great discussion; in fact, this film is so powerful that it should be part of the educational curriculum. The film not only challenges the prejudices that people in the Muslim community deal with but is also a celebration of the religion. It shows people who normally may not be associated with Islam and demonstrates the beauty they have found in the religion.
Typically, conversations around religion and politics are a no-fly zone, but this is a dialogue that needs to happen. Audiences will no doubt benefit from watching a film that explores the reasons behind people’s conversion to Islam rather than another where a Muslim character is typecast as a terrorist yet again.
In this documentary, Elatawi isn’t simply allowing the audience to get to know these people. She is holding a mirror up to society.
Grade: B+
Watch Keith’s interview with Director Hoda Elatawi:
https://youtu.be/hQNTNHdsoMA
More articles
“So You Want To Be A Muslim”: Film Chronicles Converts’ Struggles and Triumphs
“So You Want to Be Muslim” dives deep into religious exploration
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