You mean the daughters? Is Amjad meant to be from Pakistan :S confused by the accent lol

Ofcom to investigate complaints?:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...c-citizen-khan

Mark Lawson's view:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...ded?intcmp=239

K

Interesting piece regarding "self selected" custodians of morals, equality and harmony.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...ually-offended

I agree with these two paragraphs :

My own cultural outsider's view is that Citizen Khan pays British Muslims perhaps the highest compliment television can bestow, which is treating them like any other creed and people by subjecting them to a gentle domestic sitcom in the tradition of My Family. This connection is made explicit by the casting of Kris Marshall from that show as a white English convert to Islam.

The jokes about ecclesiastical bureaucracy, parental hypocrisy and teenage cunning have a target and tone familiar from the genre's previous white British incarnations. On the evidence of the opening episode, imams will come off no worse than vicars have in laugh shows of the past, which may be considered a mark of equality.

I thought Adil Ray was a British Pakistani?

Anyway, I don't think it's crucial because a good actor/actress should be able to make any character seem authentic. Nina Wadia & Nitin Ganatra do a fabulous job playing The Masoods on Eastenders (who are of Pakistani origin and Muslim, even if the actors are neither).

A good piece by Saira Khan on Citizen Khan in the Mail today:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...--oh-true.html

I don't agree with her that the show was particularly funny, but I don't think it was offensive either. Just unoriginal.

That's ok - I just wasn't sure what you were referring to. I'm still not, to be honest, but I don't think it matters.

Deleted duplicated link.

I know that but there was a massive influx in the late 60's, early 70's. I'm guessing he's about 50. Why would he be wearing clothes from that era now?

Same as any live studio recording, they just show the audience the prerecorded bits on big screens that are mounted out of shot of the cameras. Perfectly standard.

Is this for real? It can't be.

The comedy makes After You've Gone look like Emmy Award winning stuff. Forget about the gender and stereotypical representations, it was plain awful. May have cracked a few jokes but dreadful in all.

Someone said that the characters were rushing their lines, and that was my overwhelming impression too. It was most noticeable to me in a lot of the scenes with the daughters, and the way they were galloping through the script had me looking at the clock about two thirds of the way through convinced that it was about to be all over. This made me feel like it was dragging, despite the fact that it wasn't that bad. I doubt I'll go out of my way to watch it again, but I wouldn't automatically switch channels if I found myself sitting in front of it.

I quite understood why they made tightwad Mr Khan and his surroundings look so dated. The diluting the washing-up liquid thing made perfect sense in a kitchen with orange fronted doors that didn't look like it had had a facelift in decades. I could well believe that all his clothes come from charity shops and jumble sales. In contrast though, the girls' bedrooms looked quite modern and up-to-date, and I did wonder where they would get the money from for this (and half hundredweight of make-up for the younger one!) if their stingy dad wasn't fronting up for it, because neither of them seemed to have jobs.

You could go too far analysing this stuff in a quest for realism, though. When I found myself wondering if he would really pepper every sentence he spoke with the word 'bloody', it was during a scene when he was at home with his family, in which case I'm not sure they'd even be speaking English at all in reality. Artistic licence is acceptable here (I'm too lazy for subtitles), so I'd feel a bit hypocritical if I didn't accept it elsewhere in the programme. Taking it at face value, it had it's moments, but it's a long way from shaping up to be a classic.

I liked the line about Pakistan being mentioned twice in a good way (as much for the delivery as anything else), 'Delilah' booming out of the mosque PA system and the younger daughter claiming to be using a prayer app when she was texting. The 'Alton Towers ladies' fell a bit flat for me though, and Mr Khan's future son-in-law must be one of the dullest characters ever written.

Very well put I could not have said it better myself.
Most comedies are based on taking the mickey out of something or someone,. I come from Glasgow for example and find Rab C Nesbitt hilarious. Yes it stereotypes Glasgow but at least we can laugh at ourselves. It would seem that Muslim are super sensitive. father ted is another great example, this programme takes the mick out of catholics priests and christianity in general but you dont hear many folk getting up in arms about it.

Its a sitcom its not meant to define a race or religion, lighten up

Whenever I see crap like this go straight to BBC1, when the peerless Still Game, got kicked around the schedules on BBC2 until it died a death, I am convinced that the BBC have race issues with Scotland.

Well, for Muslims, it is kind of against Islam to make a mockery of it (I didn't see it however), that's why us Muslims are making a big deal.

I'm looking forward to the episode where the family murder the young daughter for living a Westernised lifestyle. That should be a funny one.

Where have you read the actual complaints to Ofcom/BBC, to see the content of the complaints.
The biggest deal so far seems to be that loads just found it very poor, so poor it's given them the pip, rather than just bored them/not to their taste.

I understand your point, but (hate doing that, lol) the main three female characters are all played by Punjabi actors and I don't think the family have a specified ethnicity, they are just meant to be...in the words of Mr Khan a "Pakistani" family and Adil Ray and Abdullah Afzal are Pakistani. Would it really have been any more realistic if they were all played by Pakistani actors?

I think it will be disliked by asians and the PC brigade alike.


Yup, an attempt to normalise something through humour, that I suspect the majority of people in this country neither asked for or want.


I can't stand him either, one can't even blame it on is character, as he behaves/talks exactly the same way in real life.


The infestation of political correctness has led many people to forget that stereotypes do exist.


Indeed.


Of course, it's ok to be racist if you're not white (!)


Goodness Gracious Me was excellent. Programmes like that, in my opinion, also do more for racial harmony than legislation and all the PC crap that goes with it.


Ugh! I remember it, embarrassingly awful.


It's the usual response of the PC brigade to call anyone who doesn't swallow their agenda ignorant or, shock horror, label them the "R" word.

I was once told on here that it is racist to ever criticise a black person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


It's been said to me by muslim people themselves that most muslims do not have a sense of humour.

Fair enough, but they are one of the few groups in our society who seek to "punish" those who say something that they don't like.


Yup, i've met many pompous and hypocritical muslims. Some of my Indian friends say that they tend to look down their nose at them and other people.



I don't believe that it does. This sounds like a case of some uneducated person trying to sound earnestly PC in return for some brownie points.

It reminds me of a meeting I was at where a girl once proclaimed "I like black people, they're nice"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Not so much the young ones now, but until relatively recently, most asians males that i've seen in my area usually wore this type of cheap, nylon drab clothing.

The penny pinching stereotype in the programme is apt too. Asian people have a, well deserved in my opinion, reputation for this.

The vast majority of asians of all religions that I know are mean, self serving and greedy to a greater or lesser extent when it comes to money and material possessions.

Even the PC people in my circle of friends are unable to successfully deny this fact as they have experienced it too.


The PC culture has made people afraid to even mention the fact that someone is eg black, muslim etc. Therefore, they certainly wouldn't feel confident in making fun of them.

Of course, in real life, we should all be prepared to laugh at ourselves and some of the funniest things i've seen are where asian people take the piss out of their own culture.

You're spot on.

By my reckoning, and I only watched about 10 minutes, Adil Ray has plagiarised on an almost monumental scale. In that 10 minutes I saw scenes, characters and voices he nicked from Fawlty Towers, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Mind Your Language etc etc etc.

Probably. The script would be a bit different if that was the case, and besides, a lot of the Indian actors who play the females wouldn't know a lot about being a Muslim/Pakistani so that's why it deems unrealistic.

Is it? Does it actually say in the Q'ran that you mustn't make fun of Muslims on TV? A bit prophetic, wasn't it?


That's nothing, I was once called a homophobic bigot for criticising someone who happened to be gay ..... and I hadn't even known they were.

A couple of weeks ago, Accused showed us something of the life of a gay transvestite, and I'm sure many people were left feeling very sympathetic towards people like that, since it showed that, with a few unimportant differences, they were just the same as everyone else.

Similarly, Citizen Khan shows that, in the things which matter, Muslim families are no different from any family .

This statement about how Catholic priests had no problem with Father Ted keeps being quoted. I remember a very different story - more like outright shock. The official national broadcaster, RTE, didn't pick it up for over ten years (which made no difference, as everyone in Ireland by then had already seen it several times.)

Here is a review from 1997 from the Catholic League which gives a flavour of the reaction at the time in certain quarters. I quote at some length for sheer hilarity:

WE ARE NOT AMUSED

Just when you thought popular television had reached bottom in the casual disrespect and downright vulgarity it regularly displays in its treatment of religious people and religious beliefs, especially Catholic ones, along comes the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to show that it is possible to descend to an even lower level—yet some audiences apparently go right on eating it all up.

One of the most popular current situation comedies broadcast by the BBC in the British Isles is not only relentlessly and deliberately vulgar in its—mostly slapstick—situations and effects. It achieves most of these effects precisely by depicting Catholic priests in Ireland as considerably less than admirable characters generally; and also by regularly making light of supposed Catholic beliefs and practices (the show is nevertheless so popular in Ireland that the Irish state-owned television network has purchased the rights to rebroadcast it).

This BBC television series is entitled Father Ted, and is based on the imagined lives and adventures of three priests living on an island off the west coast of Ireland. The humor of the series, such as it is, relies heavily on typical British-style “put downs” of various types of people: alcoholics, people in wheelchairs, members of the servant class, people who are not very bright, Irish people in general (who are mostly seen to fit into the previous category), and, especially, Catholic priests.

The three main characters in the show are three wacky Irish priests who live together in a rectory with a dotty housekeeper who is always trying to serve tea at the most inconvenient moments. Most of the humor and the humorous situations are based on the incongruity of Catholic priests ever doing or saying what these three Catholic priests are depicted as regularly doing and saying. The language alone typically used by them is quite vulgar and sometimes truly shocking. The situations depicted are usually quite remote from any possible priestly work or activity. No doubt all of this is quite intentional on the part of the writers, actors, producers, and sponsors; being a priest is itself considered by them humorous and worthy of a put-down, apparently.

The star of the show is a Father Ted Crilly, a flashy, opportunistic type of fellow with apparently unfulfilled yearnings and blow-dried hair. In one of the episodes of the series which I viewed, Father Ted was principally engaged in competing—impersonating Elvis no less!—in a priests’ masquerade contest (in which a competing group of Irish priests arrive as female impersonators clad in low-cut ball gowns). If you can imagine any priests who would ever be involved in such dubious doings, then you probably have roughly the same idea of the Catholic Church that the scriptwriters of this show do.

Another one of the episodes I saw begins with Father Ted in a bookstore at a book-signing session attempting to get the signature of the lady author of a volume entitled Bejewelled with Kisses. The lady author in question turns out to be both attractive and, conveniently, recently divorced; just as conveniently, she happens to be on her way to spending some time on the very island where the three priests live. Father Ted is later shown clumsily attempting to pursue her in scenes not completely saved from suggestiveness by the farce into which they quickly descend.

This latter episode is apparently one of the rare episodes in the series in which any reference at all is made to Father Ted’s work as a priest; in order to keep an appointment with his visiting lady friend, Father Ted has to rush through an obligatory Mass celebrated for some nuns so fast that the vast television audience will not fail to grasp why the sworn enemies of the Church once branded the Mass as “mumbo-jumbo.” Father Ted makes some of today’s liturgical innovators look positively reverent by comparison.

The second of the three priests depicted on the show, Father Dougal, is quite deliberately presented as an uncomprehending simpleton, a cheerful idiot. Father Dougal is the foil for Father Ted; he can always be depended on to say the wrong thing and, on one occasion, he turns out not even to know who the pope is. Such a person could never have gotten into, much less out of, any seminary anywhere.

The third of the island-dwelling priests, Father Jack, is presented as an out-and-out alcoholic; he is consistently shown, in the episodes I viewed, either in an alcoholic stupor or single-mindedly attempting to acquire yet another bottle. In one episode he passes out after having drunk Toilet Duck cleaner.

One of the “visiting priests” in one of the episodes I viewed is shown as quite unable to control his compulsive laughter about virtually everything. In short, in the world of this sitcom, Catholic priests are a very strange breed indeed; they are regularly shown as figures of fun, appropriately having pratfalls or otherwise in questionable, embarrassing, or compromising situations: rarely is the fun good, clean fun.

The two Irish scriptwriters who first conceived this show and continue to write the scripts for it are supposed to be ex-Catholics—”out of practice,” they say. It shows. They don’t even get the externals right (i.e., vestments, giving blessings, etc.). The point of having priests as the main characters in the show in the first place continues to be almost solely the incongruity of what they are then shown doing and saying. The show’s scriptwriters evidently belong to today’s generation of Catholics deprived of any proper catechesis; this has been the situation apparently also in Ireland. At one point Father Ted is actually made to remark: “That’s the great thing about Catholicism. It’s so vague nobody knows what it’s all about.”

On behalf of the Catholic League, I took sharp issue with the very nature of the show as such. I found it fundamentally objectionable to attempt to base humor upon such sad and unreal caricatures of Catholic priests. The show’s approach and treatment of Catholic beliefs and Catholic people fundamentally belittles and mocks both—and there is otherwise no redeeming social value whatsoever. I said that I could guarantee that the Catholic League would vigorously oppose the airing of this BBC sitcom on any American network.

I added that it was a British monarch who probably said it best: “We are not amused,” Queen Victoria was accustomed to say approps of lapses of taste and morality considerably less serious than those regularly featured in this tasteless BBC series about three Irish priests out on an island off the west coast of Ireland.

http://www.catholicleague.org/we-are-not-amused/

No. Muslims shouldn't take the mick out of the religion, on TV or not.

Does that mean Muslims aren't allowed to use humour when giving religious instruction? I struggle to imagine this. A certain type of Christian sermon is famous for its ham-fisted attempt to try to connect with the congregation using lame everyday humour. It's rather endearing.

I don't believe that the Quran says that people mustn't make fun of Muslims on TV.

What you do find is a lot of muslims interpret it differently, often to suit their own views. This is particularly prevalent within the radically extreme muslim community.

Some muslims that I know won't go to a certain local mosque because they say they "aren't muslim enough"!

I once said on here that I did not find black people sexually attractive. Of course, this soon prompted use of the "R" word!

What was I expected to do? Sleep with someone I didn't fancy just to suit the PC brigade!!!

My response was to say that anybody who was not strictly 50/50 bisexual, must be sexist by their idiotic definition


Is that your personal view, an order from yourself (as a muslim?) or something that you've read in the Quran?

errrm, I know the BBC get the credit for most things (e.g. Downton Abbey by the Americans) but, unless I've missed something...

K