Synopsis: Amaar meets Nate Shore, a new local reporter who tests Amaar’s limits of friendship when some innocent situations land this odd couple in jail.
In this episode, Amaar is looking to get an article published regarding the Mosque when he runs into a new local reporter, Nate, for the first time. Nate decides to help Amaar do his good deeds for first hand experience. Unfortunately Nate’s idea of making things better only makes it worse. Meanwhile, Yasir is given an achievement award and his acceptance speech lands him in hot water with Sarah. Amaar and Nate go through alot in their first few hours together and Amaar is led in a path against his beliefs. Yasir tries to win back his wife without digging himself in a deeper hole. Will Amaar and Nate still be friends after the ordeal? Will Sarah forgive Yasir?
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Videos courtesy of mydien
What did you think of this episode? How does it compare to the previous episode? Are there any topics from the episode that you want to discuss?
- Charity Work by the Mosque
- Muslim beliefs
- Friend vs. Student
- Husband’s previous relationships
- Hiding information from wife
Little Experiences ... 
Is part 1 and 2 working?
edit nm.. it works = )
Hmm, somehow the videos work on my comp but not on phone..
All three clips worked for me but I didn’t find Nate’s role very interesting. It was tired. Bla.
I normally love the show though.
Yay works ! It was ok eposiode not much funny parts though…. I wonder when will jj come back to mercy
sigh…
first of all i’m TIRED of sarah. she’s an immature, whining, pseudo-muslim, who i HOPE is not being featured so much because the creators want folks to think this is how most of us act…
i’m seriously considering boycotting ANY more shows featuring her and yassir. i actually like yassir, but since they are paired together, i’ll have to sacrifice seeing him too. I wish SARAH would go the way of JJ–maybe on an extended shopping trip in Dubai, and we not have to be subjected to her silly behind any more than necessary.
there’s more ‘friendly’ interaction between Barbar and Fatimah…maybe it’s because of the ‘internet dating’ episode that i’ve noticed it more. wow. THAT would be a trip to develop them into a couple…(although i doubt that would ever happen).
and poor Ammar. how stupid can this so called Imam be? Why would he hang out with someone who is obviously so wrong, and has pretty much said that is how he is and will not change. the fact that they didn’t shake hands on their deal to live and let live was interesting.
Ammar quotes a lot of hadith, but does he know the one about being careful of who one befriends? i believe it’s in the Quran as well…I actually used this episode to teach my younger son about simply leaving certain situations and so called ‘friends’ when they have somehow gotten you involved in stuff you shouldn’t be involved in–and then leaving them at arm’s length, or alone.
this episode was disappointing, unfunny and hard to watch.
oh well…i guess at least one would eventually have to seriously grate me the wrong way. i hope there aren’t too many more…
asiila
Salaam, i agree with asiila, this show completely miss out on wat Islam totally is…an imam is not wat ammar portrays…as a show it is al right…however as a show portraying Islam correctly it is not doing justice.
I think بابر doesn’t get enough of a role these days. He is definitely my favourite character, and my favourite line this episode was when he declared that he would be the judge of what is comical.
The last episode I liked better. This one took one idea and didn’t RUN with it enough.
Get it?
Okay that was stupid.
LOL! No, no, that was good David! ;D And I agree that Baber should be portrayed more often… and they seem to not be showing much of Fatima since season 1.
This episode kind of sucked. =/ Amaar should have known where to stop; he’s acting like he’s never had experience with this before and doesn’t know what to do and he should have already when he was younger.
Amaar said the “Meals on Wheels” program he was doing was a little Lefty.
That is not true.
Conservatives believe in and donate to charities all the time. What they don’t believe in is government doing it. If government did this it would become much more inefficient and impersonal.
Again, this really shows the bias of the writers.
I am a conservative and when I was involved with politics I was around conservatives. And one thing about conservatives is they don’t really go around broadcasting their good works. Time and time again I would find out only after a while of some charity work they have done, sometimes (since many of them were old) after they died.
It just happened to me recently regarding a conservative in my area who died. I never knew that he allowed his land to be used for a summer camp. Many kids who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to go to summer camp did because of him and his wife. This was never in the newspapers, he never made a deal about it himself, and while obviously the people involved knew about it most everyone else didn’t.
Our Bible says when it comes to chartable works our right hand shouldn’t know what our left hand is doing, which means that we aren’t supposed to go good works just so we can win acclaim from others. The people I knew practiced that, and yeah they rarely got the awards that others in the community might have gotten but for them it wasn’t for the praise that they did the good works.
There are several conservatives I know that donate to and help out on our Wheels on Meals program.
I loved this episode…so typically Canadian in it’s comic style…essentially – a bunch of eclectic characters acting like goofs- and the message… we may not be perfect but its a work in progress.
Nahida,
You were being kind.
This episode REALLY sucked and it looks like the next one isn’t getting better.
The only thing you can say about this episode is it shows how hard it is to be friends and pal around with people outside of your religion.
I realize you don’t see Jesus as God but you do see him as a prophet right. And, unfortunately this is the only perspective I can come from so please forgive me for using a Christian example.
Jesus would hand around all kinds of lowlifes because they were the ones who needed saving. But perhaps that isn’t an example we are meant to follow. More times than not when you hang around someone of low character, it isn’t them who get slowly converted to your ways but instead you get converted to theirs.
There’s a saying “when you play with mud you are bound to get dirty”. The problem is then how do you save these people if you don’t befriend them? Quite a dilemma.
Though perhaps Islam isn’t as concerned with “saving” people as Christianity. Christianity can be quite heavy handed with the evangelizing. That is a legitimate criticism as it is one of Christianity’s tenets to spread “the Word” to everyone.
Oh, there is one thing I liked about the episode. Not enough to save the episode but still I liked it. For the first time they did emphasize the concept that Amaar is supposed to be a leader in the the Muslim community and that means he is supposed to set a good example. I don’t think that means he is supposed to be “more holy” as was previously discussed but he has to be sure to be a paragon of virtue.
Of course the next few episodes we are probably going to see him falter in that. Yeah, this guy is a trainwreck. Not only to Amaar but the show. I hope they dump this Nate as soon as possible.
asiila you said “…who [Sarah] i HOPE is not being featured so much because the creators want folks to think this is how most of us act…
Actually it is quite the opposite. It is because the creator want folks to think this is how most of US act.
It isn’t a coincidence that the worst Muslim on the show is a White Anglo-Canadian.
“Jesus would hand around all kinds of lowlifes.” I meant hang around of course.
But I don’t know how people are supposed to put that into practice. Hate the Sin but love the Sinner, perhaps but from a distance. Otherwise it just brings trouble upon yourself.
The idea is perhaps a good one to explore although the execution of this idea was poorly done.
This topic was much better handled in the episode where Yasir tries to join the local lodge or even last weeks episode about Tree and Layla.
At the best this show has reached the level of true art, and has been daring and profound. Who can forget the very politically incorrect episodes regarding multiculturalism we saw with the one about Mercy’s Welcome Sign and the attacks on Wheat Week. Both were daring and challenged the “acceptable” views on the subject.
What would have been best would have been for Amaar to tell Nate that of course he doesn’t hate Nate, he feels no animosity to him, but he can not “pal around” with him. He is an Imam and part of being an imam means he can never have “pals”.
Being an iman is not a profession. It is indeed a calling. It’s not what he does but who he is. He is never “off the clock”. Yeah, it can be a lonely life but that is what he feels called to do.
You would think he would have learned that he can’t consider himself just “Amaar” anymore but understand the larger responsibility he has as an Imam when that lady was killed after taking his advice to go to India even after her parents disagreed with the idea. It sounded like she really didn’t even want to go herself, and she probably wouldn’t have gone if it was just some guy who gave her that advice, but since it was an Imam who told her to do it she took the advice as like this was Allah giving her a sign that this was what she was supposed to do.
I think the statement that an Imam (or any faith representative) can never have ‘pals’ is an overstatement…perhaps not this particular pal for some; but certainly not a life without a diversity of friendships and aquaintances…with personal choices and consideration along the way. In the end Imams are human beings with a calling not superhumans to be cloistered. I think that was in part, the point of the episode. Ammar was feeling lonely and has to learn over time to ameliorate that and reconcile his humanness with his calling.
Don’t know about you guys, but I liked this episode.
I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of our crazy reporter, and Ammar finally has someone he doesn’t need to teach all the time(he needs someone like that now that he and Ryaan don’t have that kind of conversations anymore, at least not in the scenes)
We’ll probably be looking back at this episode later and say “so *this* is how all this mess started”
This was episode was an improvement from that previous episode with the wooden hippie stereotypes…I mean, the wooden vegan/hippie stereotypes.
Agony, you are probably alone in liking the episode. Most of us realizes that part of being a religious leader (Pastor, Priest, Imam, Rabbi, etc) means that one can never be “off the clock”. It’s not like you take off your hard hate and punch the clock when your day ends and that’s it.
Being an Imam (or a Pastor, or a Priest, or a Rabbi) isn’t what you do, it’s who you are).
The only question that is raised then is how does one ‘teach’ the unteachable, or are there just some people it is better to stay away from.
Bad, episode. So bad that one wonders if it be looked back upon as the “jump the shark” episode.
I meant hard hat.
Yeah Sarah is too much and Yasser is extremely patient with her. Can’t wait for Rayyan and Amaar get together already 😛