Me and the Mosque

Zarqa Nawaz, Director and Producer
A Film Screening and Discussion
Friday, April 28, 2006 8:00 p.m.
Barus and Holley, 168
Free and open to the public.
Sponsor: Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life

Director and Producer Zarqa Nawaz will discuss her latest controversial film, Me and the Mosque (2005). In her documentary, Ms. Nawaz travels around North America interviewing Muslim women, clerics, and scholars to hear different views and experiences on Muslim women and their relation to the mosque.

Ms. Nawaz was born in Liverpool and raised in Toronto . Just as she was completing her B.S. from the University of Toronto and applying to medical schools, she realized that such programs had screening committees to keep people like her out of the health care system. Unfazed, she coolly switched career plans and received a B.A.A. in journalism from Ryerson in 1992.

Ms. Nawaz worked as a freelance writer/broadcaster with CBC radio, and in various capacities with CBC Newsworld , CTV's Canada AM , and CBC's The National . She was an associate producer with a number of CBC radio programs including Morningside . In 1992, her radio documentary, The Changing Rituals of Death , won first prize in the Radio Long Documentary category and the Chairman's Award in Radio Production at the Ontario Telefest Awards.

In 1995, Ms. Nawaz took a summer film workshop at the Ontario College for Art and made BBQ MUSLIMS . It was a five-minute comedy about two Muslim brothers who awaken to find that their barbecue has been blown up. Their neighbors, along with the local police and media are convinced that they must be terrorists. They end up in jail. Meanwhile the environmental activists/terrorists who perpetrated the crime are frustrated because their attempt at sensationalizing their cause has gone unrecognized. BBQ MUSLIMS premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1996.

In her second film, Ms. Nawaz continued to explore how the media perceives Muslims through stereotypes and how Muslims react to these portrayals. Death Threat (1998) is a 20-minute comedy about a young Muslim woman trying to exploit media stereotypes of Muslims for fame and financial gain. In the end she becomes victim to those same stereotypes. Death Threat was used as part of the Faith and the Media Conference at Carleton University in June 1998, and it premiered at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival.

Ms. Nawaz currently resides in Regina , Saskatchewan , with her husband and four children. She has finished a feature-length screenplay, which has received support from the Canada Council.