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Islam in Prime Time

Tall tales inspire plans for the first Islamic TV channel in America

By Sarah Downey

Newsweek International

Issues 2004 - Before a crowd of 7,000 American Muslims gathered this August in Chicago, Internet multimillionaire Omar Amanat told this bitter-edged joke. An American reporter interviews a man who has just saved a little girl from a vicious dog. When the reporter learns the man is a Muslim, he scraps his “dog bites girl” headline for MUSLIM MAN ATTACKS DOG. To desultory laughter, Amanat remarked, “For those of us who have experienced the American media, we all know that rings a little bit too true.”

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Amanat was in Chicago pitching his plan to defend Muslims in America. He plans to launch the first Muslim cable network in the United States as early as the summer of 2004. Tentatively called Crescent TV, after the symbol on many Muslim national flags, its goal is to reach not just the roughly 4 million Muslim American households with television, but all Americans. “There is a void for something like this,” says Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Sufi Muslim Association. “The constant association of Islam and terrorism is very problematic, and psychologically damaging.”

The son of Indian Muslim immigrants, Amanat grew up in New York and New Jersey watching “The Cosby Show,” which inspired him. “Programs like ‘Cosby’ literally changed the social paradigm—people got to know them [an upper-middle-class African-American family] like a neighbor. That’s something I believe can be replicated” for Muslims, he says. Now 30, he made a fortune on the sale of his e-brokerage, Tradescape, and is seeking private investors. He has creative input from filmmaker Ismail Merchant, who says it’s “wonderful to help Omar achieve something that we all subscribe to.” Crescent will start with music TV for viewers 18 to 34 and expand to talk shows, sitcoms and dramas that touch on prayers, charity and other elements of the faith. Ethnic TV niches have proved profitable before, but winning over non-Muslims will be the real test.