Who Could Be Afraid of Aymann Ismail?

We spoke to the amazing photographer and filmmaker about his new Slate-produced series on Islam and Islamophobia — ‘Who’s Afraid of Aymann Ismail?’

We’re back with another Member Spotlight, because our members are FRIGGIN’ AWESOME and always worth bragging about!

As you may already be well aware of, we are undergoing somewhat turbulent times. The United States government is imposing travel bans on Muslim countries, cozying up to similarly morally ambiguous heads of state, and doing its darndest to further exacerbate our lamentable sense of isolationism.

Fortunately, we have people like Aymann Ismail in our midst. Aymann has recently published the first two episodes of his new series elaborating on the nuances of Islam in America — ‘Who’s Afraid of Aymann Ismail?’

I met up with Aymann last week to find out more about the show, his outlook on the political climate, and the potential remedies to a click-driven media.

Check out our conversation below:

Could you start off by giving us an overview of your background. In particular, considering the subject matter, could you elaborate on your religious one as well?

I was born and raised in New Jersey to immigrant parents, who both immigrated here differently and at different times. They met here in the States and then they got married and started having kids. Both of my parents come from Egypt, but from different classes and different parts of Egypt. So when people ask me where are you from, I don’t necessarily have a city I attach to, even though I visit often.

Growing up I always had a sort of identity crisis, where in I never felt quite fully accepted as American, because of the pressures of having to look a certain way, behave a certain way, believe a certain thing, or speak a certain way. But even when I go to Egypt, they still called me Aymann the American, so it was like I was in this limbo. And because of that, I didn’t necessarily have that attachment you have to religion, where you’re ingrained in it and it’s something you feel that you’ve inherited. Like any other American kid, religion turned into a weird four letter word. It wasn’t something that I was outwardly trying to project onto myself, it’s just something I didn’t really feel applied to me anymore. And for a very long time I resisted it. I went to school in Jersey City with a whole bunch of other Muslim kids — I went to a Muslim school that taught religion as one of its subjects, and I hated it — I was a troublemaker.

It was something that I saw as being important to my parents, and because I didn’t have that connection to them, because they were immigrants and they just had a different worldview. It never translated to me in that direct way, that it might for a bunch of other people if I were to grow up in Egypt, or if they were to grow up in America. I just never had that spiritual connection.

I didn’t necessarily consider myself to be religious at all. My identity as far as I was concerned was — I listen to rock music, but grew up in the hood. So that made me different, and that made me special, and that made me feel like that’s who I really was. I like to skate, I like to play basketball, that was me.

But you go to college, then you graduate, you end up being the only Muslim kid that a lot of people know and they look to you as being that ambassador, because until you prove them differently, you’re just going to be another Muslim kid. And what that ends up doing is that if you’re doing anything, in a way, you end up representing the entire demographic. So if I’m like really, really rude to my sister, they’re just going to be like “Oh yeah, Muslim people hate their sisters.”

So I started to accept my identity a little bit more, because I felt like I had a responsibility to overcompensate for my it in a lot of ways, but what that ended up doing was it made me really have to talk about Islam more. And by having to talk about it more, I found out that I didn’t really know what I was talking about in a lot of ways. While still in college I really started to dig deeper and really tried to study it and to understand it, but not through my parents because I still didn’t have that connection with them. I started getting English-translated books, English-translated Qurans, doing my own research. Talking to American-born Muslims and trying to insert myself into that community more to learn through them.

That turned into a genuine interest in God, an interest in religion, and I ended up learning that I was sort of robbed of that spiritual experience when I was growing up, because they were teaching Islam as like “Here’s what makes us different from everyone else who you’ll be meeting your entire life.” When really it’s a lot more private than that, it’s a lot more about the connection between God and man, and I feel like that’s a lot harder to teach. It’s something you just have to learn on your own, and then through that I became — devout sounds too hard of a word — but I started to accept my identity as a Muslim person, and I started to start conversations with people about Islam, instead of letting it be projected on me. And then I started to settle into this person who I ended up being for a lot of other people — the Muslim ambassador. And it felt good, it felt good being able for people to say “Hey, I have questions about Sharia law, it’s really scary.” and I’d be like “Yo, me too, that shit’s fucked up in a lot of places.”

When they hear someone who’s a Muslim person, that’s like a revelation, and that’s a huge deal for them. So I started to enjoy being able to bridge that gap by saying “Look if we break down and start talking about the things that we are afraid of, instead of attaching it to these loaded terms like ‘Jihad’ or ‘Sharia’, we can actually make some progress on how to fight these things, or at least stand against them. I don’t think I’m going to end these things, but I feel like if we were to take the focus away from talking about these things generally, as being parts of being parts of peoples’ identities and cultures, we have a better shot of understanding it so we can end it.

Can you tell us more about the inception for the series?

It became more and more clear that Trump was a serious candidate at this point, during the summertime. And I really, really wanted to go to the Republican National Convention — and I had to fight Slate on this — to provide video and photo backup. At this point my identity wasn’t part of my work. So I was going to the RNC to do that. But we didn’t even get our credentials yet, we were literally just standing in line, this guy in a Thomas Jefferson costume is standing behind us, he hears us talking and then looks at me, leans in, and the first thing he says is “Are you Muslim?”

And I reply “Yeah, what about it?” and he’s like “Well your prophet is a pedophile, and that’s why we can’t have more Muslims here, because they’ll just start assaulting kids.” And I’m like “Dude, you’re wearing a Thomas Jefferson costume, he was a slave owner and raped his slaves. And there’s a whole generation of kids who are his ancestors from these women.” And we were just arguing back and forth, and a couple of people got it on their phones.

I showed a video of it to some of my coworkers and we all realized that’s what I should really be doing there. I should talk to people about who I am, about my religion, and see what they think about that. And the biggest common thread between all of them is that they have this general misunderstanding of what Sharia is, and not only that, but they were listening to this Muslim person trying to talk about his relationship and they were trying to say “No, no, no, you’re wrong, here’s what your relationship with God really is.” And it was kind of fun. I had a good time doing it, because more often than not, people were very polite about it. Even though they were sort of saying these things that were drastically offensive, they were generally nice about it.

I was able to really connect with some of those people, which I didn’t really expect. So that happened, it was fun, and I showed it to a bunch of people, and they enjoyed it. I explained to them it’s just part of the Muslim experience — you can’t get angry, otherwise you’re just reinforcing stereotypes.

And then, Trump got elected, and we were thinking we need to rework our video strategy. And instead of producing as many as possible, let’s create a recurring series and develop a voice. So we were pitching and pitching, it took three or four months, and eventually I got it through. I made a pilot, they really liked it, we made it better, and it eventually became this thing we’re really proud of. And it’s not just me — I’m working with another co-producer, Jeffrey Bloomer. He’s this incredible writer and has been essential to making this whole series happen.

It’s been this really, really concentrated effort to make something we’re really proud of. They told us they just want us to make something that’s looks and feels good to watch, without worrying about the views. So we had this freedom that you rarely ever get when you’re making a video, without having to worry about what the audience wants, and because of that I was able to pitch these wild ideas, like let’s go to the people are straight up saying that I want to kill them, and meet with them and see what happens. And that turned into an actual premise for the show, and we’re really happy that it turned out that way.

It feels good to hear praise, because we’ve been getting so much hate, from both Muslims who are like, “No you can’t say that gay Muslims exist, because they don’t.” And people on the far right saying “No, you can’t gloss over the fact that Muslims are killing gay people.” And we’re not. Even my family, oh my God my family, my mom is like “You’ve got to call that side of the family and apologize right now.” But it’s worth it.

It’s not going to be easy to have these conversations, because it’s part of those things that everybody has a belief about. It’s ingrained, and everything that’s against that is wrong. That goes for Muslims, non-Muslims, people who’ve just met a Muslim once and thought they were a dick. These people are just going to think “This guy is not a real Muslim.” So no matter what it’s going to turn into a pile-on hatefest. I knew that going in, but I’m still surprised.

Considering you’re publishing this through Slate, do you get the sense that you’re preaching to the liberal choir a little bit?

One hundred percent. That’s why I want every episode to involve the other side, not in a way to ridicule them, but in a way to include them, so it could potentially reach their audiences. And even the people at Slate, I think, are going to be pissed at this — because we’re not saying “Jim Hoff is a racist.” I don’t think he’s a racist, because he welcomed me into his house, that sort of contradicts things right off the bat, so even people on the left are going to write off people on the right, saying they’re out of touch. But they’re half of this country, so it’s too easy to dismiss them.

Hopefully, people on the left are going to be surprised by it, people on the right are going to be surprised by it. And frankly I kind of just don’t care, I want to make something that I think is honest, and the only way to do that really is just to piss off everybody.

Can you tease the next episode for us? You mentioned it was about Hijab

So right off the bat it’s going to be impossible to have this produced perfectly to make everybody happy, because guys generally shouldn’t have an opinion about what women should and shouldn’t be allowed to wear. We’re in America; we’re not living in Raqqa.

So having said that since I’m not going to be able to do it in a way that’s perfect, I’m just going to try and air it out without making it too much about religion, so I talked to my sister about it on camera, and I’m learning things about her that I never really knew. For example that she started wearing it when she was four years old, which even by Muslim standards is really early. I don’t think you can’t really make a conscious decision about your relationship with God at that age.

She is having second thoughts about it — she’s a doctor, so it covers her ears, which is a problem, so she’s started wearing it in a way that uncovers your ears, so she can use her stethoscope. But my mom is still putting pressure on her. So there’s this weird pressure that she’s facing to wear it in a certain way, and I really, really hope that she makes her mind up on it, but the fact is that her decision is “Do I make my mom happy, or do I make my mom upset?”

And that was the premise about this whole episode. So I talked to my mom about it, asking her if she’d accept my sister if she came home without it, and my mom cried and said no. And then I asked my sister the same thing and she was like “No, her experience and her relationship with hijab is totally different than mine. I can’t expect her to understand what my decision will look like.” So hopefully people when they see, they’ll see that this isn’t about whether or not all women should wear hijab, this is just about one person’s choice and what that choice looks like.

Is this your first time visiting these rural American places?

No. I mean, I married a girl from Kentucky. I fucking love it there, it’s so much better than New York in some ways. You drive through these amazing places, cows everywhere, and then you look over to the right and there’s Trump signs everywhere. I mean the county she lives in went like 89% for Trump. But at the same time they have a mosque there, and they’re really fucking nice to the Muslims there. And it’s like “What are we missing?”

That’s sort of what inspired the project — maybe we don’t have all the answers, and trying to come up with them is hurting us, because there is no ultimate truth that covers everything. Even within or outside of Islam, the concept of truth is kind of dumb, because everyone creates their own realities and lives in them.

So really what this is, is trying to explore the different truths and realities that people live in and not calling them crazy for it, just trying to understand it.

Over the course of this series so far, how are you seeing your perceptions of Americans, and of New Yorkers change?

So the whole premise of this series is fear, and about what makes people afraid, why they’re afraid, and why they hold onto those fears and using them to influence how they feel about whole communities of people. And the more I dig deep into this, the more I’m starting to realize that it’s not that they are afraid, or that fear is driving their lives, it’s just that fear is a good way to control people — it’s the oldest trick in the book.

I’m really worried that by doing all these interviews with people who spread fear, that they aren’t really afraid themselves, but they’ve found an audience of people who are afraid, and through those audiences they’ve found a way to do what all the media companies are trying to do, which is get clicks and get people to see their content. And I’m really, really worried that that’s what the onus is. And in my efforts to try and find the absolute truth and taking these issues seriously, I find I’m taking these fearmongerers seriously, which is really the last thing you want to do. I’m just worried that people are being manipulated into being afraid and are not necessarily genuinely afraid themselves.

For example, if people are afraid of Sharia law, there are going to be a hundred websites that say “This is what Sharia really is, this is what CNN doesn’t want you to know.” If you want to talk about letting in refugees from Djibouti, is that really going to be the case? So I’m starting to worry that this has turned into sports for them — where they have these teams that they root for, where they insist that their side is the best and stick with it forever. I’m afraid I’ll just be adding to noise.

Are you seeing entrenchment into these polarized values?

Absolutely, and I blame the internet. I see everybody as wanting to defend their ideas. I’m not trying to attack these ideas, I’m just trying to understand them. I think because everybody is becoming more and more entrenched, and perceiving the other side as inhuman, or not worth taking seriously, then this series is worth trying to do. Because people are going to see it and see the other side as being human, as individuals with different experiences. But as long as you start talking about their ideas, then we’re taking a step in the right direction.

I’ve been working in media for seven years right now, and part of how media gauges the success of each story is based on how much traffic it earns, or how much people click on it, and that’s terrifying to me. So it doesn’t matter if what you have is accurate or correct, it could be wrong, but as long as people come to it, you’ve got more of an incentive to produce those kind of stories. Its about taking a side, and writing for that side, instead of reporting the truth. And it’s been like that a long time, way before Trump, before Obama, before Bush. People are going to be seeking out the opinions they already have. And as long as media is going to be taking advantage of that, we’re going to be pushing the other side farther away, because it’s going to make less and less sense to people.

So what’s the remedy? How do you convince people to not give into that instinct to click on those stories?

We sort of did it to ourselves. We’re at this point where people everywhere are seeking out what makes them feel good, that makes them feel right, and because everyone creates their own realities, they’ll dismiss other opinions. Right now I see it only getting worse, because people are creating content at a faster rate; we were worried about the twenty-four hour news cycle, but now we have new posts coming out every second of every day. And because of that, we’re just oging to be less trusting of stories we don’t understand.

I think the only solution might be film, or podcasts, because they have this incredible way of making people feel. If we can create more content that simulates empathy, we can maybe encourage that kind of behavior, but it’s not a solution, it can treat that symptom of dehumanization.

That’s it for this week’s Member Spotlight. Make sure you check Slate every day, Episode 3 is about to drop, and follow Aymann on Instagram and Twitter for more updates!