On a road trip along historic Route 66, Muslim American couple Mona Haydar and Sebastian Robins met Muslim jazz musicians in Tulsa, historians in New Mexico, and date farmers in the Coachella Valley, exploring the ways Muslims have shaped American culture and history. The three-part PBS documentary “The Great Muslim American Road Trip,” follows Haydar and Robins on their 3,000-mile journey.
During Muslim American Heritage Month, the Albany Institute of History & Art is screening the 2022 documentary this Sunday, Jan. 11, and will feature a live conversation with Executive Producer Jawaad Abdul Rahman. WAMC’s Maryam Ahmad spoke with Rahman, Director of Development at Unity Productions Foundation, ahead of the screening.
What went into the making of the documentary and how long did it take?
It started, actually, as a history of Islam in America. We started pitching it to PBS and other platforms several years ago as a history of Islam in America. Very encyclopedic, and we'll have professors, and we’ll be chronological. We'll start with the story of a man named Estevanico who's considered the first Muslim, just around the time of Columbus, up till the modern day. That was really how we pitched it.
But in the course of several conversations, you know, broadcasters cared about getting a big audience the end of the day, and they felt that it's too academic. The approach is too academic. They said there's something there, but [to] come up with a more entertaining way of telling the story, and then it sort of evolved, after many iterations, into this road trip. Because road trips are a genre. Travelogues are a genre. One of our founders, Michael Wolfe, had actually written a book called “The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca” many, many years ago that ABC had actually turned into a short documentary about this Muslim pilgrimage, about the Hajj. And so we already had that experience in terms of developing a travel show-type approach, and it sort of evolved into that.
And then, we realized we needed a telegenic pair of posts, charismatic, and we found this influencer and artist, Mona Haydar, and her husband, Sebastian Robins, whose very grassroots educational work had gone viral, and they were actually featured in a Google Ad during the Super Bowl [in 2021] and it just seemed like the right fit, and they were ready to do it. After months of planning and setting up interviews, then the actual journey took 21 days to film and put together.
The documentary situates American Muslims as major parts of American culture throughout history. Why was this an important story to tell?
I think for what you've stated, that Muslims have been a part of America from the earliest days to now. I mean, from the time of Columbus, there are stories of Muslims in America. The time of the early explorers, to the time of right before 1776 you have a huge percentage of enslaved Africans who are Muslim, they're trying to hold on to their faith. [Then] to the period of industrialization [and] modernization, you have Muslims part of that story, to the period of westward expansion, you have Muslims part of that story. To the modern day, where you have in the film, we meet Muslim jazz musicians and tech entrepreneurs and people working on healthcare challenges and so on so forth. So really, every aspect of American history has stories of Muslims integrated in it, and we felt that this is an approachable way we're telling the story for people.
They don't have to be super interested in history, they don't have to come with a lot of knowledge. They really don't even have to be that interested in the history of Muslims. It's more just really understanding America's richness and understanding that these are all aspects of American culture and life. It's stories that haven't been told, and it's just woven together in a way that I think a lot of audiences appreciate, we see that with the reaction from schools around the country that are using the film and the rebroadcast of the film throughout the country. It's really taken off.
What were the major things that you gathered from people’s reactions who were learning about this history or seeing themselves in history as well?
Since the film came out post-COVID, it was just the idea of getting in your car and rediscovering America, [which] was on the minds of a lot of people. And so, PBS packaged it along with a couple other travelogues with that spirit, kind of a “Rediscover America” [theme] and the reaction has been incredible. We've had so many different types of institutions want to screen the film. It’s a three-hour film, so they pick and choose sections and segments, and we have a group of teachers who developed content around it for public schools because it ties so well into the US History curriculum. So we have schools around the country that are using it. We've had screenings continue, have rebroadcasts continue, it's won a bunch of awards.
You can tell the story of Muslims in America and just New York and just Chicago and just LA right, and just focus on the big cities. But by taking this Route 66 journey. And Route 66 was that first time Americans could get in their own car, and they could go see the Grand Canyon, and they could go to California, you know? It has this very romantic quality, even though it's now just a hodgepodge network of roads. But it's still in American culture, and more still has this wonderful quality of adventure, and that was really the approach that we decided to take. And so for that reason, it actually has very broad appeal. So, we have interests in screenings in smaller cities and bigger cities around the country.
What were the stories that stood out to you most while making the film?
Honestly, just the sheer variety of stories was really interesting. And you know, if we had more time, we could have shown more. We really just scratched the surface. We purposely didn't try to include everything, because it would have been impossible, I mean, but there's so much variety in the stories of Muslims contributing to enriching America. [We] really tried to give a taste of everything, from the stories of people who have been a part of the country since its earliest days, to the stories of the 1904 World's Fair, where there's Muslims coming from the Philippines, and they're this interesting exhibition, and people are curious about them. What is that all about? And how does that tie into how America's immigration laws change?
It’s a really fascinating and challenging aspect of our history, and to the modern-day person who is just on the ground trying to figure out, how do we pay for out of control health care costs? Or how do we come up with technology that's greener and less impact on the climate and so on so forth. So we meet people working on solving those kind of problems as well in the course, and then some of it's just fun adventure, the fun that you get when you go on a road trip or learning about artists and letting them kind of tell their story as well. Really the variety was what appealed to me the most.
You've been working in this field and telling Muslim stories for several years. How have you seen Muslim storytelling change and evolve, and what do you hope to see it become going forward?
I think one of the one of the positive developments in the work that we do, telling these stories that have interfaith themes with Muslim characters, is there's a lot more curiosity, and it's not coming from a place of fear. It's really coming from a place of curiosity. People are going beyond their one-dimensional villains or victims, [and often] Muslims fall into one of these two categories, and realizing that they represent the fullness of humanity. There’s a lot of interesting, exciting, amazing, intriguing stories to learn. There's a lot more interest from that in that sense.
One of the things that we do at our work at UPF is, in addition to the films we produce, we've consulted on a number of scripted series in Hollywood to try to help them develop more authentic Muslim characters and storylines in their scripting, because we ourselves are producers, and we understand the challenges of plot and character development and story arc and so on and so forth. So those are the kinds of conversations that we've had with a bunch of series like Grey's Anatomy, even comedy series like The Simpsons and Madam Secretary, dramatic series and so on so forth. You do see more receptiveness, for sure, by creatives and just by the general public and really trying to understand more. You know, this is a huge percentage of the world's population, a growing percentage of the American population. People want to go beyond the simplistic tropes and really understand who Muslims are.
