This was definitely entertaining. It's a group of Arab men - from Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan... who are conversing in a barber shop in Edmonton. Canada comes off very well as a country that offers them peace and a live- and-let-live way of life. These men come from a region of the world where, in their words, tribal affiliations can range from family threats to life or death. Canada offers an alternative.
They also discuss aspects of terrorism – and the stereotypes they face. Some put the blame for ISIS or Daesh on Islam. One said that we have to look inside ourselves. There was also some mention of the ghettoization of immigrants versus immersion into Western society.
Be that as it may, this film of less than an hour comes off as somewhat lightweight. It's probably due to the structure of the presentation – a group of guys chatting in a barber-shop - with no probing whatsoever. I did come away with a sense of a chauvinistic, patriarchal point-of-view. With comments like "my daughter wears the hijab". What does this mean? The father seemed proud of this. How would he feel if his daughter discarded the hijab? Another spoke of his son having a Jewish male friend come to the house. That's very nice – but his son lives in a pluralistic society – when he enters a university or the workforce he will be exposed to many nationalities, different political orientations, females in authority, straight, gays ... What if his son dates a Jewish girl – what then?
I got the feeling this film was skimming the surface throughout. The gender roles of women and men are a constant problem in the Muslim world – and are now affecting us here in the West (for example women wearing the niqab, arranged marriages ...). For more thought provoking issues, see the NFB film "Me and the Mosque" or Google Mona Eltahawy.
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