Finally, a Podcast That Explores the Travails of Being a Muslim Woman in America

“I just kept speaking in English really loudly so I didn’t sound like a huge foreign freak.”

#GoodMuslimBadMuslim cohosts Zahra Noorbakhsh and Taz Ahmed. Sabiha Basrai

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Zahra Noorbakhsh was 12 and attending Farsi school in California when a teacher told her that if she didn’t start wearing the hijab, her mother might burn in hell. So she tried it. But a trip to Blockbuster proved mortifying: “Everyone was staring at me and I just kept speaking in English really loudly—’Hey, Dad, I want to get Monster Truck Bloopers!’—so I didn’t sound like a huge foreign freak.”

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh, you’re going to get death threats.’ No, actually just a lot of essays and wiki links from atheists telling me I’m confused.”

That’s one of the tales she revisits with cohost Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed in their new podcast, #GoodMuslimBadMuslim. Comedian Noorbakhsh befriended Ahmed, an activist and writer, on a road trip promoting Love, InshAllah, an anthology about the secret love lives of Muslim American women. They began teasing each other about which one was “the bad Muslim,” took their discussions of cultural mores to Twitter, and later began recording them.

The resulting monthly podcast is a fun, sassy exchange, part Wayne’s World, part Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. You might catch the ladies issuing a fatwa against bacon, inventing cheesy Muslim pickup lines (“You’ve hijacked my heart”), and sharing tips on how to survive your “conservative, gun-toting, libertarian” in-laws. But jokes aside, they address the uniquely confusing contradictions of how Muslim American women are expected to behave. Noorbakhsh prays but drinks and eats pork, and admits to having had sex before her marriage—to an atheist. Ahmed won’t touch booze or pork, but she seldom prays, and recalls her parents berating her for wanting to dye her hair pink and go to punk shows.

Just four episodes in, the podcast is earning press attention (NBC News called it “side-splitting”) and praise from listeners looking for fresh voices. “For women from these backgrounds to be talking openly about private subjects is a big deal,” notes the Iranian-born comedian Maz Jobrani, who once had Noorbakhsh on stage as a guest performer. (“I totally bombed,” she recalls.)

The timing is apt, too, as horrors committed in the name of Islam fuel new resentments. Noorbakhsh, a self-declared “loudmouth,” points out that unabashed conversations are key to busting stereotypes. With her comedy act and now the podcast, “everybody was like, ‘Oh, you’re going to get death threats.’ No, actually just a lot of essays and wiki links from atheists telling me I’m confused. And celebratory email! So I’m doing a lot of reading, not a lot of dying.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate