Coming to The WORLD Channel’s America ReFramed tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16: THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN
Brittany Huckabee’s look at a Muslim woman’s controversial stand against her local mosque debuted at True/False in 2009. It also screened at San Francisco Asian American, where it was awarded best documentary. The film was nominated for an Emmy after its initial public television broadcast.
Morgantown is a West Virginia college town with a small but vibrant Muslim community, largely drawn from the nearby school. The Islamic Center of Morgantown doubles as their place of worship and community hub. When Asra Nomani returns from a stint in Pakistan as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, she believes her hometown will be the best place to raise her child. After recognizing signs of intolerance among the mosque’s more conservative leaders and prejudicial treatment of women, Asra decides to take a very visible stand, drawing media attention and criticism against supposed “extremism” in the mosque, and, in the process, precipitating a schism among its members. Huckabee deftly charts the fallout, following not only Asra in her crusade, but other members of the mosque, both allies and those alienated by her tactics, to craft a provocative exploration of the tension between tradition and progressive ideas in today’s Islam with regard to gender.
what (not) to doc 