Jennifer Taylor tells universal story through ex-drug dealer’s tale in ‘New Muslim Cool’

“New Muslim Cool” was shot over three years by Emmy-winning filmmaker Jennifer Taylor. The film is featured at the ongoing !f İstanbul AFM International Independent Film Festival, running through Feb. 21, and at the !f Ankara AFM International Independent Film Festival, which is to take place between Feb. 25 and 28. This documentary is about an ex-drug dealer named Hamza Perez, who chose to convert to Islam after having a dream when he was 21. The documentary recounts the experiences Perez had after his conversion to Islam and the difficulties American Muslims face in the US, also showing the efforts of Americans to understand Muslims after the trauma caused by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Following a screening of the documentary at New York University (NYU) last week, we had the chance to talk with Taylor.

The idea for the documentary came as Taylor was working in television news, the director told Today’s Zaman. Noting that she “learned a lot about Islam after the 9/11 attacks,” Taylor also stated that other people should not be held responsible for the wrongdoings of certain individuals.

How did you begin working on “New Muslim Cool”?

At the public television station where I sometimes work as a producer, my boss assigned me to do some reporting and short television pieces about young people in the San Francisco Bay Area from different religious backgrounds. In the course of my research, I discovered a thriving Muslim hip-hop scene in Oakland, California. There, an incredibly diverse group of young Muslim men and women -- some of them converts and some of them born into the faith -- were collaborating to create a culture that was both expressing their faith and reaffirming their American-ness.

Thinking of other seminal cultural and musical moments, I came up with a jazz-inspired title, New Muslim Cool. Then I put together a team that included my co-producers Kauthar Umar and Hana Siddiqi, raised some initial funds and started filming.

At first my team and I planned to make a “survey” film about American Muslim youth culture, a sort of ensemble piece featuring several intersecting characters on the road with a small Muslim hip-hop label. We imagined that film would explore the diversity and dynamism of this young American community, examine hip-hop as the lingua franca of youth everywhere and show how young American Muslims -- like so many other people -- were using new technologies to bring together faith and pop culture.

We also expected to explore top-line issues such as the differences between “conservative” and “progressive” Muslims, tensions between the immigrant and convert communities and the image of Islam as a religion of rebellion and “cool” among many young people around the world.

All of those cultural and socio-political themes still run through the finished film, but once we decided to focus on Hamza Pérez and his family and community in Pittsburgh, the project took on a whole other life and deeper meaning. Hip-hop culture became less the focus of the film and more the context, and Hamza and his wife Rafiah’s day-to-day and spiritual life became the real heart of the film.

What was your opinion of Islam before the documentary?

Until this project, religion was never a large part of my interest as a filmmaker. Therefore I had no real interest or opinions about Islam before starting work on the film, but like millions of Americans, I suddenly felt that I had to learn more after 9/11 and the start of the war in Afghanistan.

How did you meet Hamza? How did you establish trust with Hamza and his family? How often were you there in Pittsburgh?

I met Hamza early in the filming process, when I was still interviewing and filming with several people. Once I had a chance to sit down with him and his brother Suliman, I knew they would be wonderful characters with real human stories. That feeling was affirmed once we had a chance to go to Pittsburgh and meet their whole community.

It took some time to establish trust, but I think the main reason we decided we could trust each other is that I did not have a closet agenda as a filmmaker. I did not want to make the film about 9/11, and I was not interested in trying to tell the definitive story that would represent Islam as an abstract or all Muslims -- I was really interested in the specific stories of Hamza, his family and community and in a certain sense the small details of their lives.

And for their part, I think Hamza and the other people in the film had the same goal, not to somehow try to show that their lives represent all Muslims, or all Puerto Ricans, but just human beings.

Also Hana and Kauthar, my two co-producers, are both American Muslims themselves and so obviously knew a lot about the community and could provide a measure of assurance that we were not out to slander the community as a whole. And my family is part Mexican, so Hamza and his family and I had an immediate cultural bond.

We filmed over a three-year period and tried to get there at least every few months so that we could track the story on a regular basis.

Why did Perez want to become a Muslim?

I am hesitant to speak for Hamza, but I think he would say that he always felt an affinity for Muslims and a spiritual hunger that was satisfied when he became Muslim. He got in trouble a lot as a teenager and sold drugs, so I think he was looking for something that would keep him on the straight path. But he always points out that he was raised as a Catholic, and that as a Muslim he shares in a lot of the same ideas and values as Christians and Jews.

What was the biggest challenge in the making of the film?

Funding is the number one obstacle for any independent filmmaker. So apart from that the big challenge was to make sure that, as we were filming at regular intervals over three years, we were capturing a story that would hold together and have a clear trajectory.

It turned out a lot of the movement in the film is internal and not so overtly dramatic. The film is about spiritual growth, trust, love, redemption, family, community and forgiveness -- and those are very beautiful processes but can be hard to capture in a visual medium like film.

We could have made something more sensationalistic but that would have been disrespectful and dishonest, and I would never have broken the trust Hamza and everyone else put in us -- so we ended up with a pretty quiet and reflective film, but one that I think we all feel reflects what truly was happening.

Do you think Americans have prejudices about Islam? Is your documentary capable of changing these perceptions?

I think Americans as a whole may have some prejudices about Islam as an abstract thing, but once they get to know people as individuals most Americans are incredibly open and truly friendly. It’s one of the contradictory things about our country, and it’s one very clear element of our film -- our government can act one way while the people act in a totally different manner.

Just look at the examples of people in the film like the Christian pastor in the jail who stands up for Hamza when the FBI wants to take away his job there, or the Jewish lady who wants to work with him on the poetry anthology. She is now one of his family’s closest friends, and with Hamza’s mom she wants to open a Muslim-Jewish-kosher-halal restaurant called Andaluz!

What kind of feedback did you get after the film?

We have found that “New Muslim Cool” not only sparks productive interfaith conversations, it also serves to inspire young people of all backgrounds to reflect on their own capacity for leadership and positive change and on the basic themes of self-reliance, patience, love for family and learning to live and work with respect for one’s fellow citizens.

The film is resonating with people from diverse generations, ethnic and religious backgrounds, socio-economic classes and even across the ideological spectrum. For example, we now have the full support of the warden and staff at the jail where some of the story takes place. We recently showed the film to a large group of inmates there and will work in consultation with the warden and staff to prepare a special DVD version of the film for use in correctional facilities, with extra features and facilitator’s guides to encourage constructive dialogue among both inmates and public safety personnel.

Have you had any unexpected experiences while shooting the film?

At the beginning of the filming process, I’m not sure any of us -- the crew or the people featured in the film -- anticipated how deeply we would end up exploring the most elemental processes that make us human: the search for some form of faith, for goodness, for ways to maintain hope, find forgiveness and fall in love.

You first shot interviews with different people but later focused on Hamza. Why?

I first became very interested in Hamza as a character because he seemed so full of contradictions. His stage show was very harsh at the time, but offstage he was polite and soft-spoken, and very funny. Then once my crew and I discovered that he and his community in Pittsburgh were trying to create an alternative to drug-dealing and street life, we knew that we had a chance to try to tell a really deep story that would touch on a lot of themes.

Do you think the film succeeds in giving the message you intended to give?

My hope is to get people to think about how we can find our common humanity, and that we recognize our shared rights and responsibilities as citizens in an ever-shrinking, always-changing world. Sometimes I think that happens, and sometimes not. But viewers can write to us at info@newmuslimcool.com and tell us what they think.

Your documentary is currently featured at an independent film festival in İstanbul. What would you like to tell festivalgoers?

My main hope is that people see Hamza, Rafiah and all the other people in the film as humans first, just like themselves, whoever they happen to be. The film is of course about specific community issues and themes relating to American Muslims, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, youth, working people -- but at the end of the day, it’s a universal story about how each of us, in our own way, can try to be the best person possible.

‘New Muslim Cool’ screenings

At !f İstanbul

Feb. 17 at 1 p.m.

AFM Fitaş (in Beyoğlu district)

At !f Ankara

Feb. 28 at 12:30 p.m.

AFM CEPA