UK Muslim Youth

I recently attended a MYNA Leadership conference as a counselor and was able to meet an amazing sister, Sr. Faridha Karim, representing from Muslim Youth Helpline of the UK. Great organization, mashaAllah.

The organization also has a website for youth, Muslimyouth.net with campaigns to get Muslim youth in the UK active.

One of their documentaries on Muslim youth involved gang violence, titled Second Chance is especially interesting and brings awareness to a really important issue in the Muslim community.

Why we need an American-Muslim Tyler Perry

Hands down, Tyler Perry is cool.

The first Tyler Perry movie I saw was Diary of a Mad Black Woman. While I watched the making of the movie, I realized that this was Perrys’ first film ever. And in my opinion, his best one yet. It was a combination of a drama, comedy, love story and family movie all in one. At the same time, he promoted the idea of the ideal Black Christian family.

Perry's movies make it clear that he knows what he wants as far as portraying the ideal Black Christian community – and using his movies to give people that positive image of what to attain. Besides his TV sitcoms, I have yet to see a Tyler Perry movie without a church scene in it – which is usually the same scene where the family’s troubles all unravel and fix themselves – all because they had trust in God.

No matter what the problem is, in the end, the church is where their problems are solved.

So basically Perry is legit because he's proud of who he is and he is using movies to affirm his identity, and that is something that we, as American Muslims can learn from. This is so we don’t not push away our identity, but to embrace it.

-ScreenRighter with help from FilmMaqam

After Oz - Love Story

One of the best short film love stories I've seen on Youtube so far:

After OZ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1lkEgKzix4

Anyone that can depict a life/love story in a couple minutes or less, using tin people and no words is cool.

Each scene is well thought out and brings several messages to twist and make life of a typical and common everyday story.

Without giving away the short, its ironic that the characters are made of tin - who are not supposed to have any hearts, but in this case, they do, to further emphasize the message.

Go Vancouver Film school :-)