Watch Little Mosque on the Prairie Online

The series focuses on the Muslim community in the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan (population 14,000). The primary institutions of the community are the local mosque, presided over by imam Amaar Rashid and located in the rented parish hall of the town's Anglican church, and Fatima's Café, a downtown diner run by Fatima Dinssa. The community patriarchs are Yasir Hamoudi, a construction contractor who originally fronted the money to establish the mosque under the pretense that he was renting office space for his business, and Baber Siddiqui, a college economics professor who served as the mosque's temporary imam until Amaar was hired.

The town of Mercy is governed by Mayor Ann Popowicz. Sarah Hamoudi, Yasir's wife, works as a public relations officer in Popowicz's office.

The title alludes to the classic American book and drama series, Little House on the Prairie. The two series are not related (the original true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder's family and writings were Christian based) aside from the direct, albeit slightly modified version, of the title logo. Production staff

In addition to Nawaz, the show's writing staff includes or has included Susan Alexander, Cole Bastedo, Jason Belleville, Claire Ross Dunn, Greg Eckler, Paul Mather, Jackie May, Al Rae, Dan Redican, Vera Santamaria, Rebecca Schechter, Miles G. Smith. Mather and Sheridan were previously writers for Corner Gas.

The show's executive producers are Mary Darling and Clark Donnelly, owners of WestWind Pictures. Producers are Colin Brunton and Michael Snook.

While the show does derive some of its humour from exploring the interactions of the Muslims with the non-Muslim townspeople of Mercy, and the contrast of conservative Islamic views (held primarily by the characters of Baber and Fatima) with more liberal interpretations of Islam (as represented by Amaar and Rayyan), at its core the show is essentially a traditional sitcom whose most unique trait is the simple fact of being set among an underrepresented and misunderstood cultural community. Nawaz herself has stated that the show's primary agenda is to be funny, not to be a political platform. She has also stated that she views comedy as one of the most valuable and powerful ways to break down barriers and to encourage dialogue and understanding between cultures.

This is represented by the show's current promotional tagline, "Small town Canada with a little Muslim twist" — the religious angle, while always present, is largely tied to and sometimes even secondary to standard and universal sitcom themes such as family, friends and the humour in everyday life. For example, while the show sometimes tackles storylines with a political edge, such as a character being unable to attend a conference in the United States after being wrongly placed on a no-fly list or the mosque being raided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, even these situations are explored as much for their humour as their politics. The show much more commonly explores purely comedic issues such as whether a Muslim woman still has to cover her hair if the only man who can see her is gay, whether Muslims can curl, whether to haggle with the carpet salesman when buying a prayer rug, or whether a Muslim woman's head scarf is enough to mitigate a bad hair day. Television critics have also credited this very combination of an attention-grabbing premise with conventional and familiar sitcom themes as one of the primary reasons that the show successfully retained an audience after its debut.

Notably, the series also sidesteps issues of stereotyping by having characters in both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities who cross the entire spectrum of political opinion. Baber and Fatima, who represent conservative views within Islam, are balanced by conservative radio host Fred Tupper among the non-Muslims, while Amaar and Rayyan, who represent Islamic liberalism, are balanced by the liberal Anglican Rev. Magee. The more moderate Yasir and Sarah, who try to be good Muslims but aren't particularly strongly defined by their faith, are balanced among the non-Muslims by Mayor Popowicz, who doesn't care what anybody's religious beliefs are as long as they vote for her on election day.

Hewitt's character of Rayyan Hamoudi, in particular, has been singled out in the media as a strong and unique role model for young Muslim women - both for her ability to reconcile a commitment to her Muslim faith with a modern, feminist-inspired Western lifestyle and career, and as a fashion icon who dresses in outfits that are religiously appropriate yet stylish, professional and contemporary.

Unusual for a Canadian television series, Little Mosque received extensive advance publicity in international media, with stories appearing in The New York Times, the Washington Times and the Houston Chronicle, as well as on CNN, NPR and the BBC.

The show premiered on Tuesday, January 9, 2007, at 8:30 p.m. It airs Wednesdays at 8:00pm (all times half an hour later in Newfoundland). The Monday, January 15 broadcast was a repeat of the pilot.

The series premiere drew an audience of 2.1 million - an exceptionally strong rating for domestic programming in the Canadian television market, and on par with Canadian ratings for popular American series. It was, in fact, the largest audience the CBC had achieved in a decade for an entertainment program. By comparison, Corner Gas, one of the highest-rated Canadian TV shows, attracts just under a million and a half viewers for a typical episode. The second episode, airing against the second night of the much-anticipated season premiere of American Idol in most markets, had 1.2 million viewers, a sharp drop but still a high rating for a Canadian sitcom, and very high for the CBC, which has had trouble garnering large audiences for its scripted programming in recent years.

At the end of the show's season on 7 March 2007, the show attracted 1.1 million viewers, or an average of 1.2 million for the season. CBC Television renewed the show for a second season consisting of 20 episodes, which began airing on October 3, 2007 and continued to attract an average of one million viewers per episode.

CBC renewed the show for a third season on March 7, 2008. Season three premiered on CBC Television October 1, 2008.

• Official website
• Watch Little Mosque
• NPR : CBC to Tell the Story of 'Little Mosque on the Prairie'
• BBC website: "Muslim sitcom debuts in Canada"
• Interview with creator Zarqa Nawaz (altmuslim.com)
• How to hijab like Rayyan Hamoudi!

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