And so, for the final episode of Extremely Brummie Muslims – sorry, Extremely British Muslims (Channel 4) – we get right into the nitty-gritty of people’s lives in Birmingham – even down to how they enter a toilet. “You enter with your left foot,” explains Abdul, a white convert, “because if you were to fall dead, you’d fall backwards if you’re on your left foot. But if you’re on your right, you fall forwards. So you’re not going to die inside the toilet.” This is life- or death-changing stuff. No one wants to be found face down in a pile of Andrex rolls.
So far in the series, we have seen Birmingham’s “halal dating” circuit – like the Asian Muslim version of First Dates without the romance or Fred Sirieix; a mosque committee crammed with old Asian men chatting about the local lord mayor; and a niqab-wearing woman ride a quad bike. And then there were the beards. Lots of beards.
Last night, we saw Abdul moving menacingly up the stairs at 5.23am. He enters a dark room, flicks the switch and wakes up two bleary-eyed teenagers. He’s on a mission. We know because he can’t stop rubbing his hands together. “You’ve got seven minutes, then we need to go to the mosque,” he says to the squinting younglings. Music is added to ramp up the comic tension. [The Guardian] Read more
