No one had yet seen this show, mind you, and it is wildly unlikely in this hypersensitive politically correct age that it would have actually contained anything offensive to Islam, but the plot did seem to touch ever so lightly on the plight of Muslim women in a Sharia state (Saudi Arabia), and on the kidnapping of Western children by Muslims to raise them in Muslim countries (which is an all-too-grim reality — witness the film Not Without My Daughter, the story of Patricia Roush, etc.).
That was too much for Hamas-linked CAIR, so they began demanding that ABC adhere to Sharia prohibitions against criticism of Islam, and drop the series. But note well what ABC says: “The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned and is certainly not conducive to the creative process, so we’ve decided not to move forward with this project.” In other words, they are dropping it because of the controversy. That is in essence to reward a kind of terrorism: Hamas-linked CAIR knows that all it has to do to achieve its goals is stir up a “controversy,” and timid and ignorant Western officials will immediately cave in and give them what they want, as those officials have neither the time nor the stomach to stand up in a battle for the freedom of speech. And so we continue to slide down the road to total submission.
“ABC Family Pulls Plug on ‘Alice in Arabia’ After Muslim Org Backlash,” by Andrea Seikaly in Variety, March 21:
Just days after the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) expressed concerns over potential stereotyping in the pilot for ABC Family’s “Alice in Arabia” and requested a meeting with execs, the network has decided not to pursue the show that had been announced Monday.
An ABC Family spokesperson said Friday, “The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned and is certainly not conducive to the creative process, so we’ve decided not to move forward with this project.”
The show’s premise centered on an American teen kidnapped by her Saudi Arabian family after tragedy befalls her parents.
The pilot was penned by Brooke Eikmeier, who served in the U.S. Army as a cryptologic linguist in the Arabic language and trained to support NSA missions in the Middle East.
CAIR previously challenged actual and potential anti-Muslim stereotypes in “Executive Decision,” “24,” “The Siege,” “True Lies,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Obsession,” “The Third Jihad,” “Jihad in America” and “The Sum of All Fears.” The org has also acted as a consultant on films including DreamWorks Animation’s “The Prince of Egypt.”