ʿUmrah in Atlantic City: The Representation of Muslim-American Space in Ramy
Four men arrive at a seedy hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a bachelor party. Bathed in the neon lights of the hotel’s casino, the group debates their evening plan: a visit to a strip club. The camera focuses on their faces, and the hotel lobby behind them is a blurred palette of dark pinks, blues, and purples. The bachelor, Ramy, hesitates, suggesting instead that the group see a magic show (Figure 1). His friend, Mo, rejects this idea, asserting that magicians are “demonic.” Ramy quips, “you’re saying strippers are more halal than magicians?” “One hundred percent. Magicians speak to jinn. Strippers express themselves,” Mo responds.
Figure 1. Ramy (Ramy Youssef), promotional image for Ramy, Season 2; “Ramy” in Arabic written in neon heart.
The scene is similar to many mainstream American buddy movies, like The Hangover (2009) or Bridesmaids (2011), but it spirals quickly into a discussion about how to interpret twenty-first-century American bachelor party activities through Islamic law. The friends lightly spar over whether strip clubs or magic shows are more or less “haram” [forbidden] or “halal” [permitted] under sharia. Ahmed goes so far as to claim that supporting strippers is not only halal, it is “sadaqah” [charitable] (Figure 2). The juxtaposition of this Muslim religious discussion below a brightly lit “Casino” sign in Atlantic City strikes a dissonant chord that the show, Ramy, plays for laughs. Within the classic formulae of U.S. sitcom humor and part of the new genre of diverse millennial coming-of-age serials, Ramy injects a complex representation of Muslim religious observance that both engenders humor and prompts the viewer to question assumptions about Islam in the United States. In doing so, the show signals a new era of representation of Muslim-Americans on screen. As a professor of Islamic art history at Rutgers-Newark, where I teach a large Muslim-American student population, I am particularly interested in how the New Jersey setting and the comedic television formula shape this new representation. In nearly every episode, the show portrays the juncture of Muslim religious spaces and New Jersey locales recognizable to a mainstream audience in the United States. While the assumed dissonance between the two provokes humor, the show also reveals how these spaces fit together, forging a novel representation of Muslim-American space through the specificity of a millennial, northern New Jersey culture.
Figure 2. Ahmed (Dave Merheje) in Atlantic City, NJ argues that supporting strippers is “sadaqah” [charitable], Ramy, Season 2, Episode 7, 2020.
Ramy’s creator and lead actor, Ramy Youssef (b. 1991), is an observant Muslim from the New York City suburb of Rutherford, N.J. He attended Rutgers-Newark for a few years before devoting himself fulltime to comedy. His show has been touted as the “first Muslim American sitcom” and joins the ranks of a new genre of serial programming that traces the coming of age of millennial women and people of color who, before the 2010s, were rarely the central characters of mainstream film and television in the United States. Including shows like Girls, Insecure, PEN15, Master of None, Atlanta, Shrill, Fleabag, these comedies tackle stereotypes and exploit the gap between our assumptions and the characters’ flaws for comedic effect (Figure 3). Ramy is like Girls and Fleabag in that it specifically uses cringe-worthy sexual exploits of its main character to challenge conceptions of (Muslim and female, respectively) sexuality for laughs.
Figure 3. Left to right: Lena Dunham in Girls (HBO 2012-2017), Issa Rae in Insecure (HBO 2016-present), Aidy Bryant in Shrill (Hulu 2019-present), and Maya Erskine in PEN15 (Hulu 2019-present).
While the content of Ramy is clearly novel--never before has Muslim religious practice been represented in such detail on mainstream U.S. television--the show follows a familiar formula. Its fundamental structure--a 25-minute sitcom in two seasons with ten episodes apiece, is identical to its peers. Like many shows today, the story follows a main character, but occasionally will portray a subsidiary character in depth. In Ramy, entire episodes focus on his mother, father, sister, and uncle, further expanding representation of marginalized voices in popular culture.
“Ramy gives nuance to Muslim-American identity, showing that Muslims too can be conflicted, sexual, and religious simultaneously.”
The form of the humor in these shows can be traced back to Seinfeld (NBC 1989-1998), particularly the deeply morally-flawed character of George Costanza (Jason Alexander). Seinfeld used the gap between George’s lifestyle choices and the audience’s moral standards for humorous effect. Most memorably, perhaps, is George’s decision to buy cheap wedding invitations. This choice ultimately leads to his fiancée’s death, after she licks the envelopes’ poisonous glue (Figure 4). George is relieved since he wasn’t sure he really wanted to marry her anyway. The cringe-inducing low morality of this character makes the viewer uncomfortable, but knowing that the show is fictional, the audience can laugh at the character’s ridiculousness. Hannah (Lena Dunham) in Girls, Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in Fleabag, and Ramy (Youssef) in Ramy, are all descendants of George Costanza in the way they replicate this moral gap for laughs. Although Ramy represents the Muslim community like no show before it, the form of its comedic structure is familiar to a U.S. audience.
Figure 4. George Costanza (Jason Alexander) and his ill-fated fiancée, Susan (Heidi Swedberg) in Seinfeld, season 7, 1995.
Ramy thus breaks ground in mainstream U.S. popular culture by uniting a familiar sitcom formula with new representation of Muslim-American life. But questions remain: does this unique combination change or impact mainstream understanding of Muslims in the U.S.? Ramy knowingly flouts mainstream assumptions in the U.S. about Islam and Muslims, but how do these humorous juxtapositions change the status quo? Ramy chips away at stereotypes by representing the complexity and individual expression of Islam in the U.S., locating it in a specific northern New Jersey millennial context. Unlike Jews and Christians who are represented on screen in various roles (i.e., lapsed Catholic, guilty Catholic, WASP, culturally Jewish, etc.), Muslim-Americans have been represented as a monolith, or worse, the derogatory stereotypes of terrorists or religious extremists. Ramy gives nuance to Muslim-American identity, showing that Muslims too can be conflicted, sexual, and religious simultaneously. It does so through the hyper-specificity of a millennial, male perspective in the suburban setting of northern New Jersey.
Figure 5. Ramy (Ramy Youssef), Mo (Mohamed Amer) and Ahmed (Dave Mehreje) in Mo’s classic New Jersey diner, Ramy, Season 1, 2019.
To create humor, Ramy uses the viewer’s expectation that Muslim religious practice and U.S. culture, specifically stereotypical New Jersey culture, will clash (Figure 5). In the opening scene of the series pilot, Ramy’s mother, played by the wonderful Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, urges Ramy to flirt with Muslim women at the mosque (Figure 6). Ramy responds, “Wh-what am I supposed to say, like ‘Can I get your father’s number?’” Maysa responds flatly, “Yes, why not?” Here Youssef pairs a classic American pick-up line in millennial vernacular, “like, can I get your number,” with a stereotype of strict dating life in Muslim culture, “your father’s number,” and Maysa provides the dry punchline. This joke sets the stage for the show, recasting the supposed clash between the two cultures as lighthearted humor and also inserting Muslim life into familiar comedic form.
Figure 6. Ramy (Youssef) and his mother, Maysa (Hiam Abbass) discuss how to find a girlfriend, Ramy, season 1, episode 1, 2019.
A hilarious scene from Ramy’s season two embodies the humorous rift between Muslim and New Jersey spaces, but ultimately argues for their synthesis. The scene unites an image of quintessential New Jersey space--Atlantic City--with one of the five pillars of Islam--pilgrimage to Mecca. In this scene, two significant genealogies of visual representations of space converge. On the one hand, representations of pilgrimage to Mecca, ranging from medieval textual accounts to modern photographs, have been a core component of Islamic visual culture since the inception of Islam in the seventh century. On the other, the representations of sleazy Italian-American spaces in New Jersey was central to the immensely popular and influential series, The Sopranos, in which the office of title character, Tony Soprano, was located in a strip club called Bada Bing. During Ramy’s bachelor party in season 2, episode 7, Ramy unites these seemingly divergent representational traditions. In the episode, Mo (Amer) has scheduled a ʿumrah (a pilgrimage to Mecca not during the specific dates of the Hajj) via virtual reality. Mo has hired a man in Saudi Arabia to perform ʿumrah for him, recording it live and transmitting the footage to him through virtual reality goggles, a service loosely based in reality. As it becomes more and more difficult every year to perform Hajj due to popularity and cost, many contemporary Muslims opt for ʿumrah. Mo has chosen to perform the ʿumrah virtually, although its coinciding with the bachelor party was not intentional.
“Ramy represents a space in which a complex Muslim religious experience co-exists with New Jersey culture.”
Mo takes the virtual reality call in the Atlantic City hotel room after the men return from the strip club. Ahmed is watching poker on the flat screen TV, while Mo, still dressed in a faux-fur lined coat, narrates what he is seeing. He breathlessly relates, “it’s like an apocalypse of snow outside, and I am in Saudiya [Saudi Arabia]. I can, like, feel the warmth.” Meanwhile, in the adjacent room, Ramy’s non-Muslim friend, Steve (Steve Way), who is wheel-chair bound due to his muscular dystrophy, has asked Ramy to help him ejaculate for medical reasons (Figure 7). The scene cuts between Ramy and Steve in one room and Mo and Ahmed in the other, juxtaposing images of Mecca, poker, brocade wallpaper, prostitution, a snow storm, an extremely awkward hand job, and tears of spiritual joy. Watching this scene unfold is almost physically painful because of the contrast of two sacred acts--the ʿumrah and helping a disabled friend--with the profane--a hand job, virtual reality, poker, and a prostitute.
Figure 7. Ramy (Youssef) and Steve (Steve Way) share an intimate, yet medically necessary, moment in the Atlantic City hotel room, Ramy, Season 2, Episode 7, 2020.
Mo and Ahmed experience a religious event at the end of the scene. Ramy picks up Steve after Steve asks him to “hold me,” while the first few bars of a song begin to play. The camera cuts to the other bedroom, where, bathed in a pink light, Mo and Ahmed wear their virtual reality goggles in front of two beds and brocade wallpaper. They stumble around the room, disoriented by the VR, with their arms outstretched. Mo’s hand touches the pink silk wall, and he lets out a moan of joy. Both men touch the wall, which stands in for the Kaaba that they see in their goggles (Figure 8). Mo embraces the wall, whimpering with tears of ecstasy, as we hear Tom Waits begin to sing Jersey Girl: “got no time for the corner boys/down in the street making all that noise.” The scene then cuts to the other room, where Ramy and Steve lie back on the pink silk, heart-shaped bed. Then Mo and Ahmed prostrate in prayer, the poker game still playing on the flat screen behind them, their foreheads touching the coral-colored plush carpeting, while Waits wails, “‘cause tonight I’m going to take that ride/cross the river to the Jersey side.” The camera cuts briefly back to Ramy and Steve as the song crescendos, and then to an image from inside the goggles, hands upward in prayer, with an image of the Kaaba at night. As Waits cries, “sha la la la la la,” Ahmed plaintively says, “it is so beautiful, Allah please forgive me for my sins” (Figure 9).
Figure 8. Mo (Amer), embracing wallpaper in the Atlantic City hotel room while on a virtual reality ʿumrah to Mecca, Ramy, Season 2, Episode 7, 2020.
Figure 9. A view of the Kaaba from inside Ahmed’s VR goggles, Ramy, Season 2, Episode 7, 2020.
In this scene, a moving religious experience takes place in a morally suspect, very American locale: an Atlantic City hotel room. Moreover, the song choice—Waits’s Jersey Girl—further reminds us of the setting, by way of the lyrics (“cross the river to the Jersey side”) and Waits’s characteristic gravelly voice. The song, the juxtaposition of it with images of Mecca, and the simulacrum of the silk brocade wall for the Kaaba are played as clashes. These clashes provoke humor: it is hard not to laugh at Mo’s weeping as he embraces the tacky wallpaper as a holy site. However, through this clash, the scene also argues that these two cultures--New Jersey and Muslim--ultimately share a space. Ramy represents a space in which a complex Muslim religious experience co-exists with New Jersey culture.
Figure 10. Ka‘aba Tile, ca. 1720–30, Turkey. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The pilgrimage to Mecca has been a pillar of Islam for nearly a millennium and a half, and Muslims throughout history and across the world have depicted the trip through a multitude of different languages, images, and objects (Figures 10, 11).
Figure 11. al-Sayyid ʻAbd al-Ghaffār, albumen photograph of al-Masjidal-Ḥarām and the Kaaba, c. 1880s. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
Figure 12. Malcolm X (Denzel Washington) depicted on Hajj in Malcom X, directed by Spike Lee, 1992.
While this trip unifies the Muslim ʾumma (community) worldwide, the diversity of representations of pilgrimage is also a defining characteristic of Islamic cultural production. Whether they are Hajj paintings on homes in rural agricultural villages in Upper Egypt, extensive medieval Arabic textual descriptions by renowned travelers, or Spike Lee’s depiction of Malcom X’s experience in his 1992 biopic, these representations share both the central image or idea of the Kaaba and are united by the infinite variety of forms that the representation can take (Figure 12). In the setting of 2020 United States, Ramy Youssef has transposed this representation to suburban New Jersey and quintessential U.S. television, informed by shows like Seinfeld, Sopranos, and Girls. He blends the classic imagery of the Kaaba into vernacular American culture of sitcoms. Though the show uses the assumed clash between the two cultures to produce humor, it ultimately argues that Islam has adapted to local New Jersey cultural forms, and that New Jersey’s culture, from Atlantic City strip clubs to Bruce Springsteen, can also absorb Muslim religious experience.
