In ‘House of Gods’, Sydney’s Muslim community gets to be complicated

House of Gods, a six-part drama series coming to ABC TV and iview on February 25, begins as the contenders for head cleric at the Messenger Mosque in Western Sydney are making their final pitches. The presumed victor – an Iraqi-Australian community leader known as Sheikh Mohammad (Kamel El Basha) – is walking through a shopping strip with his daughter when he notices a table of women giggling and covertly taking photos of his traditional garb. He introduces himself and jokes that they should at least capture his good side, which emboldens the most obnoxious member of the group to plant a kiss on his cheek and snap a selfie. Soon after, during a live radio interview, a reporter (played by journalist Antoinette Lattouf) confronts Sheikh Mohammad with the photo, which has been sent in by a listener, and probes him on whether this indiscretion means that he believes Islam should update its restrictions around physical contact between men and women. When he fumbles through an answer about context and “the spirit of the moment”, it looks like he may have compromised his election win. Created by Osamah Sami and Shahin Shafaei, and directed by Fadia Abboud, House of Gods consistently highlights the tension often faced by immigrant communities, between maintaining the religious and cultural traditions of the homeland and adapting to a new context.

Sheikh Mohammad is a progressive reformer in a congregation where many value tradition above all else. He believes that Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims should put aside their differences to play side by side on a local soccer team, bemoans the injustice of a female customer being turned away by her butcher because of alleged adultery, and supports women taking on formal leadership roles within the community. In the first two episodes of House of Gods, Sheikh Mohammad and his children – pious and ambitious daughter Batul (Maia Abbas), her restless, playful sister Hind (Safia Arain) and their hot-headed adopted brother Isa (Osamah Sami) – must decide how far they are willing to go to secure and maintain power in the mosque. Centrally, the show questions whether it’s ever justified to compromise one’s morals in service to the perceived greater good.

House of Gods draws on Sami’s experiences growing up as the son of a Muslim cleric in Melbourne, an upbringing in which attending the mosque “was as essential as, say, having a shower or sitting down to a meal”. Much of the show’s action takes place within the Messenger Mosque, a space carefully crafted by production designer Roslyn Durnford using intricate calligraphy, vibrant red carpets, geometric mosaics and imposing chandeliers. Beyond a site for worship, it’s an integral place for the community and the backdrop to celebration, camaraderie, bitter rivalry and betrayal. Its centrality to the characters’ lives will be appreciated by those who have their own memories in a similar setting, as well as viewers who have never entered a mosque.

Negative stories about Muslim men take up outsized airtime in Australian media, from hardline clerics comparing women who dress immodestly to “uncovered meat” to tales of impressionable young men recruited to fight abroad for the Islamic State. In contrast, the male characters in House of Gods are compassionate and tender, if often misguided. Resisting good and evil binaries, the more controlling and conservative players are afforded a backstory, and those who appear sympathetic are not above being led astray. The show is prone to soap operatic flourishes, but even so they’re mainly effective and only occasionally veer into noticeably hammy acting and overdrawn dialogue.

House of Gods is a fresh, dynamic offering that showcases a community rarely represented on Australian television, let alone with such care. It will appeal to those who see themselves and their peers reflected, as well as non-Muslim viewers who will gain insight into an unfamiliar but parallel version of metropolitan Sydney life. Critically, the show’s majority Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim creators and cast have rendered characters who are complex and imperfect enough to draw us in and hold our attention.
 

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