About
The #GoodMuslimBadMuslim monthly podcast featuring Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh is about the good and the bad of the American Muslim female experience. But you know, satirically & disturbingly hilarious.
The podcast has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Wired, Mother Jones, NPR, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Forbes. In May 2016, the podcast had the honor of the ultimate creeping sharia with a live recording from inside the White House (Obama edition). Live shows of #GoodMuslimBadMuslim have also been held across the country including Asian American Writers Workshop (NYC), 2016 SXSW (Austin,) Wharton School (Philadelphia), Islamic Cultural Center (Oakland), and University of Minnesota (Minneapolis).
In April 2017, #GoodMuslimBadMuslim was honored by the City of Los Angeles for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month as Activists of the Year. In November 2016, the podcast was honored by OCA-GLA for the Rising Star 2016 Image Award.
In addition to podcasting, Taz and Zahra made a a Fusion video called The Muslim Guide to Voting (2016) and in fall 2017 will be in the comic anthology New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei.
But How
It all started with a hashtag.
Specifically, a hashtag back and forth conversation between Tanzila 'Taz' Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh, all in jest. And then, we decided to make it really real in January 2015.
But why #GoodMuslimBadMuslim?
To the Muslim community, we are "bad" Muslims - we listen to music, we don't pray regularly, we date or get married to white men (Zahra), identify as punks and radicals (Taz), we perform and share our lives with comedy and writing. So we are bad. So so bad.
To non-Muslims, we are "good" - we don't drink, we don't do drugs, we are not criminals, we are social justice activists and community leaders. We are successful, published, accomplished.
But then of course, on the flipside, because we are brown Muslims living in a post 9/11 islamophobia funded world, we are also villanized by Western society, too. No matter how you look at it, we are bad Muslims. There's no winning!!!!
As Muslim American women, we are walking this fine line between what it means to be good and bad. So really, what does it mean to be a good Muslim, when we as American women are getting mixed messages from all different angles? We've decided to say - fuck it. We'll define what it means to be a good American Muslim ourselves and through our #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast. And poke fun at both sides of this margin. We'll create our own narrative how we see fit, and with lots of satire and laughs.