one nation, many voices” is an online film contest challenging Muslims’ stereotypes in America. The contest sponsors wanted filmmakers to get beyond the head wraps and terrorism, to portray the complex and littleunderstood Muslim American experience.

The judges of the contest include Danny Glover (actor,film director, and political activist), Sara Abbasi (who serves on the Executive board of Developments in Literacy), Azhar Usman (a Muslim standup comedians), Mariane Pearl (the widow of Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl) and the retired
NBA Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “One Nation” organization sponsors this contest. It is a philanthropic collaboration of Muslim and non-Muslim business leaders founded in 2006 by retired businessman George Russell, who became alarmed by public opinion polls showing that nearly half of all Americans still held negative views about Muslims, more than in the days just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Online film contest is aiming to help educate people about the American Muslim experience. One of these films which were selected in the final run is “Soul Mechanic” directed by Jehan Harney, an Egyptian American TV Journalist. It is a documentary about the story of a Muslim mechanic who uses his garage to display sculptures that fuse Islamic, Christian and Jewish symbols. In an interview with Jehan Harney, published in the Washington Post she said “After 9/11, even people I considered friends became intolerant of Muslims. And we Muslims can’t seem to express ourselves in a way other than preaching. People keep repeating ‘Islam is tolerance. Islam is peace.’ But it’s not getting through.”
Harney came to the United States from Egypt 12 years ago to study international journalism at the American University. What she has learned, what she has observed about the U.S. media, she said, is the power of storytelling.

And since the terrorist attacks, she said, she had been looking for a story that would, even in a small way, counter the onslaught of violent images.
Then she found Mahmoud Rezaei-Kamalabad, owner of Aladdin Auto Service in Cambridge. Rezaei-Kamalabad, a Shi’a, came to the United States from Iran 30 years ago to study filmmaking. With a growing family, he instead began to work as a mechanic. By day, he invites customers to sit, have tea and talk about their lives as they wait for their cars to be repaired.

At night, he creates art that draws from the world’s major religions. He combined the Bible, the Torah and the Koran into one book, and called it “The Book of Light.” The film opens with him slowly chanting “ya Rabb,” or, Harney said, “Oh Lord”. The film features a Jewish mother and her daughter visiting Rezaei-Kamalabad after Hebrew school, a young American who gets her car fixed and often chats with him over tea, and a neighboring businessman who says that Rezaei- Kamalabad can transform cars and souls at the same time.

What Harney hopes, she said, is for Americans who know little about Islam other than Sept. 11 to be touched by Rezaei-Kamalabad’s story. “It’s a message of hope, diversity and tolerance,” she said. “And we need more of it.”

For more information visit: http://www.linktv.org/onenation/

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