Journalist and filmmaker Omar Mouallem first learned he was Muslim when his mother scolded him for eating Hawaiian pizza during preschool. Over the past three decades he’s tried to make sense what exactly his faith means to him and how he identifies as Muslim as grown man and a father, punctuated with the release of his acclaimed 2021 examination of Islam’s role in the Americas, Praying to the West.

On this episode of Paternal, Mouallem reflects on his Lebanese parents and the moment he realized he and his family were outsiders in a small town in Western Canada, and what it meant to see Middle Easterners regularly portrayed as terrorists when he was a kid parked in front of cable television. He also discusses how the recent rise of Islamophobia in Canada and the United States forced him to examine his faith more closely, and what role faith will play in the lives of his two young children.

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