The Antidote To Terror?

"We are trying to take the best of this world and introduce it to the Middle East and bring the best of the Middle East and introduce it to this world."
"We take negative feedback  as constructive criticism. It means they are getting the message. By spotlighting issues such as sexual harassment, which is high in the Arab world, we hope it will make people change."
"Satire is not known in most of the Arab world. We are trying to bring something to the Middle East that didn't exist before."
Maher Barghouthi, 23, director of The Weekly Show

"ISIS has been able to get wide attention across the world by using very slick videos made by highly-qualified people. By making people laugh we hope our message will sink in."
"Our message [to  young Muslims] is that ISIS is using Islam in a sick way -- using it as an excuse to kill people."
"This is the easiest way to send the message that ISIS is extremist and you can't kill somebody just because they don't agree with you."
"Perhaps we can cause Muslims to ask questions of those who are [Islamic experts]."
Anas Marwah, 22, host, The Weekly Show

"They [ISIS] are going after your emotions. Canada is a beautiful country, don't let this stuff soil it for you."
"For all of us, I think to know that someone would want to kill people in the name of our religion is frustrating."
"They [young susceptible Muslims] get to go to Syria, where there is no law and get to be part of a gang and kill people using real weapons."
Nader Kawash, main actor, The Weekly Show

Anas Marwah (center), a student in the 2015 MPM cohort was featured on the front page and website of the Ottawa Citizen today, along with friends, Nader Kawash and Maher Barghouthi.

Available on YouTube in English and Arabic, The Weekly Show is created out of a basement studio where the satiric show's aim to counter radical Islamic views through humour is worked on by three young Muslim students who arrived in Canada while in their late teens after living the earlier parts of their lives in different parts of the Arab world. The Weekly Show's aspiration is to make people laugh: "If people choose to take it so seriously it's up to them", said Anas Marwah.

Although there is nothing particularly amusing related to the actions and fall-out of the jihadi terrorists whom the three set out to lampoon in their effort to make people who might be vulnerable to recruiting more aware and intelligent -- pointing out the unwholesome stupidity behind viral hatred that leads otherwise sane people to feel it is their religious duty to kill others -- their efforts may bring the point home.

The airing of their point of view hasn't always been received as representing a purpose whose time is long overdue. They have, through their efforts, struck a raw reaction on occasion from those whose views and values obviously differ from their own. As when someone in Syria will comment "May God hand me your neck", or when someone else queries: "Why are you insulting men?"

Maher Barghouthi, a Carleton University biology student, was raised in Ramallah on the West Bank. Anas Marwah, born in Syria, was raised in Saudi Arabia -- because, he noted, "the Syrian regime didn't like my father". And Nader Kawash is of Palestinian birth, raised in Syria. They work with another half-dozen occasional cast members to open up minds.

Their most direct target whom they hope to influence is Canadian Muslims falling into their very own age group. An age group that not incidentally represents the very same western Muslims that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham also targets for influence in inciting them to join their noble cause of exceptional fundamentalism as an expression of Islamism whose goal is a universal caliphate as a symbol of Islamist triumphalism

They are acutely aware that the medium is the message. To reach the minds and opinions of people their age it must be delivered through the platforms of popular communication they all gravitate toward: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. And Nader Kawash knows all about those platforms of social media as an electrical engineering student at University of Ottawa.

Most of the Arab diaspora viewing their most popular episode, watched by 150,000 people, were situated in Canada and the United States. But they're aware that people in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon have also been tuning in since the first airing two months ago of The Weekly Show. Their longer-term ambition is to succeed with a TV show beaming directly into the Arab world's potential audience of millions.

"And we would like a set like that", says Anas Marwa, pointing to a photograph of the Jon Stewart show posted on the wall of the basement studio where the three students do all their preparatory work.