Salam Cafe aims to bust misconceptions about Muslims

So here comes Salam Cafe, hoping to give Aussie Muslims an image makeover via humour — which in Australia is usually the best way to make a serious point.

"People are probably not expecting the kinds of stuff that comes out of our mouths," says Imam. "Even (producer) Ted Robinson said, 'When I saw the show the first time, I was laughing at what you were laughing at. I couldn't feel any distance'. Humour is a particularly Australian characteristic, and we all originate from different places, but we're all Australian. And the humour is probably a reflection of the new kinds of Muslim in Australia, who are comfortable living and practising their faith and joking."

Humour also allows Salam Cafe to broach sensitive topics.

"We won't do anything we're uncomfortable with," says Carland. "But then we do address some uncomfortable issues because I think to ignore those issues is even more offensive to people."

The regulars chosen for the 10 initial episodes of Salam Cafe — to be filmed in front of live audiences in Sydney and Melbourne — are an impressive bunch. There's Waleed Aly, the young lawyer who is a regular contributor to The Age opinion page and ABC radio.

There's the show's host, Imam, who is the acting chief executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria, a father of four and the son of the Mufti of Australia (Fehmi Naji el-Imam). He sees Salam Cafe as a potentially useful tool in bringing Islam into the consciousness of mainstream Australia.

"I was born and raised here in Australia," he says. "My dad came to Australia in 1951 from Lebanon, then he married my mother, who was of Anglo-Celtic background and became a Muslim in the '50s. The Muslim community in the '50s in Sydney and Melbourne was incredibly small, and only since the '70s has Muslim migration skyrocketed. So it's a changing dynamic. Within the Muslim community there are now more parents who have grown up here and who understand the environment and significance of the cultural values."

Then there's Carland, who is sharp, opinionated and has a stud in her tongue.

"She has a touch of the punk about her," says Pamela Swain, who is producing with Robinson.

"She's like a punk mum. She's got a bit of the rebel about her and is also a feminist. But she's amazingly down to earth, and so Aussie.

"I can't speak highly enough of all them. The thing that makes me really excited is they're really young. The oldie is Ahmed Iman, he's 38, but these are mostly 20-somethings, and that's a generation we don't often see on television. This show is a big ask of them, but I think it's got great potential."

Also on the team are Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman, comedians whose show Fear of a Brown Planet, winner of the best newcomer award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, was described by The Age as "beautifully distilled fury". Appearing beside them are Ahmed Hassan, Dakhylina Madkhul and Toltu Tufa.

With the help of Robinson and Swain, whose credits include Good News Week, The Glass House and The Sideshow, Salam Cafe on SBS will be more polished than it was in April 2005, when it premiered on the community TV channel.

The idea for the show came over a game of Pictionary. "When you don't drink it's just party around the clock," says Carland. "Ahmed just said, 'Wouldn't it be good to have a TV show?' We thought it would be awesome, so we filmed four episodes in a local primary school. It was all very Wayne's World, but the Muslim community seemed to like it. Originally it was just a panel show, but then we brought in sketches."

For the initial episodes, the title was Ramadan TV. "We deliberated for weeks over what the name should be," Imam says. "And just like the word 'Islam', and the word 'Muslim', 'Salam' comes from the word for 'peace'. And then we decided we wanted to create the atmosphere of a coffee shop. Because everybody loves a coffee shop, especially in Melbourne. So this is the Peace Cafe. We didn't want something overly Islamic or Arabic but something where a Muslim sees the name, they know, and when a non-Muslim sees it, they might just think, 'That's an interesting name'."

As far as Imam is concerned, the image problem faced by Muslims in Australia will soon pass.

"Everybody has their time," he says. "The Italians, the Greeks, the Asians, they all had their time. Now it's the Muslims, and probably even more so at the moment it's the African community. It could be someone else next. The Italians, Greeks and Asians have all come through that, and it's going to happen with Muslims, too, and hopefully this show will assist with that process. Not that we're sponsored by the Department of Immigration."

Salam Cafe screens Wednesdays at 10pm on SBS.