Bump Baba Ali into Time Magazine

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

Alhamdulillah I have had the opportunity to be interviewed by USA Today, BBC, The Guardian, and the NY Times. Over the weekend, I was interviewed for an article about the Muslim Funnymentalists and today I was informed that if the article gets "bumped" enough times, it will be considered for Time Magazine.

Please click on the following link: http://www.divanee.com/view_article.php?aid=256
and make sure to click on the "Bump it!" link at the bottom of the email.

JazakAllah Khair

Join Baba Ali *LIVE* this Saturday (conference call)

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

I'm going to try to answer your questions live this Saturday on a conference call so if you want to talk to me live, please visit www.halfdate.com for more information

12pm Pacific Time
2pm Central Time
3pm Eastern Time
7pm GMT (UK)

The Muslim Funnymentalists

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

In one of my Season 1 videos, I mentioned that I’m not a comedian and that’s because I wasn’t a fan of how people were doing comedy. I’m trying to stay away from the idea of lying to make people laugh which has become a norm for comedians. Later, I realized that life itself has so many funny and interesting things and you can be truthful and still do comedy. The challenge isn't necessarily making someone smile but more importantly having a message/point to your material and that's what makes standup interesting to me.

So in August of 2007, I was invited to do some standup at MuslimFest with Aman Ali & Preacher Moss. It was my first time doing standup on stage and Alhamdulillah it went really well. About a month later, Aman Ali contacted me and asked if I was interested in going on tour with him and Asif Ali under the name of "The Muslim Funnymentalists". The idea sounded intriguing so I decided to give it a go. Now my schedule has become a mix of doing solo events with just Baba Ali and group events with the Muslim Funnymentalists. Last week, I did a few shows by myself (Northeastern University, Boston University, and University of Connecticut) and on Saturday I did a show with the Muslim Funnymentalists at the University of Syracuse. When I do shows solo, its a little different because I show some of my videos, do a little comedy, and sometimes I'm serious as well. When I do shows with the Muslim Funnymentalists, I share the mic with two other talented comedians and we not only do standup but we also do something that other Muslim Comedians don't do, Muslim Improv.

Anyways, the brothers recently released a trailer (below) which was put together by Aman Ali:

Conference call with BabaAli

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

Message Mastery is hosting a conference call with special guest BabaAli. The call is titled, "Baba Without a Crew: A Case Study of How a Young Muslim Made Videos that Matter Without Prior Experience"

The conference call will take place this Tuesday, the 25th at:

8:30pm EST
5:30pm PST
7:30pm CST

Mark your calendars and remember the date. You can get the full details on the conference call at Baba Ali without a crew

Also check out the 2nd video from Belal at Message Mastery entitled:

"Three POWER Principles of Filmmaking"

In this second video he discuss the three POWER principles that
lead him to make thousands of dollars doing what he dose.

Editing Tomorrow Never Comes

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

So it's been a while since we gave you a sense of where the movie is really at. Well, today we want to inform you that we have successfully completed The Final Cut. That is where the Video part of the movie is complete, and what is left is the Audio. We are now in the sound editing phase and should be completed as scheduled. In "Behind the Scenes 4" you had a glimpse of our intention to have this movie out in April 2008, and inshaAllah (If God wills) we plan to do just that.

So I thought i'd take some time and explain the process we went through to get this movie edited. So here it goes.

• On our first shoot, we were able to get a lot of the footage we needed but we ran into some technical difficulty which translated into needing to reshoot some scenes. This shoot lasted 46 hours with around 8 or so hours of sleep.


• From our first shoot, we edited a draft to see how the movie looks and see what kind of new footage would be needed to "Fill in the gaps"


• We drew up a schedule, whopped up some storyboards, and got ready for the second shoot.


• We got on set again, and got to filming. Again, we ran into slight difficulty with the equipement because of our very tight shooting schedule. This shoot lasted around a day and a half.


• After this second shoot, the camera we shot with (on the first day) was actually broken and we couldn't download the footage from it for A WHILE! So the director was scrambling for literally hours daily for a week to try and get his hands on a camera that can download this footage. This set us back quite a bit but we got the footage.


• Now the footage we got from the second shoot was of two formats; standard DV 30p, and HD720 24p. The HD footage we got was in Apple HDV codec format so we had to go through apple to edit it. We also had to throw in some non-HD shots with the HD ones to make sense of the scenes.


• So, we edited the HD in OSX on Final Cut Pro, exported it to windows into Adobe Premiere 2.0 and we edited the movie there.


• Once we had another draft edit, we got feedback, changed what was needed and found a few things missing. This prompted yet another (much shorter) reshoot.


• Only a few people went to the third reshoot, and it was from Dawn till noon. We got what we needed, transferred the footage into the movie timeline, and output another draft.


• From here, we got more feedback, we addressed as many issues as we could, and output what we have now: The Final Cut.


• BUT ALHUMDULILLAH (Praise be to God) We have a Final Cut now, and very little left to do.


• The Sound Designer will start the work anytime soon and should be done before the deadline.

Ask Baba Ali - "The Art of Complaining"

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

Behind The Scenes Footage Part 4

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

More Information about Baba Ali's Movie

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

With the Ask Baba Ali Season Finale just one week away, I often get asked “what’s next?” and my answer is “A Movie InshAllah”. Instead of the typical Muslim documentary or drama film, I wanted to try something new and different: A Muslim Comedy. The goal isn’t just to make my audience smile but more importantly get a message across by using the tool of humor.

The reason I think most filmmakers don’t go touch the Muslim comedy genre is because it’s a slippery slope. Sometimes comedy is done by those who care more about making the person laugh and sometimes its done by people who don’t care about following the rules of Islam. I pray that I don’t fall into any of those categories InshAllah.

Alhamdulillah one of most amazing things I have noticed when I go and speak at events is the wide range of audience members that attend. You have everyone from non-practicing Muslims to conservative Muslims to even non-Muslims who come to the event. I remember my first speaking event I saw some Salafi brothers sitting at one table and the table next to them was the Muslim Hip Hop brothers. At the same event I saw both Niqabies and non-Hijabies and I was like wow, everyone came tonight (and I was the only speaker at that event). That’s when I realized that whatever I was saying in the Reminder chair was reaching a very broad audience and this is why I haven’t changed my style. I figured if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Well, that is why I planning to continue this same “serious comedy” (humor with a message) style but this time, I hope to take it to another level: A full length movie. Instead of me sitting in my chair for 7 minutes, I want to go out to the real world and show the adventures of something that most of us can relate to: The Adventure of looking for your future spouse .

Basically, the movie is about this guy, Ali, who turning point of his life comes when he best friend gets married. That is where he decides to seriously start pursue looking for his future wife. He sets on this adventure and tries almost everything to find his better half (online matchmaking, chaperoned meeting through parents, marriage program at Masjid, etc..). Although many of the prospects on the surface seem to be a good match, each experience ends up being a comical disaster. Ali learns through his crazy adventure the impact Culture, Racism, and even Nationalism has on the Ummah and the difficulties of halal path.

In the movie Borat, the main character is the strange one and the society is normal while in this movie it is the exact opposite, the main character is normal one and the society is strange (because they gave up parts of their religion for the sake of their culture that conflicts with Islam). You are going to watch this character go through a crazy adventure and its going to fun InshAllah. Although the experience can be comical at times, more importantly there is a message, and my goal is get that across InshAllah.

I asked a Director to come up with a budget of how much it would take to make a professional film. He broke it down in detail and the price he came to a little over 100k. Of course, the more funds we have the better resources we have access to (equipment, cast, crew, location, etc…) so the better the turnout InshAllah. Thus, a movie made with a 250k budget can be much better than one made with 100k. Individually, most of us can’t afford such amounts but I figure if we all work together, we can get the necessary funds together by chipping in what we can afford. So if you can help, please click on the link below to contribute:



The reason I started sponsorships with Ask Baba Ali is because I wanted to raise funds for this movie and that is where I plan to put the funds that I raised from those sponsorships. Also, I won money from two film contests and I’m planning to put that money into it as well. I'm not asking you to do something that I'm not doing myself. For those who don't know, I don't get paid a dime from making the Reminder videos or the Ask Baba Ali videos. Whatever I have made, I have put back into Ummah Films. Money doesn't inspire me and I would much rather have good deeds (hasanat) than money. Because the money in this life is temporary and won't help me on the Day of Judgment.

I don't believe in signing petitins or standing on the street corner holding a sign each time the film industry tries to build a negative stereotype of Muslims. I much believe that there is a better way of putting our 2 cents on things. The movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was an independent film that was watched by millions and you didn't have to be Greek to enjoy or learn from it. I have the same frame of mind with this film InshAllah. For whatever reason, people feel less threaten when humor is involved and this is why comedians can talk about sensitive subjects. This is why I think I have been able to bring up taboo issues in my videos as well.

Remember, the media is a very powerful tool and using the tool of movies/films is even more powerful. For those who are familiar with the Cosby Show, it was a show about an African American Doctor and Lawyer raising a family in the middle class. The show never had to say that “Black people are people too” but rather they showed it by living normal lives. Each time you sis a sister on TV, she is talking about either the topic of “Women in Islam” or “Hijab”. Don’t Muslim women talk about anything else? Don’t they just live normal lives? Of course but that won’t get airtime. The film industry doesn’t want to “humanize” Muslims for their own reasons. Anyways, that’s a whole email of its own so I’m not going to get into that now.

Nevertheless, I hope to have a website up soon InshAllah that will have more information of the film. The goal is to show the different aspects of the filmmaking process so from writing stage to the premiere, I hope to keep our audience in the loop with the various parts of the film (auditions, location scouting, behind the scenes, etc..). Also, since the audience is help fund this film…I want them to play a role on some of the decisions so just like did with some of the decisions with UF (dvd cover, t-shirt design, etc), I hope to use the same voting mechanism as well.

Ask Baba Ali - "We're Just Friends"

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

Learn to produce online videos

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

A brother that I know has started a new project called Message Mastery, where the goal is to equip 200 Muslim brothers and sisters on producing effective and profitable dawah videos. Not only produce them, but also equip them with the tools necessary to develop, write, produce, edit, market and distribute their the call to Islam. The brother knows what he is doing so if you are interested in getting your ideas on the web, I highly recommend you check it out. If you are interested, you can sign up here



For those who think that you need a professional studio to film something, he filmed the video above in this room:

Ask Baba Ali - "Racism & Pride"

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

Baba Ali's Upcoming Movie

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

On June 13th 2006, The Reminder series started and the production of 10 videos in 10 weeks was promised and fulfilled. Following the success of the 1st season, I completed 8 more videos for Season 2 and the audience has reached over 3.5 million viewers on YouTube alone. In Feb 2008, I promised 8 videos in 8 weeks for the new "Ask Baba Ali" series and so far a new video has been released (as promised) each Friday. I often get asked the question "so what's next?" And my answer is...

A Movie!

Yeah, a real movie InshAllah. By now, my viewers have a good sense of my work ethic, the ideas I carry, and my sense of humor. All I have had at my disposal is a camera, a few lights, and a chair and most of you have seen the impact Alhamdulillah. Now my goal is to put a Dream Team together and spearhead a film for the big screen. I figure you can either continue to protest and sign petitions about the way Muslims are portrayed in films or we can pick up a camera and show them an alternative.

Most of us can't afford making a film on our own but as a collective whole, I believe we can raise the money if we work together. All we can do is put in the effort and the rest is Allah (swt) hands. That is been what I have repeated many times for all my past projects and what I am repeating again for this project. If you want to be part of this effort, you can contribute using the widget below. JazakAllah Khair