The UK is Ridiculous

So, I just found the following story on News of the Weird - apparently the UK has started a game show designed to pit religious groups against each other. It's called Faith Off. How clever. And how TOTALLY unlikely to spread intolerance and misunderstanding. Color me skeptical. And a teensy bit appalled.

Then again, it's not like this is new. Maybe it's something in the drinking water, but the UK aired something I felt was equally inane sometime last year: Make me a Muslim. It's the wild and wacky reality TV show based on the concept that a conservative imam and a few other volunteer Muslims could take a couple of morally corrupt Westerners and improve their lives by converting them to Islam. The lucky contestants included a bitter alcohol-imbibing middle-class man, a single mother stripping to pay the bills, a gay man (this is going to be good), and some woman dating a "fallen" Muslim.

I was "fortunate" enough to see a part of this TV show one day. The highlights included telling the gay man that he was only gay because he spent too much time with women (so he was sent off to play cricket with "the boys" while the imam wandered the town showing his picture around to likely-looking young ladies in order to find him a wife) and a really awkward conversation with the woman and her Muslim boyfriend about whether they slept in the same bed ("but do you do more than sleeping?"). How do you suppose the volunteer Muslim guides justified their participation in this to themselves?

Anyway, apparently the UK is at it again. I hope I get to see an episode of Faith Off. I suspect it will be.... enlightening.