# The new Star Trek Series should have a Muslim character **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 26, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242 "2016-02-26T19:45:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/81 "2016-03-02T03:28:11Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Bashir in DS9 is an Arab. Not necessarily. They never did officially establish the Bashirs’ ethnic background. Ronald D. Moore, one of the producers, is on record as believing the Bashir family is likely of Sudanese (like Alexander Siddig), Indian, or Pakistani descent (but living in England when on Earth\*, also like Sid), but that never actually made it into the show, aside from a brief mention of one of his ancestors being named Singh. - Until his parents were sentenced to a penal colony in New Zealand for the whole genetic manipulation thing. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/82 "2016-03-02T03:32:27Z")
Star Trek should have people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, gender identities. It should not have any people of any existing, contemporary religion. One of the fundamental characteristics about Star Trek is the secularism of human society. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/83 "2016-03-02T04:14:36Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Star Trek should have people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, gender identities. > > It should not have any people of any existing, contemporary religion. One of the fundamental characteristics about Star Trek is the secularism of human society. Which is one of the things that makes Star Trek’s vision of the future so unrealistic. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/84 "2016-03-02T04:16:56Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > The main religions of Earth - Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. - have all been around for a thousand years or more. There’s no reason to think that they will wither away just because we’re bopping around in spaceships, now. However… > > …is an interesting point. And religions do change over time - modern Reform Judaism doesn’t look much like the religion of the Temple priests and Sadducees of the first century BCE, to take one example. So I would expect different forms of existing religions, perhaps influenced by the shock of meeting sentient non-human races, as well as several new religions, birthed maybe by the same event. On Babylon 5, Joe Straczynksi (who is NOT a religious guy) had fun by showing how various religions have been tweaked over time. For instance, there’s a news reports alluding to Pope Bernadette II. I thought that was rather clever. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/85 "2016-03-02T05:51:57Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Bashir in DS9 is an Arab. I’m currently watching the series through for the first time (up to season 4 episode 8) and haven’t noticed him doing anything specifically Muslim. > > Worf did do some Klingon things. We don’t know what was Klingon culture and what was religion. > > Worf’s foster parents were Jewish. IMO, that was their ethnicity, but they never played toward any religious aspects. > > Chekov was Russian, but never struck me as being a Communist. Again, nationality/ethnicity, not religion/political creed. > > Bajorians a religion. Ferengi, maybe. It’s hard for me to tell with the Ferengi if it’s just a strong cultural thing or if it’s religious. > > I think any demonstrations of religious beliefs among alien races in the ST universe are mostly to demonstrate that alien races are _different_ than humans and come with _different_ cultural biases/backgrounds. It seems the writers preferred to present a universe of cultural diversity by displaying a diversity of cultures. > > But what do I know? The Klingons killed their Gods. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/86 "2016-03-02T06:19:15Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > And yeah, thirded, everyone else’s religion is superstition or some aliens fooling them but Chakotay, oh, \*he \*has a \*spiritual \*connection. :rolleyes: I’m not sure I’d agree about a double-standard there. In Trek _almost all_ religious beliefs end up being based on some real entity or power. You could consider it pro-religion in that sense. Sure, it’s usually implied the object of such beliefs are not gods, but they usually have god-like powers. I’m struggling to think of an example where religion was brought up and nothing happened to imply the religion was more than just a myth. Maybe some of Picard’s archeology? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/87 "2016-03-02T06:19:40Z")
Star Trek should have a cast selected from the best auditions, not some committee-designed politically correct collection of diversity just for its own sake. I find ST:TNG horribly dated now, and that’s probably because they so blatantly pandered to the styles and mores of the time. The original series holds up much better even though it looks more old-fashioned, because the characters were by and large just normal people behaving as their characters would behave according to the show’s mythos. And their stories (with a few exceptions) were more classic science fiction with interesting ideas than thinly wrapped commentaries on some contemporary social issue, which was common in ST:TNG. I’m just rewatching the entire original series on Blu-Ray with my kid, and I’m surprised by how well it holds up. I’m really enjoying it, and he loves it. Mind you, we haven’t gotten to season 3 yet… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/88 "2016-03-02T11:39:41Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Star Trek should have people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, gender identities. > > It should not have any people of any existing, contemporary religion. One of the fundamental characteristics about Star Trek is the secularism of human society. Somebody already mentioned Kirk’s line to Apollo, that _“mankind has no need for gods; we find the one quite adequate.”_ The first six words seem to be heading that way, but the next six seem to kill the idea that it’s a fundamental characteristic. It’s not just folks in general making Biblical allusions, or McCoy in particular uttering a quick _“Lord, forgive me”_; those, I can handwave away. But this seems explicit. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/89 "2016-03-02T15:12:23Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > About as progressive as when Marvel Pictures took the only black guy in Asgard and made him the doorman. You mean when Marvel Pictures decided that, since every single movie related to a comic book series must now have a Token Black Person, it was ok to make him the doorman. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/90 "2016-03-02T15:26:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I find ST:TNG horribly dated now, and that’s probably because they so blatantly pandered to the styles and mores of the time. It did? Can you give a couple of examples? > [@The Other Waldo Pepper](#): > > _“mankind has no need for gods; we find the one quite adequate”_ Wow, what an awful line. Not just bringing in religion but with a rhetorical flourish that’s both nonsensical and condescending. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/91 "2016-03-02T15:44:58Z")
As a side-note, the last _Star Trek: The Animated Series_ episode was titled “Jihad” and featured a bird-like alien race, one of whose members attempted to trigger a holy war between his people and the infidel Federation to return his people to their warrior-like ways. Not explicitly Muslim, but with Islamic references, and the character Tcharr could be seen as a prototype for Osama Bin-Laden, I guess. That was actually where I learned what the word “Jihad” meant. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/92 "2016-03-02T15:53:05Z")
I wonder if that was influenced by Dune? Right time period. I’ll have to look at TAS again… . ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/93 "2016-03-02T16:04:28Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > … > What is easy to overlook is the choice to put a Russian National on TV in america at the height of the cold war. The Soviet Union was a hated enemy. The US had been on the brink of war with them just few years earlier but Star Trek made a conscious decision to show a world where that enemy was now friend. And then created proxies for the **R** ussians and **C** hinese calling them **R** omulans and **C** lingons. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/94 "2016-03-02T16:25:18Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > _“mankind has no need for gods; we find the one quite adequate”_ > > Wow, what an awful line. Not just bringing in religion but with a rhetorical flourish that’s both nonsensical and condescending. _“There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”_ Sorry, mixed up my fandom Captains for a second there. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/95 "2016-03-02T17:54:25Z")
Making my kid watch The Corbomite Maneuver now. “We assume you have a deity or deities or some such beliefs that brings you comfort.” ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/96 "2016-03-02T18:55:07Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I’m not sure I’d agree about a double-standard there. > In Trek _almost all_ religious beliefs end up being based on some real entity or power. You could consider it pro-religion in that sense. > Sure, it’s usually implied the object of such beliefs are not gods, but they usually have god-like powers. > > I’m struggling to think of an example where religion was brought up and nothing happened to imply the religion was more than just a myth. Maybe some of Picard’s archeology? Can’t think of the title, but there was an episode where the Enterprise was assisting anthropologists who were observing a pre-industrial Vulcanoid people, and one of them gets accidentally transported to the ship, where he’s healed of some injuries, and returned to his people. Whereupon he promptly relates to them his encounter with the great god Picard. Eventually, Cap’n Baldy has to go to their village and allow himself to be shot by an arrow to prove that he’s not divine. Jean-Lucky gets off some pretty contemptuous lines about religion in that ep; he implied that most educated people in the Federation view religion as mere superstition. It was an explicitly anti-theistic episode. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/97 "2016-03-02T23:16:03Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Can’t think of the title, but there was an episode where the Enterprise was assisting anthropologists who were observing a pre-industrial Vulcanoid people, and one of them gets accidentally transported to the ship, where he’s healed of some injuries, and returned to his people. Whereupon he promptly relates to them his encounter with the great god Picard. Eventually, Cap’n Baldy has to go to their village and allow himself to be shot by an arrow to prove that he’s not divine. Jean-Lucky gets off some pretty contemptuous lines about religion in that ep; he implied that most educated people in the Federation view religion as mere superstition. It was an explicitly anti-theistic episode. I don’t remember that one. I do remember the one where a con artist passing herself off as the goddess foretold in a prophecy comes looking for treasure, and Picard reproduces all her “miracles” with Enterprise technology. That was a good anti-theist one also. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/98 "2016-03-02T23:17:09Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Making my kid watch The Corbomite Maneuver now. > > “We assume you have a deity or deities or some such beliefs that brings you comfort.” And the great thing was that they paid no attention to such nonsense and concentrated on the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/99 "2016-03-02T23:19:12Z")
> [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > I wonder if that was influenced by Dune? Right time period. > > I’ll have to look at TAS again… > . Dune was quite a bit earlier - in fact the sequel had already been published by TAS time. I saw a lot of them when it was on originally and then when it reran on the early days of Nick, but it seems I missed some. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242/100 "2016-03-02T23:34:00Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And the great thing was that they paid no attention to such nonsense and concentrated on the problem. Meanwhile in a similar situation…I believe Picard retired to his quarters to navel gaze. Though i do think there’s value to “If you only had hours to live” stories. Ten minutes was too short a time for the TOS crew to do anything but think about the problem. I love how Kirk snaps at Spocks mention of Chess. “Is that your best recommendation!!?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-trek-series-should-have-a-muslim-character/747242.md?page=6)