Can a Sitcom End Islamophobia?

Aasif Mandvi is known mostly as “The Daily Show’s” Muslim correspondent, but now he’s introducing his alter-ego Aasif Qu’osby in his new series “Halal in the Family,” premiering on Thursday on the website Funny or Die. 

Created by Mandvi and Daily Show producer Miles Kahn, “Halal in the Family" is shot in the warm, flat lighting of a 1980's sitcom. Mandvi, rocking a Cosby sweater, is the embarrassing dad. Sakina Jaffrey — mostly known for her work on Netflix's "House of Cards" — is the exasperated mom. They've got two teenagers trying to fit in.

Mandvi looked to classic TV sitcoms like “The Cosby Show,” “Growing Pains” and “All in the Family” for inspiration. And he said his character just wants to be American, not an American Muslim. “Because we were attempting to point out the absurdity of the bigotry and the racism towards American Muslims, it was necessary to have my character to have an Archie Bunker quality of being bigoted and racist towards Muslims himself,” he said.

There are punch lines about President Barack Obama being a Muslim, and for Halloween, Mandvi's character builds a haunted house only to have the neighbors think it's a mosque.

"Halal in the Family's" journey from Daily Show sketch to Web series is also unconventional because it was partly funded by non-profit organizations.

Producer Lillian LaSalle said she was originally approached by the group Muslim Advocates. She explained it wanted to fund an Aasif Mandvi project that also do some social good.

“It opened up this idea of wow, there could be a bridge between creating funny content for a social issue that was important and that it could be supported by all of these organizations,” she said.

Money also came from organizations like the Ford Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy, the Pillars Fund and the National Network for Arab American Communities.

There was some push and pull between the creative side and the non-profits. For example, they demanded to see scripts before filming began. But Mandvi said he eventually got them to see things his way.

“We also needed to let them know that we were going to have to push the envelope in some ways in order to get the message out because if it was too lukewarm, no one would care,” Mandvi said.

The team behind “Halal in the Family” hopes the series will go viral. Mandvi said that could be accomplished simply if the one billion Muslims out there were to re-tweet it.