Representations of US Muslims in Hulu’s Ramy: Islamophobia, Religiosity, and Dating

At the 2020 Golden Globes, Egyptian American actor and comedian Ramy Youssef won the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series (Comedy) for his work in Hulu’s critically acclaimed 2019 series Ramy. Youssef began his acceptance speech with, “I would like to thank my God, Allahu Akbar [God is great]. Thank you, God” (Youssef 2020). This opening came in response to host Ricky Gervais’s biting monologue, in which he warned nominees against political virtue signaling in their speeches: “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything….So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and fuck off. OK?” (Kilkenny 2020). As the night’s first winner, Youssef playfully followed Gervais’s advice, simultaneously making a powerful political statement in the process (Rearick 2020).

For Muslims, the phrase Allahu Akbar is a routine expression of gratitude and celebration, used in daily prayers and throughout their lives. However, in American news and entertainment media, the phrase often carries a menacing connotation, typically associated with images of terrorist violence enacted by threatening masculine Muslim bodies. Youssef, a bearded Muslim man in Hollywood, might have been relegated to such roles less than a decade earlier. Yet, the role that earned him his Golden Globe was that of the lead in a comedy-drama inspired by his own life as a millennial American Muslim. By uttering Allahu Akbar while accepting a Golden Globe for playing an “everyday Muslim,” Youssef reclaimed this everyday Islamic expression in a strikingly meaningful way (Ismail 2020).

Youssef continued his speech with an earnest joke about the niche appeal of his show: “Look, I know you guys [fellow Golden Globes attendees] haven’t seen my show….We made a very specific show about an Arab Muslim family living in New Jersey. And this means a lot to be recognized on this level” (2020). In the days that followed, media outlets and news headlines described Youssef’s win as a “surprise victory” (Blake 2020). This language of shock—through descriptions like “upset win”—often accompanies moments when underdogs, especially minority artists, triumph over mainstream favorites. Such coverage reflects both the rarity of representation for these identities on-screen and the infrequency with which they are honored in Hollywood.

What stands out about Youssef’s Ramy, however, is not simply its recognition by Hollywood’s gatekeepers who continue to honor predominantly white talent, but the show’s content itself. Set in New Jersey and Cairo, Ramy follows Ramy Hassan, a cis-gender, heterosexual, thirty-year-old Muslim man navigating his place in the world. Viewers watch him wrestle with ethical challenges surrounding his relationships with dating, premarital sex, and recreational alcohol use, all while grappling with—and continuously affirming—his Muslim identity.

This article offers new insights into the shifting media representations of US Muslims. While Ramy operates under the gaze of white non-Muslim audiences, it resists defining American Muslim life solely through a lens of Islamophobia, instead addressing Muslim viewers directly. Through an analysis of the pilot episode, which aired in 2019, and key storylines from the first season, alongside conversations with scholarship on Muslims in American media, I demonstrate how Ramy offers a critique of the social pressures imposed on American Muslims by the norms of hegemonic secular culture. At the same time, the show selectively accommodates these same norms by at times portraying Islam as socially restrictive in contrast to an America characterized as permissive and liberal, particularly with respect to sexual mores. Nevertheless, by bringing the complexities of American Muslim life to the fore, I argue that Ramy pioneers a groundbreaking portrayal of Islam on US television—one that embraces religiosity and eschews the pressure to present likable or morally exemplar characters who uncritically adopt secular values.

Existing academic debates have examined media depictions of Muslim characters within narratives of assimilation. Scholars such as Evelyn Alsultany (2012), Nabil Echchaibi (2013, 119–38), and Kyle Conway (2017) have offered incisive critiques of such representations. In these representations, the extent to which Muslim characters assimilate on-screen often determines whether they can be deemed “good” political subjects who condemn terrorist violence and distance themselves from their religious identities. Beyond portrayals of Muslims as terrorists, the introduction of nonviolent, terror-condemning Muslims to media narratives has rarely yielded nuanced representations of Islam. Alsultany (2012, 26) demonstrates that even positive portrayals of Muslims often emphasize their patriotic commitments to America, reinforcing links between Islam and violence. She categorizes these depictions as simplified complex representations—strategies employed by media producers to signal that their characters are nuanced even as they reinscribe harmful stereotypes. These representations reify the association between American Muslims and national security, portraying Muslims as potential US allies in counterterrorism, but outsiders nonetheless. This binary is mirrored in real-life US politics, where Muslims are either rejected as national threats or embraced as tools in the fight against terrorism (Beinart 2016). The pervasiveness of this formula–casting Muslims as either threats or assets to national security—underscores the significance of Ramy’s contributions to popular culture and political discourse on American Muslims. As a show about a millennial Muslim grappling with mundane yet universal challenges of transitioning into adulthood—such as seeking a romantic partner, stable employment, and meaning for life—Ramy diverges from the typical focus on national security or existential threats to democracy. Moreover, it does not portray Islam as an obstacle to overcome through secular liberal values.

Ramy builds on earlier key cultural productions by Muslims, such as the popular Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007–12) created by female author and producer Zarqa Nawaz, and the stand-up comedy tours Axis of Evil (2005–11) and Allah Made Me Funny (2004–9), which featured Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African American male comedians. These tours were adapted into a Comedy Central special in 2007 and a documentary film in 2008. More recently, American Muslim comedians Aziz Ansari and Hasan Minhaj, both of Indian heritage, launched award-winning projects on Netflix: Master of None (2015), a comedy-drama cocreated by Ansari, and Homecoming King (2017), Minhaj’s long-form comedy special. While these works all incorporate comedic elements and have achieved success, Ramy stands apart in its portrayal of Islam and religious life for Muslims.

The series depicts faith—Islam in particular—as a dynamic aspect of life, continually negotiated by believers in relation to themselves and others. The first season comprises ten episodes (22–30 minutes each) primarily focusing on Ramy, though the show also offers nuanced glimpses into the lives of his twenty-five-year-old sister, Dena, and mother, Maysa. These secondary characters are well-developed and each occupy entire episodes that illuminate some of the gendered differences in both the immigrant and first-generation American Muslim experiences. Dena’s episode highlights discrepancies in how she and Ramy are treated by their parents regarding dating and its social expectations. Viewers learn from the onset that Ramy, who still lives in his parents’ home, enjoys significant social autonomy—staying out late, dating, and spending nights with sexual partners without parental interference. In contrast, Dena’s whereabouts are intensely scrutinized by her parents, despite her adherence to conservative Muslim norms, as she reveals in conversations with her girlfriends, that she has never had sex (Dabis 2019b). Maysa’s episode explores the profound loneliness of a middle-aged immigrant woman who, after devoting her life to being a dutiful mother and wife, finds herself isolated in the absence of the extended social and kinship networks she left behind (Dabis 2019a).

Throughout the season, viewers learn that Ramy is a practicing Muslim who believes in God, performs daily ritual prayers, and fasts during Ramadan. However, he continually reflects on his identity as an Egyptian American Muslim and longs to belong—whether to a place, within a fulfilling romantic relationship, or among peers. Ramy’s excessive self-contemplation often renders him narcissistic and immature, albeit earnest. Throughout the series, he appears to treat his romantic female partners as little more than stepping stones in his personal journey to self-discovery. His routine unethical decisions harm both himself and others, yet he continues striving to be a devout Muslim, in his own eyes and the eyes of others. In this way, Ramy offers a fresh portrayal of American Muslim life, foregrounding how religion informs everyday experiences. It also resists centering Islamophobia as the defining feature of US Islam, carving out space for narratives that embrace the complexities of faith and identity.

In the post-9/11 era, Islamophobia has heavily shaped US Muslim comedy. Muslim comics often use their experiences as politicized subjects routinely facing harassment and discrimination as a springboard for their stand-up routines. Humor becomes a central strategy for challenging and uncoupling the persistent association of Islam with terrorism and the oppression of women. Since the early 2000s, comedic themes have evolved to reflect key political events and the distinct gendered expectations placed on Muslim men and women.

During the Bush era, the Axis of Evil and Allah Made Me Funny comedy tours directly confronted terrorist stereotypes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, by calling attention to airport surveillance and the curtailment of civil liberties for Muslims and Middle Easterners. These comedians narrated personal experiences of being racially profiled at airports, surveilled and harassed by law enforcement, and ostracized by fellow Americans (Simon 2007; Kalin 2008). Their humor lays bare how societal and state-sanctioned Islamophobia criminalizes Arab, African American, and South Asian Muslim men, marking them as inherently violent (Bayoumi 2015). Their narrations showcase Muslim perspectives of what it feels like to be criminalized based on one’s faith and race, on the receiving end of state scrutiny and individual suspicion. Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King—produced during the Obama presidency and released by Netflix in the Trump era—also addresses 9/11 but shifts focus to contemporary hot-button political issues like immigration (Storer 2017).

For Muslim women comedians, misogynistic stereotypes about their oppression take center stage, typically symbolized by the hijab and other forms of modest dress (Michael 2013, 142). Iranian American comic Tissa Hami, for instance, begins her routine by donning a hijab and the traditional Iranian chador, a full-body covering, only to remove them on stage to confront audience assumptions about Muslim women (Michael 2022, 230). Likewise, African American comic Zainab Johnson references her clothing choices on stage to preemptively respond to audience perceptions that she might not appear “modest enough” to fit their image of a Muslim woman (231). While these comics differ in their approaches, they share a focus on Islamophobia in their work, using humor to challenge stereotypes, discrimination, and societal fear and disdain of Muslims.

Ramy also addresses Islamophobia through comedy but resists centering it as the primary lens for depicting Muslim lives and rejects the notion that Muslim art must always foreground racism and discrimination. Speaking in an interview with Islamic studies scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl, Youssef (2019) responds to criticism that his show is not sufficiently political, stating:

Youssef challenges the expectation that Muslim artists must always educate audiences about Islamophobia or portray themselves as victims by using instances of racism as the primary material for their art. For him, given that Muslims are already politicized by news media and constantly engaged in ongoing discussions about their marginalization in the US, it is unnecessary to center such issues in Ramy. Youssef argues that focusing heavily on political injustices and the discrimination faced by Muslims could undermine his artistic goal of representing Muslims as three-dimensional individuals rather than as symbols of victimhood. He does not believe that speaking on Muslims’ precarious socio-political status and the Muslim travel bans enacted by President Trump through executive orders, barring entry to citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, would support this goal.

Yet, despite Youssef’s framing, his show is political. It addresses Islamophobia while also expanding the parameters of political response in entertainment and how Muslims are represented in media. In the pilot episode, for example, Ramy does raise the topic of the January 2017 Muslim ban—the first of three Trump-era travel bans—while on a date with Nour, a fellow Egyptian American Muslim. As they stroll through the city, eating ice cream on the day the ban was announced, sparking nationwide protests, Ramy jokes:

Nour responds with her own irreverent take, sharing that the Muslim Ban prevented her Libyan uncle from coming to live with her family, saving her from losing her bedroom. While their lighthearted tones seem to bypass a serious political discussion of Trump’s draconian immigration policies, the scene’s levity exemplifies Youssef’s broader strategy of deploying humor as a refusal to conform his Muslim identity to the terms set by a hostile political climate. This use of humor to subvert grave political conversations creates space for the characters on-screen to reflect inwardly as individuals rather than as burdened representatives of a marginalized collective.

Ramy represents a fresh shift in American Muslim humor, distancing itself from the Islamophobia-centered narratives that have characterized this genre. Scholar Mucahit Bilici observes that post-9/11, Islamophobia has propelled Muslim comedians from obscurity to mainstream success, explaining that “the discrimination, prejudices, and stereotypes from which other Muslims suffer are a godsend for the Muslim comedian.” Islamophobia endows Muslim comics with a “negative charisma” and a “common language” in a new cultural space, enabling connection with and appeal to non-Muslim audiences (2010, 197).

Relying on narrating experiences of Islamophobic discrimination as content is so central to Muslim comics’ communication with non-Muslim audiences that it can create its own challenges. In 2023, Hasan Minhaj sparked controversy when a New Yorker article by Clare Malone, a white female journalist, accused him of taking excessive creative liberties by fabricating elements of Islamophobia in his personal stories for his stand-up routines. In response, Minhaj defended his approach, stating that while his stories are dramatized, they are based on real events and “emotional truths.” He also provided evidence to refute some of the article’s damning claims about his “faking racism” (Minhaj 2023). Yet, the ethics of Minhaj’s use of hyperbole and poetic license continues to be debated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, bringing into sharper focus the implicit rule that Muslim comics must put Islamophobia on display to find success in Hollywood. One way to read the Minhaj scandal is that he has been penalized for understanding too well what his audience expects: a firsthand minority narrative of extraordinary discrimination and harassment. In the words of South Asian writer and filmmaker Imran Siddiquee: “Hasan’s comedy seemed to fit into a narrative that I thought people in Hollywood—white men—were more open to receiving” (Luse 2023). Siddiquee’s assessment of Minhaj aligns with how Bilici and Michael evaluate the rise of Muslim comics within the broader trajectory of comedy from minoritized groups in the US. Bilici (2010, 207) proposes that “Muslim ethnic comedy is the world of Islamophobia turned upside down,” delineating how the genre of Muslim humor is predicated on experiences of Islamophobia and Muslim otherness. Similarly, Michael (2013, 131) asserts that American minorities use the negative stereotypes of their communities reinforced by majority groups as prompts to “respond to and engage with their comedic relevance in public settings.”

By contrast, Ramy resists framing Muslims primarily as victims of Islamophobia, thus differing in its political engagement from other works by Muslim producers. Although the show acknowledges structural and individual racism, it often relegates these issues to the background, as seen in the Muslim ban scene in the pilot episode. This approach creates space for Youssef to explore Islam separately from Islamophobia, showcasing the internal debates and contradictions of religious observance. In doing so, Youssef does indeed engage with political issues that marginalize Muslims, but on his own terms. Ramy privileges its protagonist’s individual narrative over casting him as a representative of a politicized religious collective. Youssef’s insistence that Ramy not “talk about anything political” can thus be read as a refusal to define Muslims solely as marginalized subjects and victims of Islamophobia. While American Muslim experiences under the white gaze are often mediated through such a lens of exclusion, Ramy challenges the expectation that Muslim artists must primarily perform their victimhood in their art and instead asserts a space for nuanced, individualized representations of Muslim life. As Farah Bakaari (2023) writes, “To watch Ramy is to witness a Muslim show, one of the first of its kind, gradually and painfully figuring out its relationship to whiteness and to the white gaze under whose force and violence it was created.”

We can understand Ramy then, as building on the genre of Muslim ethnic comedy and attempting to overcome the existing racism-based formula for minority self-representation demanded by the white gaze. Rather than replicating the Islamophobia-centered patterns of post-9/11 comedy, it shifts the conversation in contemporary socio-political debates about the place of Islam in America to highlight, instead, internal Muslim debates about faith and identity. Through its irreverent humor and exploration of religious observances, the show expands the possibilities for American Muslim storytelling.

Ramy offers a nuanced portrayal of Muslims, presenting them as having deep, complex, and positive relationships with Islam. Religion in the show is not an antagonizing force but a dynamic framework that its characters grapple with, defy, and idealize. Youssef has described Ramy as a “spiritually aspirational” show (2019). Throughout the series, religion is treated with sincerity and respect rather than caricatured or reduced to the punch line of a joke. The protagonist, Ramy, strives to practice his faith and deepen his relationship with God and Islam; his faith underpins the plot of the entire first season. Viewers often see him performing salah—obligatory ritual prayers incumbent on Muslims—at home or in the mosque. Through its depictions of Islamic religiosity, Ramy is a significant departure from the violent on-screen caricatures of Muslims that have dominated Hollywood for decades.

Jack Shaheen’s (2009) comprehensive analysis of cinematic representations of Arabs from 1896 to 2001 demonstrates how Muslim characters are typically portrayed as uncouth religious extremists, obscenely wealthy oil barons, or oppressors of women. These one-dimensional depictions have remained remarkably consistent over the decades (Sardar and Davies 2010), reinforcing the idea that Arabs, and by extension, Muslims, are fundamentally different from Americans in ways that cannot be reconciled. In Hollywood storylines, Muslim religiosity is associated with violence, depravity, and restrictive social norms, particularly for women (Khan et al. 2021). Dominant entertainment narratives typically frame Islam as either fanatical or, at best, antiquated—something villains embrace and heroes escape or overcome in favor of secular, liberal values.

Even in media productions that deploy more positive portrayals of Islam, Muslimness is primarily mediated through an ethnic or cultural lens rather than as a religious identity. In her study of Muslim American humor, Samah Choudhury (2021, 121) observes that popular comedians Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, and Kumail Nanjiani refer to their Muslim identities in minimal ways, primarily as a marker of race or ethnicity. While this strategy has helped them find mainstream success, Choudhury argues that subsuming religion under racial or ethnic identity is uniquely alienating, leaving Muslims little recourse for achieving meaningful gains in the realms of representation. This approach diminishes the religious and spiritual components of Muslim identity within a secular order, which only allows for limited demands, such as calls for diverse and more positive representation. Choudhury further suggests that these comedians’ prominence in US popular culture has come at the expense of conforming to the requirements of being good secular subjects whose works do not challenge American exceptionalism.

By contrast, Ramy foregrounds Islamic identity as a religious experience rather than reducing it to cultural or ethnic dimensions. The show amplifies religious differences and challenges the norms and demands of “good” secular subjecthood. This is evident in its treatment of both Islam and the common idealization of white women as romantic partners for heterosexual brown Muslim men in Muslim-led media productions. Ramy presents faith as a spectrum, with the protagonist’s religious devotion and belief fluctuating between aspiration and imperfection. Ramy often sets intentions to follow Islamic principles—such as avoiding promiscuity—only to fall short by partaking further in questionable behavior. For example, in one plotline, he resolves not to engage in drug use or a sexual relationship with a white Jewish love interest during Ramadan, only to begin an affair with a married Muslim woman he meets during prayer at the mosque. These frequent juxtapositions of illicit sex and expressions of faith reveal Ramy’s ongoing struggle to reconcile his actions with the kind of Muslim he aspires to be. Yet, his acts of prayer are not framed as guilt over his sexual inclinations or as absolution for sin, but rather as routine expressions of his faith, consistent with the Islamic norms of Sunni Muslims that mandate prayer five times a day.

Ramy’s amplification of specifically Muslim experiences, like ritual prayer, on television defies what Kyle Conway (2017) calls “saleable diversity,” a strategy used by media producers to downplay cultural and religious differences in order to appeal to broad audiences. In his analysis of the TV show Little Mosque on the Prairie, Conway describes the process of cultural translation, showing how writers navigated foreign elements by making them appear familiar to predominantly white, Judeo-Christian audiences. Softening or erasing differences to humanize Muslim characters and emphasize similarities between them and their non-Muslim audience is integral to this process. However, distilling Muslim art to saleable diversity presents essentialized, albeit positive, views of Muslims that address negative stereotyping only superficially, stopping short of highlighting the structural racism that creates the conditions for such stereotypes to exist. Bringing structural discrimination against Muslims to the fore would risk alienating white viewers. Michael (2013, 152) observes this trend in mainstream American Muslim stand-up comedy, arguing that commercialization and gaining popularity often demand compromises such as avoiding “jokes that challenge social attitudes.” White American audiences are not looking to entertainment media to be held accountable for their complicity in racism and, thus, are more amenable to productions that promote a narrative of American exceptionalism. Youssef’s American Muslim contemporaries and predecessors market saleable diversity to varying degrees. While their works call out racism, they also frame North America as a meritocratic land of freedom where immigrants can achieve their dreams and racism is the exception rather than the norm. For instance: Minhaj cites the Declaration of Independence to appeal to his right to equality; Hami contrasts the freedom to take off the hijab in the US with her native Iran, where women’s clothing is restrictively policed; and Little Mosque mocks its Muslim characters who have socially conservative views and immigrant accents, while celebrating the Canadian-born Muslim protagonists as ideal citizens compatible with liberal democracy (Storer 2017; Michael 2013, 143; Nawaz 2007–12). These approaches help their form of art to emphasize commonalities and forge connections between Muslims and non-Muslim audiences but sideline the distinctiveness of Muslims and the Islamic faith.

While Ramy appeals to people of different backgrounds by exploring universal themes of the human experience like family and relationship dynamics, it emphasizes specific elements of Islamic faith and identity. In this way, the show can be read as prioritizing insider Muslim audiences over non-Muslim outsiders. For instance, in the pilot episode, Ramy rebuffs his Muslim date Nour’s sexual advances, expressing shock that a Muslim woman would engage in premarital sex: “I didn’t know if you could, you know, just ’cause we’re not married.” Nour responds earnestly by offering to enter into a temporary marriage (nikah mut’ah) with him: “Oh, I didn’t even know you were that strict! I mean, yeah, we can get married. My cousin does, like, nikahs [Islamic marriage contracts] over the phone if you want to do, like, a temporary marriage” (Bradbeer 2019). While this scene could be considered cringe comedy, it displays stereotypical American assumptions about Muslim women’s lack of sexual agency while also showcasing a highly specific category of temporary marriage that only some Muslims and experts on Islamic marriage law would fully grasp. The scene continues with a frazzled Ramy rejecting the idea of temporary marriage as “tricking God” and then admitting, to an unamused Nour, his own double standard toward premarital sex with Muslim versus non-Muslim women. The episode assumes a level of insider knowledge, with no effort to translate the Arabic term nikah, for non-Muslim viewers. In other words, the plotline is not a teaching moment about Islam for non-Muslims and there is no attempt to defend, condemn, or even define this religious practice to broader audiences. This lack of explanation aligns with Youssef’s claim that he does not “want to try to teach anybody anything” through Ramy (Marchese 2020). Despite this lack of cultural translation, Islamic religiosity is frequently woven into the show through gendered discussions of sexual desire and marriage.

Marriage—and the broader pursuit of long-term romantic partnership—is the central lens through which Ramy explores Muslim identity and, therefore, its religious differences. The pilot opens with Ramy’s mother, Maysa, dropping him off at the mosque for prayer and his friend’s katb al-kitab (Islamic marriage ceremony). Maysa urges him, in a kind of universal mother-to-adult-son exchange, to find a wife soon and encourages him to do so at the mosque where the “best kind of girls” can be found (Bradbeer 2019). While Ramy balks at her suggestion, remarking that “the mosque is for praying, it’s not for picking people up,” the narrative quickly establishes that he is indeed interested in marriage and settling down. Two of his close friends, both married Muslim millennials, echo his mother’s sentiment, though in more forceful terms. Marriage as a central pursuit for the twenty-nine-year-old Ramy sets the narrative trajectory for the series within the first few minutes of the pilot, while also signposting a notable religious and cultural difference between him and other male television characters of similar age. His desire for marriage hints at his religious upbringing to viewers. Unlike mainstream portrayals of young heterosexual men who typically prioritize casual relationships, his keenness for marriage highlights his Islamic values. This emphasis on marriage announces the show’s departure from secular norms, reinforcing its commitment to portraying Islam as a central, lived experience rather than an ethnic backdrop.

In Ramy, marriage is framed not only as a desirable life milestone but also as a reflection of the ethics of sexual practice in Islam, where sex is lawful only within heterosexual marriage according to Islamic legal norms. While Ramy has never been married and is sexually active with multiple partners, his decisions often leave him feeling internally conflicted in relation to his spiritual aspirations. For instance, when he meets his latest love interest, a white woman, shortly before Ramadan, he informs her that he will not see her during the holy month (a time during which observing Muslims abstain from food, drink, and sex during the daylight hours and engage in additional acts of worship in the evenings). He wants to focus on cultivating his faith and building his relationship with God. This scene demonstrates how Ramy conforms to a binary representation of Islam and the West—Islam as restrictive and American culture as permissive—while simultaneously resisting a reductive critique of Islamic norms. Further, Ramy’s problematic fixation with sex invokes Orientalist stereotypes of Muslim men as hypersexual and morally depraved (Shaheen 2009). Yet the portrayal of his internal struggles around sex disrupts these tropes. By presenting Ramy as confused, self-centered, and inconsistent in his views on premarital sex, particularly on gendered expectations for Muslim chastity, he is shown to be far from morally exemplary and, therefore, not in any position to villainize Islam to viewers. He makes decisions that are ethically questionable by both Muslim and non-Muslim standards, such as engaging in an affair with a married Muslim woman (Storer 2019). His actions are not conducive to viewers’ rooting for his character. This layered characterization resists framing Islam as a restrictive force to overcome in comparison with mainstream American culture.

At the start of the series, Ramy’s views on Muslim women’s sexuality reflect his understanding of Islamic legal norms that prohibit sex outside of marriage. This is humorously illustrated in the scene described earlier where Nour, his Muslim date, proposes a temporary marriage after initiating sex with him, leaving Ramy confused. This interaction reveals his narrow perception of Muslim women as a monolithic group that collectively and uniformly desires chastity, exposing the gendered expectations he imposes on women of his faith. Nour refuses to tolerate Ramy’s double standard, pointing out the hypocrisy of his sexual behavior with non-Muslim women compared to his expectations of Muslim women. It becomes evident that he lacks the understanding needed to interact with Muslim women as potential romantic partners.

When viewers first meet Ramy, they learn that he exclusively dates non-Muslim white women. This aligns with a broader trend among Muslim male protagonists in contemporary media, where they often pursue white women as romantic partners to signal their assimilation into secular, liberal norms. Choudhury (2021, 108) critiques this tendency in the works of Muslim comedians, who strive to be viewed as good secular subjects by perpetuating discourses of “American exceptionalism, capitalist pursuits, [and] aspects of gender and racial hierarchies that preserve the desirability and prestige of white women.” For example, both Ansari’s Master of None and Nanjiani’s Oscar-nominated film The Big Sick portray white women as the ultimate romantic ideal for brown Muslim male protagonists; in contrast, brown Muslim women are caricatured as overly traditional and undesirable partners for these men trying to establish themselves as good secular Muslims (Ponsoldt 2015; Showalter 2017). Ramy disrupts this trope, even as its protagonist prefers white women over Muslim women of color in his romantic pursuits. The show does this by interrogating his internalized biases and presenting his inability to appreciate the multifaceted identities of Muslim women, a skill he seems to possess when interacting with his white romantic partners. Furthermore, Ramy explicitly critiques the idea of white non-Muslim women as ideal romantic partners for brown Muslim men, depicting such relationships as emotionally unfulfilling and fraught with cultural misunderstandings.

Ramy’s friends Ahmed and Mo (short for Mohammed) are American Muslim men who serve as comedic foils to his indecision and prolonged soul-searching, delivering blunt critiques of his choices. They are both depicted as happily married to strong Muslim women whom they love and respect, and they urge Ramy to also settle down with someone who shares his faith. In the pilot episode, while attending a marriage ceremony at their mosque, they remind him of his declining prospects as a marriage partner due to his thinning hair, warning him that he will not be able to find a suitable Muslim wife if he fails to act fast. Ramy replies that he does not necessarily have to marry a Muslim; he shares that he has been dating Chloe, a white woman, and that their relationship is going rather well. Both friends admonish him, with Ahmed exclaiming, “White girls suck, bro. You can’t keep dating ’em….You need to find someone who knows where you came from and what you believe in. And someone who’s hot.” Mo echoes this sentiment, urging Ramy to ask his parents to set him up with a Muslim woman. Mo’s wife, who overhears their conversation, interjects to tell them to be quiet as they are disrupting the ceremony but also validates his friends’ views by saying to Ramy, “These guys are idiots. But everything they said is true.” The scene ends with Ahmed reiterating his concern: “White girls suck…You don’t wanna go down that road” (Bradbeer 2019).

Although this exchange is played for humor, it touches on some serious underlying points. The remarks about white women hint at misogynistic ideas about respectable womanhood. Part of Ahmed’s argument against dating white women is that they “have no morals” (Bradbeer 2019). While his friends do not explicitly clarify what this immorality entails, based on Ramy’s own attitudes toward Muslim women’s chastity, one interpretation could be that it implies being sexually promiscuous, ironically, much like Ramy himself. Another aspect highlighted by this friendly interaction is Ramy’s broader bid to elevate the status of Muslim women and portray them as desirable romantic partners, roles typically occupied by white women in narratives featuring male Muslim protagonists. While Ramy initially pursues white women as his love interests, the show reveals the emotional toll that desiring them takes on him, thus, disrupting their idealization.

As the pilot unfolds, another element of Ramy’s friends’ warning about pursuing white women—the importance of finding “someone who knows where you came from and what you believe in”—is drawn into sharp relief in a later scene when Ramy’s relationship with Chloe, who viewers soon learn is Jewish, begins to unravel. In an awkward encounter where Chloe catches Ramy nervously checking his used condom for holes to assuage his anxiety about a potential unwanted pregnancy after they had sex, she confronts him and expresses offense. She states, “Even if, like, something crazy happened,…we’d do the responsible thing and, like, take care of it.” In response, Ramy stammers through an explanation, revealing his internal conflict over abortion: “I mean, look. I’m…I’m totally pro women getting to choose what to do with their bodies, I am. But I’m Muslim, so I’m just pro us not having to make that choice” (Bradbeer 2019). This scene offers crucial insight into how Ramy carefully navigates his religious values in everyday situations, illustrating the complexities of his Muslim identity. Here, he affirms his faith as a Muslim and frames it as his ethical compass, guiding how he approaches life’s dilemmas, even if it does not offer concrete answers. In this situation, he addresses his ethical dilemma regarding abortion through the lens of his Muslim identity. This showcases how Ramy does not shy away from alluding to its lead character as having socially conservative values—being pro-choice but preferring not to face the option of abortion as a form of contraception for himself.

This scene can also be interpreted as a foil to a similar plotline in the pilot episode of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, titled “Plan B.” Ansari’s character, Dev—a secular, second-generation Muslim immigrant—experiences an awkward end to his first date with a white woman, Rachel, when his condom breaks during sex. Like Ramy and Chloe, Dev and Rachel face the dilemma of a potential unwanted pregnancy, leading them to take an Uber to a local pharmacy to pick up the emergency contraceptive pill known as Plan B, from which the episode’s title derives (Ponsoldt 2015). This moment not only hints at their future romantic compatibility—Rachel remains Dev’s love interest throughout the first season—but also underscores Dev’s general compatibility with white American women.

In contrast, religiously-inclined characters like Ramy grapple with anxieties about discussing the implications of premarital and potentially unprotected sex, signaling their outsider status. The scene with Chloe further highlights how American Muslims express their religious identities to non-Muslim friends and sexual partners. After Ramy mentions his desire to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, the tension between his faith and Chloe’s worldview comes to a head when she has a revelation about him: “No, like, you’re Muslim, I thought, in the way that I’m Jewish. Like, it’s a cultural thing. I didn’t know that you were Muslim-Muslim.” Her disbelief reveals that he has concealed aspects of his religiosity to avoid alienating her. Ramy confirms that he is indeed Muslim, and through the ensuing exchange, viewers learn that Chloe is unaware of his abstention from alcohol because he has never openly shared this information. In an attempt to rebut his claim of Muslimness, she counters, “But you drink. Religious Muslims don’t drink.” She recalls when he socialized at bars and even bought drinks for their friends the previous night, to which he responds “Yeah, but mine was a Coke” (Bradbeer 2019). Beneath this comedic dialogue is the somber reveal that Ramy had never made his abstinence explicit for fear it would mark his otherness and alienate him in Chloe’s eyes as well as his own.

Ramy’s participation in alcohol culture while abstaining from drinking, along with his reluctance to share his religious beliefs, reflects what Shabana Mir (2014) describes as “covering” one’s Muslim identity due to the associated stigmas. When Muslims “cover” their religion, they downplay their religious beliefs as members of a marginalized minority to fit in or avoid being singled out as different. Mir’s research on Muslim youth culture indicates that “participation in alcohol culture yielded status and emotional rewards,” while opting out entirely resulted in lost social and professional capital (47–48). Many Muslims in Mir’s study, like Ramy, resonate with this dynamic: To fully engage with their non-Muslim peers, they partake in alcohol culture while abstaining from drinking, yet they conceal their religious practice of sobriety to avoid standing out.

Chloe ultimately rejects Ramy when his religious “idiosyncrasies” come to light. She frames her rejection as a response to his deception about his religious beliefs rather than the beliefs themselves, but viewers are left questioning whether this is entirely true, especially given her shock at discovering she had been dating “a Muslim-Muslim” for months. In an attempt to explain his lack of forthrightness, Ramy offers an earnest plea, “Look, Chloe, it’s just [that] I’ve met girls who seem open-minded, and then they’re not….I thought maybe you’d be into the idea of me being culturally different but hate that I actually believe in God” (Bradbeer 2019). In his relationship with Chloe, Ramy tried to embody what Mir describes as “cool difference,” which refers to a “tastefully exotic resistance to majority culture, just a dash of flavor to create a pleasant contrast.” However, Mir clarifies that “Being different can be cool, but it is not always so. Not all kinds of difference were necessarily acceptable or popular.” (2014, 61). In this context, external markers of religiosity, such as refraining from alcohol or identifying as a practicing Muslim, are not considered “cool difference.” Ramy felt he could not truly express his Muslim identity with his white girlfriend, and Chloe failed to provide the understanding and acceptance he seeks. This reinforces his friends’ view that he should find a partner who aligns with his faith and values. Viewers are made sympathetic to the cultural tension and emotional toll the relationship places on Ramy, as he rides home in an Uber late at night, feeling dejected and forlorn after Chloe kicks him out.

While Chloe is not developed as a character and does not appear after the pilot episode, the message is clear: Unlike other Muslim-led productions, Ramy is not interested in romanticizing white non-Muslim women as markers of modernity and secular compatibility, nor does it try to render Muslim men as their suitable partners. Through humor and introspection, the show challenges viewers to rethink ideas of desirability and compatibility in ways that elevate Muslim women as complex and desirable romantic partners.

In this article, I have argued that Ramy pivots away from existing trends in US Muslim comedy by rejecting the notion that American Muslim experiences in media should be defined primarily by Islamophobia. Instead, the show foregrounds topics that are deeply relevant within American Muslim communities—how to practice one’s faith while navigating the ethics of sexual practice, alcohol culture, and the quest for marriage. By relegating Islamophobia to the background in favor of telling individual stories, Ramy challenges the expectation that those with minority identities must always represent a larger collective.

I have also demonstrated how the series portrays Islam and Muslims’ relationships with their faith as dynamic rather than fixed. Islam is represented as central to everyday ethical decisions and as a living, evolving force in Muslim lives, illustrated through Ramy’s observance of ritual prayer and his struggles to reconcile his faith with personal shortcomings. Furthermore, I have shown how Ramy’s exploration of Islamic religiosity is often mediated through discussions of dating, sex, and marriage in ways that disrupt the idealization of white women as romantic partners for Muslim men—a prevalent motif in other Muslim-led productions.

Ramy’s significance lies in the space it creates for American Muslims to debate internal issues on their own terms. The show avoids presenting an idealized or sanitized picture of Muslims to satisfy non-Muslim audiences in a bid for social or political acceptance in a hostile climate. Although Ramy operates under the white gaze—evidenced in its protagonist’s struggle with reconciling his religious beliefs with his sexual desires—it does not pander to white audiences. Ramy’s character is deeply flawed, often insufferable, and far from a moral exemplar throughout much of the series. His self-centeredness and lack of self-awareness highlight the show’s refusal to position its lead character as a model for Muslim assimilation or as a means for validation within secular liberal society.

Through its layered storytelling, the series lays bare the complex social negotiations young American Muslims must constantly navigate to gain acceptance and a sense of belonging in the US, while simultaneously confirming and critiquing their outsider status within their own country. Ultimately, Ramy portrays Muslims not as a monolith or as one-dimensional symbols of a collective, but as authentic and nuanced individuals who celebrate, wrestle with, and continually reconfigure their faith, thus illustrating the diversity of Muslim experiences and identities, and what it truly means to be Muslim in the US today. 

Published online: February 21, 2025