The first Islamic Muppet is a girl

The first Islamic Sesame Street Muppet is a girl named Zari, which means “shimmering”, and she’s going to empower young Muslim girls. Even though girls are not allowed schooling in many parts of the Islamic world, Zari will help them dream of going to school, having a career and being a doctor. Read here

With her purple face (thankfully covered by a veil in some circumstances), and her brown hair streaked with blue, purple, orange and pink, Zari will be the picture-perfect model to get to the heart of the matter – empowering girls to overcome “entrenched traditional (Islamic) attitudes towards women’s education and careers” outside the home…driving a car...by herself.

Zari showing girls how to empower themselves

Zari will “interview a doctor and other professionals to find out what she would need to do to be one herself”. For starters, school would be suggested, but first a girl would have to overcome her father’s resistance to this strange western idea of educating females. However Zari, ever optimistic, will “open minds and influence attitudes” in a non-threatening Sesame Street sort of way (therefore let's hope Zari never interviews Miss Piggy in black tights singing You’re the One That I Want with Kermit the Frog or more than a few little Muslim girls might want to go to Hollywood to pursue careers in motion pictures).

It’s odd though that the article never mentions that Zari is an Islamic Muppet, but only says that she is an “Afghan girl.” And do the producers think how many girls and women might be beaten over Sesame Street's notion that Muppets can change the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad?

The only way to empower Muslim girls is if they convert to Christianity.