Wajahat Ali, a 28-year-old lawyer and playwright, is busy sending out e-mails to people, urging them to buy tickets for a play that’s close to his heart, not just because he has written it but also, and perhaps more importantly, because, as a Pakistani American Muslim, it is an opportunity for him “to showcase White America what it is to be a Pakistani American Muslim”. For an audience that was struck by the 9/11 terror attack and thereafter fed pictures of bearded Muslim terrorists thriving along the Afghan-Pakistan border, The Domestic Crusaders is a play Ali hopes would make America realise that not all Muslims or Pakistanis are the caricatures they see on television.

The Domestic Crusaders is debuting at the Nuyorican Poets Café off Broadway in New York City on September 11, the eighth anniversary of 9/11, in the very city the terrorists struck. A two-act play which will run for five weeks in New York, The Domestic Crusaders captures a day in the life of an immigrant Muslim family of six—a grandfather, a middle-aged couple and their three grown-up children. The family gathers to celebrate the birthday of the youngest son who is studying to become a doctor. When the son announces he is dropping medicine to teach Islam, all hell breaks loose and the mother advises him, “You like kids? Become a paediatrician. Teach them Islam as you give them your lollipops.” She also reprimands him for having boarded a plane wearing a beard and a skullcap in the past. “Why didn’t you hold a sign saying, ‘I am an extremist!’ One way ticket to Abu Ghraib, please?” 

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