Baz Ashmawy has opened up on why he wanted to make his documentary The Lost Muslim – which follows his spiritual journey back to practising Islam.
The 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy star’s two-part series comes to an end tonight with its second installment that will see Baz interview Guardian journalist Nicolas Hénin, who was held hostage in Syria in 2013 for 10 months.
Despite the nature of the documentary being very “heavy-hitting”, Baz admitted that his decision to film a documentary about Islam was encouraged by his daughters and a “spirituality crisis”.
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“I was hearing a lot of things about Islam being regurgitated by friends and I’ve two little girls and one is five and in a couple of years she’s going to ask me questions about Islam,” he said.
“Why does her aunt wear a hijab, and I felt like I didn’t know enough to explain it to her.
“Plus I turned 40 and was going through a bit of a spirituality crisis and I thought, well let’s have a look at what’s out there,” he explained
“I’ve kind of had the same mantra for years, yeah I believe in something but I don’t know what that is, nothing non-religious, no organised religions, I just thought I’ll dip back into Islam because that’s what I was born into.”
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In the first installment of the documentary, audiences watched Baz explore what Islam is and what it really means.
“It started off on this kind of spiritual journey. I think people are just intersected, ” he revealed on Newstalk Breakfast.
“There’s a lot of stereotypes out there all the time, and to anyone who’s Muslim or who lives in a Middle Eastern country or any Islamic country you hear them and think that’s not right, that’s wrong.
“It was just to kind of get a grounding in it.”
The Lost Muslim airs on RTE 2 at 10.05pm tonight.
