When I first watched the first season of Ramy, I wasn’t Muslim.
I didn’t know I would become one a few months later either.
I watched it as an outsider. Curious, observant, but emotionally detached, or so I thought.
Looking back, I wasn’t detached at all. I just didn’t have the language yet for what was being stirred.
Ramy follows a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim navigating faith, desire, guilt, family, identity, and modern life in New Jersey. It’s not a show about being a “good” Muslim. It’s about being a conflicted one.
The show lives in the tension. Between belief and behavior. Between tradition and temptation. Between wanting meaning and wanting pleasure. And it refuses to clean that tension up for the viewer.
That’s what makes it uncomfortable. And honest.
At the time, I didn’t see Ramy as a religious show. I saw it as a human one.
It felt awkward. Cringe. Funny in a way that makes you exhale through your nose instead of laugh out loud. It showed people trying, failing, justifying themselves, spiraling, then trying again.
What stood out to me wasn’t the theology. It was the guilt. The searching. The constant internal negotiation.
I didn’t relate in a religious way yet.
But I related in a moral one.
Why It Feels Different Now
Watching Ramy after converting hits differently. Scenes land heavier. Silences feel louder. Certain conversations don’t feel theoretical anymore.
What once felt like “his struggle” now feels familiar in a quieter, internal way. Not because my life mirrors his, but because the questions do.
How do you live with intention in a world that rewards impulse?
How do you want God without wanting to disappear from yourself?
How do you sit with imperfection without turning it into an excuse?
The show doesn’t answer these questions. It just sits with them. And that restraint is its strength.
Ramy doesn’t try to sell Islam. It doesn’t sanitize it. It doesn’t perform it for Western approval.
It lets Muslims be flawed, contradictory, selfish, sincere, hypocritical, searching. Which is exactly how real people are.
Islam is not about being perfect.
It doesn’t pretend humans are flawless or capable of purity without struggle. It assumes the opposite. That people will mess up. Repeatedly. That desire, weakness, ego, and contradiction are part of being human.
What matters isn’t flawlessness, it’s direction.
Islam encourages striving, repentance (tawbah), and returning to Allah again and again, even after failure. The goal isn’t moral performance or spiritual perfection. The goal is closeness to the only One who is perfect.
The religion itself, as a path and revelation, is considered perfect. But the people walking that path are not. We stumble through it imperfectly, learning, falling, repenting, and realigning. Growth isn’t linear. Faith isn’t clean. And mercy is central, not conditional.
That’s what makes Ramy feel honest instead of idealized. It doesn’t show polished believers. It shows people in motion, trying, failing, justifying, regretting, and returning.
Also, completely random but still cracks me up, my brother-in-law worked on Ramy, and his Facebook page literally shows up on a laptop screen in season two.
My husband and I were watching and both paused like, wait… is that…?
Yep. It was.
Just sitting there in the background like a tiny Easter egg you’d never notice unless it was your actual family member.
It’s one of those moments that pulls you out of the heaviness for a second and reminds you that these shows are made by real people, living real lives, leaving little accidental fingerprints behind.
Still hilarious. Still surreal. Still one of my favorite “wait… did that just happen?” moments ever.The season finale was just so beautiful. Genuinely unexpected in the best way.
After all the mess, the contradictions, the spiraling, the avoidance, it ends with him praying. Quietly. Sincerely. No speech. No explanation. No performance.
Just return.
It aired last night, and I still haven’t stopped thinking about it. Because it felt like the most honest ending possible. Not redemption. Not resolution. Just someone turning back to Allah without pretending they have it figured out.
That scene said everything the show had been circling the whole time. That faith isn’t about arriving polished or fixed. It’s about showing up anyway. Even messy. Even unsure. Even late.
It was surprising. It was perfect. And it felt true.
Honestly, Vanessa 