Meet the woman Waleed Aly leans on, his ‘funnier, sharper, wittier’ better half

WALEED Aly turned the spotlight on his wife Susan during his Gold Logie acceptance speech. She’s even more talented than him.

Waleed Aly and Susan Carland arrived at the 58th Annual Logie Awards in style. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty

WALEED Aly is the toast of the town, but he wouldn’t be where he is without wife Susan Carland, an exceptional talent in her own right.

Aly took home the coveted gold statue at the 2016 TV Week Logie Awards on Sunday night. The 37-year-old host of The Project used his speech to thank his better half.

The man accustomed to being the smartest person in the room admitted he has a “dirty little secret”: at home he isn’t.

“If she had my job she’d be much better at it than me,” he said.

“She’s sharper, wittier, funnier and infinitely more charming and likeable and I’m really glad she doesn’t have my job because otherwise I definitely wouldn’t have it.”

The pair appear the picture of happiness now but Carland admits it wasn’t always that way. They weren’t always Australia’s Muslim power-couple. In fact, before they got together she told her friends: “That guy? I wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man on earth.”

Getting readyyyyyy!#Logies pic.twitter.com/ViEvxHG5ma

— Susan Carland (@SusanCarland) May 8, 2016

Nowadays they are very much aligned, both spiritually and philosophically. She grew up in Sydney’s eastern suburbs following Christian values before becoming a Muslim in her teenage years.

They now use their respective platforms to share a consistent message, one Aly again highlighted during his acceptance speech at Melbourne’s Crown Palladium.

“There’s nothing wrong with this picture,” he said, referring to a Muslim winning the Gold Logie.

“It will be fine. This is happening.”

Some say it shouldn’t matter. That his being a Muslim is irrelevant. But both Aly and Carland are consistently targeted for their faith. Both have their own style for deflecting the attention.

In October last year, Carland — an academic and mother-of-two — tweeted that she would donate $1 to charity for “each hate-filled tweet I get from trolls”. There were plenty.

She donated almost $1000 to UNICEF that month, along with the message: “The needy children thank you, haters!”

She told Fairfax she was worried the initiative would slowly send her broke, but it was a matter of principle.

“I thought, what’s a good thing I can do? What is the complete antithesis of what these people are doing? They are putting so much ugly into the world. I thought what something is good I can put into the world.”

Last week she updated the tally, announcing she had donated $3750.

Donation tally to @unicefaustralia for hate-tweets now=$3750. Hard to know exact amt so approx + rounded up. Thx to ppl who sponsored some!😎

— Susan Carland (@SusanCarland) May 5, 2016

Carland, a former Muslim Australian of the Year, has a PhD on the topics she is most passionate about: Muslim women and sexism. She also denounces the so-called Islamic State and has a point to make about banning the burqa.

“ISIS are no friend to Muslims, by any stretch of the imagination, and so it’s really important that we never fall into the trap of thinking this is about Muslims against other people or anything like this,” Ms Carland told Studio 10.

“This is about a very, very problematic group that is trying to set themselves up against the rest of the world, and to say that all Muslims are with them, nothing could be further from the truth.”

On the ABC’s Q&A program, she said discussion about banning the burqa was flawed.

“I think you can see a person’s eyes, you can hear their voice. In the end, a woman should be able to choose how much of her body she shows to other people and if she wants to cover her face and she feels comfortable with that and the laws of our society say that she can then get over it.

“I might not feel comfortable looking at people with a face covered with tattoos and a mohawk but that’s their prerogative. If they want to dress like that then that’s my issue if I can’t deal with it.”

The daughter of a New Zealand mother and an Australian father, Carland says her parents were religious and eccentric.

“We went to church, my mum has really radical ideas about Christianity — my mum likes to think God is a black woman, she’s got really out there ideas. By no means (were we) fundamentalist at all,” she told Meshel Laurie’s podcast earlier this year.

Superwoman is not all that far off the mark. Picture: Facebook/Susan Carland

She says as a teenager she sought a better understanding of her faith and took a different path to her parents. It’s one she has dedicated her life to ever since.

An emotional Aly wrapped up his speech by touching again on his place as a Muslim on the biggest stage in Australian television. Fittingly, he called out his biggest supporter.

“If tonight means anything, it’s that the Australian public, our audience, as far as they’re concerned, there is absolutely no reason why (the status quo) can’t change.”

Aly and Carland will continue to make an articulate, educated case for the new normal, and Australia is finally listening.