Cinema has always been celebrated as a source of entertainment only but the truth is that it is much more. People might see movies as a leisure activity but the fact is that it passes on information on the topic being shown in the films. In Sajid Varda’s opinion, CEO and founder of the charity called UK Muslim Film, there is a link between cinema’s portrayal of Muslims and how the community gets treated in the real world, “It is a very powerful educational tool, especially for people who wouldn’t normally come into contact with specific minority groups, and so it can be dangerous if the media are perpetuating common tropes such as Muslims are terrorists, Muslim men are misogynists, Muslim women are oppressed and Islam is a threat to the West.”
Many hold 9/11 to be the cause of the harsh and biased characterization of Muslims in the cinema but movies have been doing it since before that. Aladdin (1992) is criticized as it had caricaturization of the Arabs whilst leaning into the stereotype that they were brute and maddened by the sight of riches. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) threw in every Arab stereotype it could find. The Siege(1998) focused on attacks carried out in New York city by Palestinian terrorists. East Is East (1999) sticks to the stereotype of the man as the head of the family who is brutally cruel towards his family. Executive Decision (1996) is about Palestinian terrorists taking over a plane to launch an attack on Washington D.C.
Time and time again, Pakistan has been portrayed as a hub of terrorism and Pakistanis as barbaric, uncivilized, and participating in activities that make them a threat to the West. People from the Pakistani media industry have raised their voices to shed light on the matter and Mehwish Hayat, a local actress, has been known to speak about it on international platforms. As she lauded Riz Ahmed’s efforts to correct the representation of Muslims in Hollywood, she remarked, “ [It is] time for our industry to step up and also counter the way that we are shown in Hollywood and Bollywood. We need films ‘about’ and not just ‘for’ Pakistan.”
While speaking at a Pak-Nordic conference in Oslo in 2019, she expressed, “I sincerely believe that Hollywood films and programs vilify my country and portray us as backward terrorists, which has had a profound effect on the psyche of the west. It has greatly influenced what people think of Pakistan. Homeland, Zero Dark Thirty, The Brink to name a few, have built an image of my country that I certainly don’t recognise.”
Missing & Maligned: The Reality of Muslims in Popular Global Movies was a study published by USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative which analyzed 200 films (from the US, the UK, and Australia) found out that only 2% of the speaking characters were Muslim characters. Moreover, the study highlighted that 39% of Muslim characters were involved in some form of violence and 53% were victims. 58% of the Muslim characters were refugees or migrants, 75%’s clothing represented their religion, and 88% were shown to speak no or accented English.
Ahmed emphasized that the gross misrepresentation and underrepresentation have a far larger effect, “The representation of Muslims on screen feeds the policies that get enacted, the people that get killed, the countries that get invaded. The data doesn’t lie. This study shows us the scale of the problem in popular film and its cost is measured in lost potential and lost lives.”
The above-mentioned study is not the only one done on the topic, a report was done by the Islamic Human Rights Commission in 2007 that highlights how Hollywood plays its part to demonize the Muslim community and is responsible for fanning the flames of Islamophobia. The study mentions that movies portraying Muslims terrorizing Americans, “brings into focus some of the worst American fears – that is, Muslims or Arabs attacking the country, murdering men, women, and children … and ‘attacking our way of life’.”
When the famous movie The Siege came out, it was celebrated for “showing a different angle” of Muslims. The ending might have targeted a portrayal of Muslims which was different than the widespread one (of being terrorists) but did it do anything to fight off the stereotypes surrounding Muslims? Hussein Ibis who was the media director of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of the time explained, “This movie participates fully in the linking of Arab culture and Islamic religious practices and terrorism. That’s nothing new. But this movie is different. This movie purports to be a socially responsible, serious intervention … about how American society responds to a threat. Its rampant use of discriminatory stereotypes is very dangerous for our community.”
When Hollywood tried to move away from the narrative of Muslims as terrorists, it saw it fit to stereotype most of the Muslim characters as oppressed victims and refugees. Maissa Houri, a filmmaker in Ottawa, mentioned her experience, “It evolved from, you know, the terrorist roles to the refugee roles. So last year, most of my Middle Eastern auditions were refugee roles — almost like 99 percent of them were refugee roles.”
One important yet overlooked narrative of the impact of the misrepresentation of Muslims in the entertainment industry is the effect on Muslim viewers. On this issue, Riz Ahmed said, “People are looking for the message that they belong, that they are part of something, that they are seen and heard and that despite, or perhaps because of, their experience, they are valued. They want to feel represented. In that task, we have failed.” Furthermore, to combat the toxic lure of extremist groups can be fought back with the right portrayal of the said community in movies because as Ahmed put it, “In the mind of the Isis recruit, he’s a version of James Bond, right? Everyone thinks they’re the good guy. Have you seen some of the Isis propaganda videos? They’re cut like action movies. Where’s the counter-narrative? Where are we telling these kids that they can be heroes in our stories?”
There is no denying that the recent decade has seen a better representation of Muslims in the mainstream media. Reza Aslan, an author, and TV producer has credited it to, “It’s improving in the sense that more Muslim storytellers, more Muslim actors, Muslim writers are being given opportunities to tell their stories. But most importantly it’s improving because we’re seeing more Muslim execs and more Muslim producers working in studios: in other words, more Muslim decision-makers. And that, I think, is what is having probably the biggest and most profound difference in how Muslims are portrayed in Hollywood.”
As awareness regarding the portrayal of Muslims is increasing, any individual who wants to find out whether a Muslim character is misrepresented in a TV series or movie can put it to The Riz Test. It is a project of Sadia Habib and Shaf Choudry, individuals with a considerable level of mastery in their respective fields of research and tech. The test takes inspiration from Riz Ahmed’s stance on the phenomenon and has its premise in the Bechdel Test.
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