# Are Muslims portrayed fairly by Hollywood? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 27, 2017, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331 "2017-01-27T18:36:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/21 "2017-01-28T18:38:41Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > (Regarding Jack Shaheen who is quoted in the OP on how Hollywood is so mean to Muslims, he not only has a bit of an obsession with this issue but has elsewhere [suggested](http://reason.com/archives/2002/12/16/unreel-claims/) that it’s those Jews in Hollywood who are causing it.) Where in this article does he do that? Here are the quotes from the article that mention Jewish people as regards Sheehan; [QUOTE=the article in question] In addition to expected offerings like Exodus (“WORST LIST”), The Mummy (Shaheen’s gloss: “[AP writer Michael] Hoffman contends politics may have played a role in the demonization of Arabs, writing, 'Universal’s President and Chief Operating Officer is Ron Meyer. Universal is owned, in part, by Seagram, whose CEO is Edgar Brofman (sic) Jr. Brofman’s father runs the World Jewish Congress.”), [/QUOTE] Here he’s quoting _someone else_. [QUOTE=yet more article] Nor is it impertinent to note, as Shaheen does, that the industry doing the vilification employs a disproportionate number of Jews—it was an implicit recognition of this fact that gave this year’s email hoax about Steven Spielberg’s plans for a “Palestinian Schindler’s List” its particular artistic punch. The Israeli producers Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus have devoted much of their output to pictures where villainous Arabs—and Palestinians in particular—are terminated with extreme prejudice. (Globus, Shaheen notes, is also a former director of Israel’s Film Industry Department—a significant position, since that country stands in for the Arab world in most American film shoots.) [/QUOTE] Here the article itself cites yet another article in which Sheehan isn’t quoted for the opinion given. Beyond which; if this were evidence for Sheehan’s supposed Jewish blame-calling, this article itself would seem to be doing that, in which case I’m surprised you’d rely on it. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/22 "2017-01-28T18:39:01Z")
I dunno. Most of the movies I watch, the bad guys are much more likely to have English accents than Middle-Eastern. Just so we know what we’re talking about here - can someone make a list of movies from the past 6-7 years with Muslim bad guys? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/23 "2017-01-28T18:52:25Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Just so we know what we’re talking about here - can someone make a list of movies from the past 6-7 years with Muslim bad guys? I’m not about to but “Hollywood” also encompasses television. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/24 "2017-01-28T19:20:32Z")
Besides Homeland and a couple of seasons of 24, how many recent shows have had Muslims villains? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/25 "2017-01-28T19:34:34Z")
Whatever. Movies and shows made in the United States, for consumption of the United States residence, show Muslims in a bad light? Shocking.:rolleyes: Pakistanis are also typically the bad guys in Bollywood flicks, amazingly\*. I’ll say this. I do wish the Americans could start to get a woman wearing a hijab right. Every muslim woman seems to wear one, even in situations where it makes no sense. You’ll see it when she is also wearing a sleeveless dress. Serving food to her kids at home. In bed. With her husband. \*Interestingly when Pakistani drama series were popular in India back in the 1990’s, the producers would try their hardest to avoid demonising India/Indians, they usually used some euphemism, like “from an enemy country”. The very popular in India drama, series; about [Alpha, Bravo, Charlie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Bravo_Charlie), about Army life and produced in collaboration with the military managed to avoid saying India even once. Money is money I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/26 "2017-01-28T20:29:26Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Besides Homeland and a couple of seasons of 24, how many recent shows have had Muslims villains? Isn’t the question “How many Muslims are in shows who aren’t terrorists or connected to terrorists/terrorism”? If 90% (to make up a number) of shows with Muslims have them connected to terrorism then that’s the issue, even if they make up 2% of the shows in general. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/27 "2017-01-28T21:08:40Z")
Yes, and they have been since Rudolph Valentino as The Sheik, 96 years ago. Actually, even then, there was a strong stereotype against Muslims in America, and Valentino made a valiant effort to portray the sheik as a dignified, cultured, civilized character. Lawrence of Arabia (closerr to Valentino’s time than to our own) also tried to depict Muslims fairly. In fact, American films very commonly portray politics, big business and criminal justice as being full of conniving villains, but the film-going public continues to tolerate those institutions with only bemused reflections on their nature, as in boys will be boys. At the same time, film characters are very rarely shown to be racist, while in reality, America is now more racist than it was before the civil rights act of the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/28 "2017-01-28T22:41:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In real life, most Muslims are not terrorists. What proportion of Muslims portrayed in movies are terrorists? That’s not the right question, because TV and movies deal with terrorists far more frequently than real life. So if, say, 20% of all terrorists shown in fiction are Muslim, that would lead to a lot of Muslim terrorists shown in fiction, compared to the number of Muslims shown total. But it wouldn’t indicate a bias against Muslims, in fact if anyone studied the matter, I imagine the percentage of fictional terrorists who are Muslim would be lower than the real percentage worldwide. Consider it another way: here are some religious groups that make up between 0.5% and 3.0% of the USA: [ul] [li]Buddhists[/li][li]Lutherans[/li][li]Muslims[/li][li]Presbyterians[/li][li]Mormons[/li][li]Hindus[/li][li]Eastern Orthodox Christians[/li][/ul] How many major movies in the past year have a Hindu main character? How many network TV shows prominently feature an Eastern Orthodox Christian? None that I know of, though I don’t follow these matters too closely. But it isn’t a matter that Hollywood is unfairly blocking out these groups; it’s a matter that for a very small religious group, you wouldn’t expect many roles in mainstream Hollywood. Likewise if there aren’t many roles for Muslim non-terrorists, it’s not a matter of unfair blocking. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_John\_Marcej](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Richard\_John\_Marcej](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_John_Marcej)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/29 "2017-01-28T22:53:59Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I think the writer of the article has it right. It’s paradoxical that liberal producers, screenwriters, etc in Tinsel Town, while excoriating Trump and the right for their prejudices, do more to portray all Muslims in a bad light than a hundred Steve Bannons. > > A fair assessment or not? Everytime I see posts like this, where I see the allusion to **“Liberal Hollywood”** by the Conservative Media, I just have to shake my head. Ladies ad gentlemen, since the day that the studios in Hollywood began making motion pictures (and then TV shows) they’ve been, have always been and (more than likely) will always be a **BUSINESS**. And in Capitalistic America businesses have one function, make a profit. That’s it. Bring in the green. It doesn’t matter how many liberal artists, actors, directors, producers, etc… they employ, the powers that be have one desire, make money. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/30 "2017-01-30T03:30:30Z")
If anything, Hollywood goes too easy on Muslims. In the movie version of “Clear and Present Danger,” the Muslim terrorists are turned into neo-Nazis. In “The Siege,” well, Muslim terrorism is a tad unfortunate, but the TWUE danger is the meanies of the U.S. Army, who are chomping at the bit to toss nice Arabs in concentration camps. Even in “24,” it always turns out that Arab terrorists are being framed by sinister white European bankers. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/31 "2017-01-31T03:50:17Z")
In the movie version _The Sum of All Fears_, they replaced the Muslim terrorists with Neo-Nazis. That’s good, I presume. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/32 "2017-01-31T21:59:04Z")
I don’t know about movies off the top of my head, but I can think of at least a couple of sympathetically-portrayed Hindu TV characters: Apu from _The Simpsons_ and Raj from _The Big Bang Theory_. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/33 "2017-02-01T01:51:57Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t know about movies off the top of my head, but I can think of at least a couple of sympathetically-portrayed Hindu TV characters: Apu from _The Simpsons_ and Raj from _The Big Bang Theory_. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) on _The Office_ is also a Hindu (there’s an episode where the office goes to a Diwali celebration with her), although she’s not particularly devout. I don’t know that she’s all that sympathetic of a character either, but her annoying tendencies clearly have nothing to do with her religious background. I’ve only seen a few episodes of _The Mindy Project_ and I’m not sure if Kaling’s character on that is a Hindu or not. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/34 "2017-02-01T04:42:06Z")
Is this an attempt at a partisan\* tu quoque?\* Yes, the American media, specifically Hollywood, stereotypes Middle Easterners as terrorists. This is a known problem. The American “right” and “left” aren’t really diametric opposites in all ways, you know. I bet there are lots of Americans whose politics you can’t even guess. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/35 "2017-02-01T16:51:02Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > Make films about muslims that don’t include terrorism or politics at all. Show them as they really are, no apologetics or propaganda for the faith, just the long [translated] prayers and those hairsplitting debates on every issue that define them, their charity and ordinary everyday life particularly in America rather than in foreign countries whose foreignness is a red flag to Americans just for existing. > > Much the same could be done for Mormons, an equally fascinating crowd, or Objectivists, or Scientologists. I thought the HBO show Big Love did a pretty good job presenting Mormons. Mostly it just seem to deal with Bill Paxton and his wives dealing with normal issues related to family, career, business and church politics. There have also been a few decent films that, while not specifically about Objectivists, captured at least the spirit of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. The Aviator about Howard Hughes comes to mind. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/36 "2017-02-01T17:20:50Z")
There was “All American Muslim”, but it only lasted one season. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/37 "2017-02-01T17:30:14Z")
Doesn’t Hollywood also stereotype the British as archvillains? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/38 "2017-02-01T18:38:16Z")
Hollywood is a mixture of progressive ideals with greedy capitalism, and the latter wins out every time. Hollywood is about making money, and thus does what will make the most money. Hence why I don’t get how Hollywood is against Trump, but nearly half the country isn’t. I can only surmise that the anti-Trump side has more money. But then why the fuck did they let Trump win? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/39 "2017-02-01T23:49:24Z")
Remember, Hollywood doesn’t make what sells. They make what they _think_ sells. And for a long time there, it looked like anti-Trump was what sold. Now that we’ve learned otherwise, we might start seeing a shift in Hollywood. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331/40 "2017-02-02T10:13:57Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > But also **beowulff’s** point is true, that a lot of groups aren’t portrayed well in Hollywood. How often are disabled people portrayed as regular people? They are usually either inspirations or burdens or just don’t appear in movies or TV. Things have gotten a bit better for gay and lesbian characters, but it seems like if there’s a bi character it’s because they are such a horndog and so they want to sleep with everyone. Trans people are rarely shown other than as a punchline. A lot of times when Asians are in TV or movies it’s as the nerd or IT guy or ninja or if it’s a woman as the sexual object. Ask anybody to name a movie or TV show where their profession is portrayed realistically and the first reaction is likely to be laughter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-muslims-portrayed-fairly-by-hollywood/778331.md?page=3)