Muslim Avengers Tackle Maligned Muslim Media Portrayals

ISLAMOPHOBIA Muslim Avengers Tackle Maligned Muslim Media Portrayals

Do Americans realize that their Islamophobia has roots in the misrepresentation of Muslims in the media?

BY SANDRA WHITEHEAD

Many of us were devastated by the news that a Muslim family in Canada, out for an evening walk, were run down in June by a pickup truck driven by a young man motivated by anti-Muslim hate.

As they waited to cross the street, a grandmother, father, mother and 15-yearold daughter were killed. The 9-year-old son suffered serious injuries but has survived. Ed Holder, mayor of London, Ontario, where the tragedy took place, called it “an act of mass murder perpetuated against Muslims … rooted in unspeakable hatred.”

The tragic news spread fear in Muslim communities across the globe. There is a sense that it could have been any of us, one protester in Canada said to a reporter.

Where does the hate come from? One answer is the misrepresentation of Muslims in media, says a group of highly accomplished Muslim media professionals who have joined together to address the issue.

Top left clockwise: Arij Mikati (Photo credit: Elias Rios), Kashif Shaikh (Photo credit: Olawale Sanni), Dr. Stacy Smith (Photo credit: Marcus Yam), Riz Ahmed (photo credit: Sharif Hamza).

“An all-star team of the Muslim Avengers lined up,” said Riz Ahmed in a June 10 online speech about a new project to address Muslim misrepresentation. Ahmed is the first Muslim nominated as best actor at the Oscars and a leader in the effort to correct Muslim media portrayals. The British Pakistani actor was nominated this year for his lead role in The Sound of Metal for his portrayal of a drummer who loses his hearing. The artist and activist is also known for his performances in the television series The OA and The Night Of, and the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Ahmed and his renowned colleagues, including Mahershala Ali, Sana Amanat, Karim Amer, Rosa Attab, Lena Khan, Nida Manzoor, Hasan Minhaj, Jehane Noujaim and Ramy Youssef, initiated a collaboration with the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the Pillars Fund and the Ford Foundation to study media portrayals, create a plan of action for the entertainment industries, and fund a fellowship for Muslim filmmakers.

MEDIA PORTRAYALS HAVE REAL-WORLD IMPACTS “People don’t just wake up hating Muslims. They believe a story,” Ahmed said.

“The problem of Muslim misrepresentation can’t be ignored anymore,” Ahmed said. “The reason it matters is the real-world costs of this misrepresentation is measured in the films compared to their percentage of the population. It also revealed the overwhelmingly demeaning, stereotypical portrayals of Muslim characters in those films, as well as a narrow view of their racial and ethnic backgrounds, even though Muslims are the most racially and ethnically diverse religious community in the world.

BY ANOTHER MEASURE, LESS THAN 10% OF THE 200 FILMS FEATURED AT LEAST ONE MUSLIM CHARACTER SPEAKING ON SCREEN. THAT MEANS 90.5% OF THE MOVIES DID NOT INCLUDE A SINGLE MUSLIM CHARACTER IN A SPEAKING ROLE, WHILE 24% OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE MUSLIM.

lost potential of untold stories and unfilled careers of storytellers; it’s measured in lost audiences, but it is also measured in lost lives.

“We know that when people don’t know a minority group the onscreen representations are far more impactful and 62% of Americans don’t know Muslims. The massacre of three generations of one family this week in Canada … is the result of dehumanizing and demonizing portrayals of Muslims.”

A 2015 peer-reviewed study in Communication Research (“Exposure to Muslims in Media and Support for Public Policies Harming Muslims”, Muniba Saleem, Sara Prot, Craig A. Anderson, and Anthony F. Lemieux) supports Ahmed’s point. It found that exposure to negative portrayals of Muslims increased support for harsh civil restrictions of Muslim Americans and for military action in Muslim countries.

NEW STUDY LAYS THE FOUNDATION FOR COUNTERING STEREOTYPES To address the problems of Muslim representation in media, the group needed data, Ahmed said. It was not enough to “go on feeling.”

To lay the foundation for change, a new study “Missing & Maligned: The Reality of Muslims in Popular Global Movies” was undertaken by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation, the Pillars Fund and Ahmed. The study of 200 top films showed an absence of portrayals of Muslim characters in 200 top

The study examined films from the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand released between 2017 and 2018. Less than 2% of more than 8,500 speaking characters across the films examined were Muslim.

By another measure, less than 10% of the 200 films featured at least one Muslim character speaking on screen. That means 90.5% of the movies did not include a single Muslim character in a speaking role, while 24% of people in the world are Muslim. The total absence of Muslim characters in the animated films examined, paired with the finding that only 7% Muslim characters were children, sends “a strong message to children that Muslims do not belong and are not worthy of inclusion in storytelling,” according to study co-author Dr. Stacy Smith.

When Muslim characters did appear, the majority were boys and men, and they were Middle Eastern or North African. In addition, they were stereotyped as threatening, particularly to white characters. And more than half of the characters were rendered as “foreign,” as immigrants, migrants or refugees.

Women were portrayed primarily as romantic partners or family members and are stereotyped as submissive. By showing this narrow portrayal of who Muslims are, audiences do not identify with the Muslim characters as neighbors, friends or colleagues, or even members of modern society, the report concludes. A BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE The study reveals the scope of the problem facing Muslims in entertainment and the urgent need for solutions that increase the presence of Muslim voices in storytelling, Kashif Shaikh, Pillars Fund cofounder and president, states.

From these findings, a Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion was developed. It supports the creation of more authentic Muslim portrayals by amplifying Muslim voices in the industry and eliminating terror tropes, among other recommendations. It is intended for every organization in the industry, from production companies to drama schools.

FELLOWSHIP FOR MUSLIM STORYTELLERS To bring in more Muslim voices, the Pillars Artist Fellowship focuses on Muslim artists in the U.S. and U.K. at the early stage of their careers, offering multiple selected fellows an unrestricted award of $25,000 and career development support, including workshops and mentorships. As an unrestricted award, the recipient can use the funds for anything they choose, even paying the rent, Ahmed said in his video address. Whatever frees them to pursue their art, he said. The hope is that substantial financial and professional support can create the kind of talent pipeline that will help shift on-screen representation.

The first year of the multiyear program will focus on directors and writers from film and television. In future years, it will expand to cover storytellers in other disciplines, including literature, music and visual arts.

“It’s really scary to be a Muslim right now,” Ahmed said in 2019 speech to the Creative Artists Agency, a Los Angeles-based talent and sports agency, as reported in Variety. “Super scary. With all my privilege and profile, I often wonder if this is going to be the year they round us up.

“I think lives are quite literally at stake here,” he continued. “The representations of Muslims on screen — that feeds the policies that get enacted, the people that get killed, the countries that get invaded.” [NOTE: This story originally appeared in the Wisconsin Muslim Journal. https://wisconsinmuslimjournal.org/ muslim-avengers-tackle-maligned-muslim-media-portrayals/) ih

Sandra Whitehead is an author, journalist and a long-time adjunct faculty member of journalism and media studies in the journalism and media studies faculty, J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University.