DAR AL HARB - HOLLYWOOD & BOLLYWOOD: PORTRAYALS IN THICK DIRTY COLORS

Media Threat and Muslims

Hollywood rarely portrays real Muslims or Arabs, while cinema elsewhere, including Bollywood in Mumbai, paints the Muslims in thick dirty colors, says Abdul Ruff Colachal.

Importance of media for shaping the policies of the State, on the one hand, and the public opinion, on the other hand, can neither be denied nor be disputed. According to a report released last week by the Britain’s Islamic Human Rights Commission, entitled “The British Media and Muslim representation : The ideology of demonization”, the Muslims are consistently portrayed as violent, dangerous and threatening in Hollywood movies and that this reinforces prejudice against Muslims. From the silent films of the 1920s that showed Arabs as brigands and thieves to present day films that show Arabs as ruthless terrorists intent on world domination, Hollywood rarely portrays real Muslims or Arabs, while cinema elsewhere, including Bollywood in Mumbai, paints the Muslims in thick dirty colors. Journalists from non-Islamic faiths are engaged by the media to churn out anti-Muslim stuff, as Christians do in the case of India.
Atrocities, being committed by the core global media against the defenseless Muslims in the era of so-called terrorism in one form or the other, ably aided and promoted by the ruling politico-bureaucratic apparatus, are so grave for the Muslims that they feel threatened by the entire society wherein they live. It seems that offence perpetuated by anti-Islamic forces in most of the countries continue as a routine matter without any hindrance whatsoever. By portraying Muslims as unwanted anti-socials and supporting the goals of US-led forces in Arab world, the global media have attempted to degrade the image of all Muslims and even undermine their spirit of co-existence in plural societies. This is indeed dangerous.

Havoc being created for the very existence of Muslims by the print media requires no illustration, while the state-run radio corporations with their biased news reporting as well as discussions and talks target the Muslims, including the Arabs, create an image of Muslims as being "evils". The electronic Media have strikingly immediate impact on the life patterns and the formation of mind-set of the people. In countries like India, firmly rooted in the cause of anti-Muslimism unleashed by the media, by both print and electronic, the politicians and bureaucrats cooperate with media magnets in the anti-Muslim campaign as if that is their legitimate right to do so. The pathetic Muslim community, badly shaken by this strategy, has been on the defensive even before the partition in 1947. With the arrival of the era of "terrorism" ably perpetuated by the US-led West to advance their collective national interest, luck seems to have blessed the majority community in India to ill-treat them more ruthlessly and deny them their legitimate rights.

Media strategy has harmed the genuine interests of Muslims world over. Muslims, particularly in USA, Britain and other western countries conscious of their rights, feel insecure anywhere and under perpetual threat. They also have to shoulder the brunt of the anti-Muslim hatred generated by the state-media combine. The most interesting part of this report shows that the media are biased against them. There is also a pervasive belief that stereotypes, reinforced repeatedly, in film and television are directly linked to their experiences of discrimination and religious hatred. Arabs and Muslims are portrayed on screen as terrorists, thieves and barbarians; violent, backward and religiously unhinged, be it in the big screen of Hollywood, Bollywood or the little screen of television. Quite extreme variety could be even more devastatingly damaging for the Muslims. But it looks as if it should not matter that films portray Arabs and Muslims as caricatures and most Muslims should just laugh and shrug it off.
Modern Muslims do attempt to coexist even with antagonistic communities. There is no denying that screen depictions play a significant role not only in reinforcing stereotypes but in creating them in the first place, particularly of Muslims as small ethnic groups in some countries. The problem with portrayals of people from the Middle East, as the Muslims all over the world, is their homogeneity, there is little differentiation between an Arab, a Turk or an Iranian, they are all lumped into one indistinguishable, bad lot, though their national characters are quite different. This creates and reinforces stereotypes that are not only inaccurate and crude but also wide in their reach.

The Ulemma rightly thinks that the extensive growth of print-cum-electronic media equipped to attack Islam, have negatively affected the young Muslim children and drive them away from the religious path. Today Muslims all over the world, irrespective of country and regions, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, have been facing a crudely threatening atmosphere. The injustice done to the Muslims by negative portrayals in films and TV serials that show the Muslims as terrorists and villains of civil societies has gone unnoticed even by the Muslims against whom the campaign is directed…

A negative portrayal may not be offensive in itself. But the Muslims, as presented by the global media do not correlate in the media to real experience of being a Muslim. A film in which the baddies are a band of Muslim terrorists with dirty beards and ugly looks cannot be objected to just because it shows negative human straits. What can be objected to is that these are the only portrayals available to the global audience. What is missing is realism, the multidimensional depictions showing, sympathetically, the full variety of what it means to be an Arab and or a Muslim. Media, by and large, have lost the focus of reality. As a result, Muslims are not presented quite realistically and accurately today. There lies the essence of Western anti-Islamic ideology which global media quite faithfully reflects.

Thanks to the strenuous efforts by the world ruling circles and the global media mafia, the Muslims are now better known as the so-called "terrorists" and, even worse, the "suspected terrorists", especially in India and US. Given the existing anti-Islamic international environment it won't be surprising if ,sooner than later, the encyclopedias and school text books define Islam as the religion of terrorists and suspected terrorists and a forum that generate "terrorist outfits" and encourage "cross-border terrorism", etc, and requiring children, even in Arab nations that promote US interests in Middle East, to learn by heart similar definitions.

Cry me a river why don't ya...

Pertinent Links:

1) Media Threat & Muslims