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From True Lies to American Sniper, from 24 to

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Western media is

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full of images of evil brown people who need to be

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wiped from the earth by noble, righteous white men

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heroically fighting for freedom and justice.

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And sure, it’s so commonplace by this point

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that maybe you don’t even bat an eye at

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old-fashioned American Islamophobia

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in our media.

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Whoa!

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Even Back to the Future,

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that beloved comedy classic,

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takes a moment to toss in a few scary

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brown men to menace and terrorize our white heroes!

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Unfortunately, we can’t hop in Doc Brown’s DeLorean

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and undo all the harmful representations of

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Muslims, Arabs and Middle-Easterners that have

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haunted our stories since...

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well, basically the Crusades.

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But we can try to make sure history

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doesn’t keep repeating itself.

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Okay, maybe that’s not entirely fair.

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In some ways, things have changed.

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Once upon a time,

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non-white actors could hardly get

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any work in Hollywood at all.

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These days, shows like Homeland and movies

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like Executive Decision are providing some brown

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actors with ample opportunity to portray scary

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terrorists who get gunned down while screaming

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something absurd like “Death to America”.

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It doesn’t even matter if you’re not actually of

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Middle-Eastern descent!

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If you’re vaguely brown,

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you can stick around (to play bad guys).

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Now, sure, not every Middle-Eastern character in

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films is a villain.

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In the 1921 box-office smash

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The Sheik,

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the dashing hero gets the girl in the end.

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But the Arab world of the film is presented as

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exotic and dangerous, and the sheik himself, the

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one good, heroic Arab, is played by

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Italian-American heartthrob Rudolph Valentino!

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You see,

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since he’s not really Arab, he’s allowed to get the

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girl in the end.

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If you think this kind of racist coding to signify

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the difference between “good Arabs” and “bad Arabs”

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went away with the advent of talkies, think again.

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Have you ever noticed how,

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in Disney’s Aladdin,

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the good guy might as well be a

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tanned American surfer dude...

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...but the bad guys look and sound a little

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more…”Arab”?

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While Hollywood historically has sometimes given

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“good Arab” roles to non-Arab actors,

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it has also sometimes given not-so-good Arab

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and South Asian roles to white actors,

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too, denying brown people work and

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decent on-screen representation in one

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fell swoop.

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It’s the world’s worst Catch 22!

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For example, take “Mr. Habib,” the scheming

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Middle-Eastern villain in Father of the Bride Part 2

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who is played by Eugene Levy.

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Those aren’t even real words he says to his wife!

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It’s just vaguely Middle-Eastern sounding

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gibberish!

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And the written equivalent

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of this is very common as well:

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video games and TV shows constantly

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just toss up some squiggly text

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and try to pass it off as actual Arabic!

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Well, this one is Arabic,

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but it sure doesn’t say

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what the Homeland producers wanted it to!

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As insidious as it is to flatten entire cultures

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and populations into The Land of Squiggly Writing,

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there is nothing so pervasive and damaging as

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Hollywood’s tendency to constantly portray vaguely

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Middle-Eastern people as generic terrorists.

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It’s so common that on screen,

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brown skin has practically become synonymous

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with bad guys who have little or no

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character development beyond

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hating America and freedom fries.

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One of the biggest problems with this is that

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it erases the actual lives and cultures of

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Middle-Eastern people,

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and leads many Western viewers to lump all of them

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into the same group.

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So let’s start by clarifying a few terms whose

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meaning has been obscured by media that paints the

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entire Middle East with the same

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broad, shallow, ignorant brush.

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First of all, we’ve done a lot of research on this

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and as it turns out,

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words actually have meanings!

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Weird, right? You can’t just lump Arabs and Muslims

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together because they are not the same thing!

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Arabs are a specific ethnic group,

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united by culture and language,

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and who primarily originate from middle

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eastern countries.

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Arab is not, repeat NOT, a

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racial category.

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Got that?

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You can be white, black,

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brown and still be Arab.

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But not all people from

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the Middle East are Arab and vice versa

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-- like, oh say, ethnic Persians in Iran.

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A Muslim is someone who practices Islam,

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a religion with over 1.7 billion members

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spanning a vast number of ethnic and cultural identities.

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The “Muslim world” actually comprises a multitude of

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groups that folks often forget,

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including: Iranians, South Asians,

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North Africans, Indonesians, black Americans.

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Islam is not confined

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to the Middle East, to olive-skinned people, or

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just people who speak Arabic.

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But despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not

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a race, it’s vital for us to understand that

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Islamophobia is racism.

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If you’ve been paying attention thus far,

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then you might be asking yourself,

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“If Islam isn’t a race, then how can

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Islamophobia be racism?”

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The answer lies in another

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“-ism,” one many Westerners aren’t particularly

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familiar with: Orientalism.

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In short, the term “Orientalism” refers to how,

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for hundreds of years,

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Western artistic and academic

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history has perpetuated an ignorant and prejudiced

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view of the East.

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A view rooted in the idea of

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Western culture as inherently

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more advanced and enlightened,

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and Eastern culture as inherently more

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ignorant, irrational, primitive,

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and often, highly-sexualized.

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Again, Muslims come from many different

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races and span a myriad of cultural identities.

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In fact, the former president of the Islamic Society

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of North America is a white woman,

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Dr. Ingrid Mattson.

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But let’s be real: nobody who spreads the

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hate of Islam is talking about white ladies.

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Western media has contributed to a level of

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ignorance so great that for many people it has

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resulted in equating Islam with scary brown people,

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particularly scary brown men,

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from the Middle East.

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It’s been so effective that most of you probably

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didn’t even know that this man isn’t Muslim,

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he’s Sikh!

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Sikhism and Islam are two

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completely different religions!

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The fact that Sikhs are so often the

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targets of anti-Muslim hate crimes makes it crystal

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clear that Islamophobia is all about race. The only

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reason some Sikhs--those with brown skin--are

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sometimes the targets of Islamophobic violence is

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that they are also perceived as Middle-Eastern, and

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Middle-Eastern is perceived as Muslim, and Muslim

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is perceived as scary!

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Whew!

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Thanks, Jack Bauer, what would we do without

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you?

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It isn’t just film and television that

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perpetuates this kind of ignorance.

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Here’s comedian

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Kumail Nanjiani on how video games often don’t put

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in even the absolute bare minimum of effort or

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research when representing the Middle East.

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Modern films, TV shows and games definitely

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perpetuate Islamophobia, but it’s no exaggeration

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to say that ignorant representations of people from

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the Middle-East in Western media date back for

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centuries.

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Orientalist paintings of the 1800s were

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often characterized by overly sexualized depictions

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of daily life,

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and Romantic Orientalist literature

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of the late 1700s and early 1800s served to justify

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European imperialism by presenting Middle-Eastern

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people and cultures as inherently exotic and

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strange.

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So there’s a conflation of Arab with Muslim,

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and because our ideas about Islam are so deeply linked

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to stereotypes about terrorism and violence, both

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of those categories are associated

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with masculinity and men.

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While many male Muslim actors in Hollywood

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can only find work playing bit parts as evil

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terrorists, Muslim women are often erased

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altogether.

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The very real advances that Arab women

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have made in many parts of the world are ignored

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because depicting them would complicate the

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simplistic racist narrative about Arabs and

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Muslims that Hollywood continues trying to cash in

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on.

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It’s almost as if we don’t know how

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to contend with women as real people.

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Filmmakers and TV producers know

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how to objectify women,

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how to prize them for their physical

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attributes and their appearance.

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The stories we allow ourselves to tell about

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the Middle East,

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with its different cultural mores,

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don’t allow for the

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same kind of easy objectification of these brown 

women’s bodies -- and so we resist including them

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at all.

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And when Arab or Muslim women do appear,

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they’re either offered as mysterious,

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sexually wanton creatures who offer

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temptations for white male heroes:

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think belly dancing seductresses if the

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story is set in the past, or niqab-clad secret

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purveyors of violence, if the story is set in the

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present.

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At least we can thank 24 again for casting the

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great Iranian actor Shohreh Aghdashloo in season four

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as a Muslim terrorist who

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is also a wife and mother!

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But there are artists, critics, and

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writers who are out there

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speaking about what it means to be the target of

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all-this anti-brown racism, and a lot of the most

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interesting critiques are coming from Muslim women

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themselves.

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Oh crap, I think we just missed a call

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from Muslim comedian, Zahra Noorbakhsh…

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let’s see if she left a message,

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cause I know she has feelings about all this.

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Oh crap, I think we missed a call, I wonder who it

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could be. To the feminist answering machine.

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There’s tremendous harm in centuries of images that

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reduce entire nations, cultures and religions to

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the status of subhuman savages.

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In the wake of the September 11th attacks

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former “Worst President Ever” George W. Bush used

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the term “axis of evil” to describe nations

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including Iran and Iraq,

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in an effort to drum up

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support for the “War on Terror”.

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And it worked.

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More recently, during the 2016 presidential

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campaign Republican candidates tossed around the

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phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” as if it were

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some kind of magic spell they could use to make

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votes appear out of thin air.

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And again, it worked!

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The only reason tactics like

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these have any effect is that,

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to so many Americans,

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people in the Middle East have never

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been established as human beings,

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with real lives, hopes, dreams, and struggles.

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When almost every story you’ve ever seen

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about a particular part of the world

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paints the people who live there

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as monolithic, evil, and scary,

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you’re a lot more

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likely to believe that it’s actually true.

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When people believe it's true,

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they aren't just more likely to support politicians

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or policies that appeal to fear and ignorance

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about the Middle East.

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They're also more likely to act on that fear and

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ignorance themselves.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center notes

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that the number of anti-Muslim hate

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groups tripled in the United States in 2016.

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The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

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noted the same increase after the release of patriotic

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fever dream, American Sniper.

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2016 also saw a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes,

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and there's no question that

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Trump's racist, fear-mongering

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rhetoric has played a part in this surge of

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xenophobia and violence.

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Of course, Trump doesn’t

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stop with rhetoric himself.

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Within the first 100

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days of his presidency:

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He has repeatedly tried to push through bans

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preventing the citizens of several Muslim-majority

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countries from entering the United States.

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He dropped the US military’s most powerful non-

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nuclear bomb on Afghanistan.

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And he fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at,

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I don’t know, some Middle-Eastern country

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while eating the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake!

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Iraq, Syria, what’s the difference?!

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It was one of those countries the

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evil, scary brown people live in.

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Now, I can already hear the army of Richard

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Dawkins-parroting, anti-feminist Twitter users typing

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up their responses about how Islam is a religion

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dedicated to oppressing women.

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It’s amazing how suddenly everybody’s a feminist

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when it lets them perpetuate hate against

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brown people or dismiss concerns about

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how women are oppressed in their own

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culture.

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So let’s be clear,

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misogyny is not a problem with Islam;

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misogyny is a problem that some

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cultures which happen to be Muslim use the religion

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to perpetuate and justify.

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Christianity has been used as a tool to

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oppress women around the world

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for millennia!

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It’s specifically because our media

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perpetually equates Islam

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-- a religion followed by nearly ¼ of the

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world’s population --

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with evil, terrorism, and oppression,

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that so many people

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believe that’s what Islam actually is.

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And make no mistake:

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Islamophobia is big business –

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- and not just for Hollywood.

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Hundreds of millions

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of dollars each year go into

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feeding what activist

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Taz Ahmed calls “the fear industrial

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complex that perpetuates racism.”

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Devious Russian generals and Nazi scientists

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from the Cold War won’t prop up our

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defense industry anymore,

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so we needed some new bad guys.

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Come on it’s not like

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we’re just going to stop making bombs, right?

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Our entertainment media's insistence on constantly

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portraying people from the Middle East as scheming

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oil sheiks, slavers, snake charmers and suicide

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bombers--but never as real people--

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has real consequences.

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Muslims here in the U.S., and

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everyone who is or looks like they could be

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Middle Eastern, constantly face ignorance and racism.

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They live in fear of the very real possibility of being

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accosted or attacked because someone takes a look

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at them and associates them with everything they've

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seen in the movies and everything the president has

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said about people from the Middle East.

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What we need now are more stories that dispel the deeply

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harmful stereotypes and encourage us to see people

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from the Middle East--

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whether they're Arab or Muslim or neither or both--

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as what they REALLY are:

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human beings.

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