Why are Arabs Portrayed as Evil in Hollywood? from Planck's Constant

Always the villain? With author Jack Shaheen, actor Ahmed Ahmed and producer Abdullah Omeish, this episode of the Riz Khan show on Al Jazeera English looks at stereotypical portrayals of Arabs in Hollywood and asks why these continue.

If you do not see the YouTube video above click here.

At the 00:32 second mark we are shown a clip from the film The Kingdom (2007) where an Arab suicide bomber sets off a suicide vest full of explosives in a crowded American compound in Saudi Arabia.

I fully agree with Riz Khan that it was totally unnecessary and stereotypical to use an Arab Muslim in this scene. Wouldn't it have had the exact same impact and meaning if instead they had used Russian agents of the former KGB? Yeah, sure; however there is one problem: this attack, which was the inspiration for the film, actually happened on 12 May 2003 and unfortunately for Hollywood scriptwriters the perpetrators were Arab Muslims and not KGB agents. I suppose Arab Muslims would prefer that we dispense with truth and accuracy if it offends or insults their race or culture or religion.

Ashraf Barhom in The Kingdom
Photo by: ahm_79

I viewed this film and I have to tell you that, if anything, this is one film that portrays Arabs, and Muslim Arabs in particular, in a very, very complimentary manner.

Although some might think that Jennifer Garner's boobs were the main attraction in this film, one has to admire the performance of Ashraf Barhom (an Israeli of Arabic heritage, by the way) who plays Saudi police Colonel Faris Al Ghazi, an Arab Muslim who is deeply religious, dedicated to his job, street-smart, loyal to his men, fair to his American friends, and professional in his conduct.

If one had to select a movie where Arabs or Muslims were portrayed in the best possible light one couldn't pick a better film than "The Kingdom". Riz Khan certainly made a mistake in criticizing this film for so-called Hollywood stereotyping of Arabs.

It is not Hollywood at Fault

So one should not be asking if Hollywood is unnecessarily portraying Arabs as evil, the question should be, is Hollywood lying about Arabs? If Hollywood produced a film showing Arabs (instead of Indians) attacking a wagon train in the old West merely to vilify them I would be the first to condemn it.

On the other hand, I think it is morally wrong to portray Polacks instead of Italians as running the Gambino crime family, to show Chinese instead of Arabs attacking the World Trade Center, or to represent Buddhists instead of Christians heading up the Inquisition. Certainly if we distort the truth for political correctness, we end up insulting some other culture or religion. The solution, if we carry it to its logical conclusion, is not to use Semitic-looking actors to portray Islamic terrorists, or black actors to depict inner-city drug dealers or Italians as Mafioso.

Wouldn't it be absurd if we insisted that pizza shop owners, Persian rug merchants, or French restaurateurs be masked actors of indeterminate ethnic origin and color so as not to insult any particular nationality, culture, religion or species? Distorting the truth to prevent some group from being offended is in itself offensive.

Another Offensive film

Riz Khan also criticizes the film United 93 (at the 7:30 minute mark). Here we see Muslim Arabs preparing themselves for their suicide mission while in the background we hear Quranic passages being recited. Riz Khan wonders why Hollywood has to mix religion with culture. Why are the bad guys Muslims?

Hey, every intelligent person knows that most Muslims are not Arabs, but so what? It was in fact Muslim Arabs who commandeered United Flight 93; what was Hollywood supposed to do in this film, have a Bulgarian midget reciting passages from the Book of Mormon? How is merely portraying actual historical events accurately and truthfully a stereotype? Are Muslims asking Hollywood to change history so that a particular ethnic or religious group doesn't get its burqa in a twist?

Obviously movies supposedly based on "a true story" have to be dramatized in order to entertain, and I understand that Hollywood plays loose with facts anyway but this does not mean that they must completely distort the truth just to avoid offending some idiot in Wadi Kaboom.

If Arabs and Muslims want to be portrayed as scientists and great contributors to civilization they need to stop spending money on religious madrassas and spend their oil moneys on science education. Then they won't be so embarrassingly under-represented in Nobel Prizes compared with the Jews.

Let's not think that documentaries are any different than Hollywood fiction flicks. We recall that Michael Moore produces socialist propaganda films. His faux-documentaries "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Sicko" exploit the mental deficiencies of liberal idiots who believe the contradiction that our government is evil when it fights against Islamic terror but benevolent when it fights against American Corporations:

Planck's Constant, $100 Shoelaces and Healthcare in America
Moore has learned that great huckster lesson that you need only appeal to that half of the population that believes in a flat earth, that Bush caused the WTC massacre, that we never landed on the moon, and that masturbation leads to warts on your hand (I burn mine off with acid). Indeed, there is a large segment of the population that believes that everything in "Fahrenheit 911" is true and sadly they will also believe that the UK or Cuba has a better health care system.