Islamophobia. It's in the water we drink, the air we breathe and the movies we watch. One brave man has spent a lifetime cataloging all the Islamophobia in a big red book. And one day, hopefully, there'll be hearings. For the moment he's gotten a hearing from the Times Record as he gets to play broken record.
The first academic paper Shaheen wrote on the subject languished, unpublished, for three years. His first book manuscript racked up dozens of rejection letters. Smear campaigns in academic circles painted him as a propagandist. And the work was lonely — nobody else cared about how Rudolph Valentino launched the stereotype of the swarthy, desert-dwelling predator with his 1921 film "The Sheik."
Probably because nothing was "launched" with The Sheik which just latched on to an existing cliche. But after being mocked in Dusseldorf and laughed at in Warsaw, Shaheen finally got a hearing.
Still, Shaheen pressed on in what became a lifelong mission to expose what he considers racist and dangerous distortions of Arabs and Muslims. Over the past 40 years, he's addressed the topic in three books, in a documentary, on two Hollywood film sets and in countless news interviews.
Please, tell us more.
In all his years of research, Shaheen said, he's never seen anti-Muslim prejudices this intense, including in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The current hostility toward Arabs and Muslims, he said, is reflected in and reinforced by on-screen portrayals that haven't evolved much over the years.
Yes. Like the refusal of movies to actually depict something as unreal as Muslim terrorists.
Shaheen's list of "worst offenders" is long and includes some beloved box-office hits, such as "True Lies," with Arnold Schwarzenegger (incompetent terrorists conquered by the American hero) and Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery (greedy sheikh wants to destroy non-Muslims with missiles).
Now it's been a while since I've seen that movie, but somehow I don't recall Muslims with missiles being a major plot point there. The closest thing to it is the Sultan who helps the Nazis in exchange for a car.
Maybe I'm just blind to all this Islamophobia or maybe some of this Islamophobia has been.... made up.