Tired of negativity, Muslims take on media stereotypes
Hannah Allam
Detroit Free Press
When Jennifer Zobair sat down to write her first novel, she already had a muse in mind for the heroine: a glamorous, foul-mouthed Muslim woman whose high-profile job in Boston is on the line after a terrorist attack.
The character, Zainab, was inspired in part by Muslim Huma Abedin, vice chairwoman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Zainab and her fictional friends struggle to balance their high-pressure jobs with family expectations, like many real-life Muslim girlfriends of the author, an Iowa-born convert to Islam. And although terrorists are central to the plot, Zobair said, she was determined not to let them overshadow the romance at the heart of the story.
“I was thinking of people with anti-Muslim views and thought, ‘Can I change that? What would it take?’ ” Zobair recalled at her home in Virginia. “Well, it’s got to be love.”
Unfortunately for Zobair, her book, “Painted Hands,” was released in spring 2013, coinciding with the Boston marathon bombing, in which two radicalized Muslim brothers killed three people and wounded more than 250. Reviewers wouldn’t touch a Muslim love story set in Boston, Zobair said.
“It was sad because the publicist kept saying, ‘This is a time where people need to read your book, because it’s showing what Muslim American lives are like in a way that people don’t see,’ ” Zobair said. “But we just could not get any traction.”
This unhappy ending is familiar to Muslims across the arts who are struggling to diversify depictions of Islam — only to confront hardened stereotypes and a lack of support. Muslims working in mass media named three common archetypes representing a faith with more than a billion followers: the terrorist “bad Muslim,” the hyper-patriotic “good Muslim,” and the oppressed woman yearning for liberation.
The past couple of years have yielded a handful of breakout moments, but representation of Islam remains overwhelmingly narrow and negative — a problem that’s not only unjust on its own, but one that also stokes anti-Muslim prejudices at home and gives ammunition to jihadist recruiters abroad, according to media critics and counter-extremism specialists.
“Every time an American leader or TV show vilifies American Muslims or Arabs, that’s a propaganda tool to say, ‘See what America thinks of you? See how Americans talk about you? We’re ISIS … we love you, come to us,” said Jack Shaheen, a media scholar who has tracked depictions of Arabs and Muslims for 40 years and is widely considered the nation’s foremost expert on the subject.
The quest for normal
During his landmark visit to a Baltimore mosque in February, President Barack Obama drew applause when he noted the “hugely distorted impression” left by programs that show Muslims only in the context of terrorism.
“Our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security,” he said.
Not two weeks after Obama’s remarks, however, “The X-Files” TV show cast Muslims as extremists — in this case, militants who blow up an art gallery. Muslim sci-fi fans vented on social media about what they called gratuitous, nonsensical religious references, as if script writers had gone out of their way to make American Muslims seem foreign and dangerous.
“We are doing all these normal things that you don’t pay attention to,” Zobair said of the absence of mainstream Muslim roles. “We’re a part of you. When you keep this narrative up, you’re keeping us all from knowing each other.”
Zobair, who grew up Catholic, said her embrace of Islam came from the heart — first through the close friendship of a Kuwaiti woman at Smith College and, later, through her marriage to a Pakistani-American from a conservative Muslim family. In Virginia, the couple have built a Muslim family that doesn’t fit Hollywood tropes: South Asian attorney dad, unveiled blonde novelist mom, their two biological children and an African-American son they adopted.
Their multicultural household isn’t an anomaly. Because of the diversity of Muslims in the U.S., intermarriage is common among Arabs, South Asians, Central Asians and African Americans. However, Zobair said, you wouldn’t know that from the limited depictions on TV or in the movies.
Perhaps that’s why, gradually, despite the lack of promotion, Zobair’s novel drew notice in the burgeoning world of Muslim-focused women’s fiction, or “Muslim chick lit.” Fellow Muslims weren’t necessarily Zobair’s target readers, but they’re the ones who e-mailed.
“Muslim women started writing to me, saying, ‘This is the first time I identified with a character in a book,’ ” Zobair said. “And then people started writing to say, ‘Thank you for making Muslims look normal.’ And that was really sad. ‘To look normal.’ Like, for the first time, we’re not terrorists.”
Another way forward
Media critics said that with the exception of “Quantico,” which includes twin Muslim characters who are from Dearborn, TV shows about federal agents are the worst for pigeonholing Muslims as terrorists. Think “Sleeper Cell,” “24,” “Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye,” “The Agency,” “The Unit” and, more recently, Showtime’s Emmy-winning “Homeland.”
“It’s not just one or two. It’s hundreds of representations,” said Evelyn Alsultany, director of Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book “The Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11.”
“We, as viewers, have been seeing Arabs and Muslims as strange, exotic and threatening for over a century.”
Rather than wait for studios, publishing houses and screenwriters to come around, Muslims are taking it upon themselves to flesh out Hollywood’s portraits, creating a wave of Muslim-produced literary, TV, online and film work. In a challenge to stereotypes about subservient women, many projects are anchored by strong-willed, independent women.
In the comics world, Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teenager with shape-shifting abilities, is the first Muslim heroine to assume the Ms. Marvel title and the first Muslim superhero to headline a major comic book series. In gaming, where favorites such as “Call of Duty” are notorious for vilifying Islam, an entertainment company bankrolled by a Saudi prince is developing “Saudi Girls Revolution,” a mobile game and digital series about seven Saudi warrior women, including a lesbian, who race through a post-apocalyptic landscape on motorcycles. And two Muslim women who wear headscarves, or hijab, made ripples in reality TV: Amanda Saab on “MasterChef” and Aidah (her last name wasn’t publicized) on “Home Free.” On social media, Muslim viewers rejoiced that the shows focused on their abilities as contestants. Islam, for once, was incidental.
“You have to keep on creating stuff,” said comedian Aasif Mandvi, a regular on “The Daily Show.”
“We’re in a period of time right now where Hollywood, maybe for the first time in a long time, is looking at diversity in another way. …This conversation is happening.”
Source: www.freep.com