The Muslim World in Post-9/11 American Cinema

The Muslim World in Post-9/11 American Cinema
Author: Kerem Bayraktaroğlu
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476633630

Focusing on the decade following 9/11, this critical analysis examines the various portrayals of Muslims in American cinema. Comparison of pre- and post-9/11 films indicates a stereotype shift, influenced by factors other than just politics. The evolving definitions of male, female and child characters and of setting and landscape are described. The rise of the formidable American female character who dominates the weak Muslim male emerges as a common theme.

American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11

American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11
Author: Terence McSweeney
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1474413838

American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 is a ground-breaking collection of essays by some of the foremost scholars writing in the field of contemporary American film. Through a dynamic critical analysis of the defining films of the turbulent post-9/11 decade, the volume explores and interrogates the impact of 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' on American cinema and culture. In a vibrant discussion of films like American Sniper (2014), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Spectre (2015), The Hateful Eight (2015), Lincoln (2012), The Mist (2007), Children of Men (2006), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), noted authors Geoff King, Guy Westwell, John Shelton Lawrence, Ian Scott, Andrew Schopp, James Kendrick, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke and many others consider the power of popular film to function as a potent cultural artefact, able to both reflect the defining fears and anxieties of the tumultuous era, but also shape them in compelling and resonant ways.

Arabs and Muslims in the Media

Arabs and Muslims in the Media
Author: Evelyn Alsultany
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2012-08-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0814707319

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

Reel Bad Arabs

Reel Bad Arabs
Author: Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2012-12-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1623710065

A groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema’s earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood’s shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of over one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1—brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood’s defamation of Arabs.

The Muslim World in Post-9/11 American Cinema

The Muslim World in Post-9/11 American Cinema
Author: Kerem Bayraktaroğlu
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2018-08-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476666679

Focusing on the decade following 9/11, this critical analysis examines the various portrayals of Muslims in American cinema. Comparison of pre- and post-9/11 films indicates a stereotype shift, influenced by factors other than just politics. The evolving definitions of male, female and child characters and of setting and landscape are described. The rise of the formidable American female character who dominates the weak Muslim male emerges as a common theme.

Innocent Until Proven Muslim

Innocent Until Proven Muslim
Author: Maha Hilal
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1506470475

On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four airplanes and carried out attacks on the United States, killing more than three thousand Americans and sending the country reeling. Three days after the attacks, President George W. Bush declared, "This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace." Yet in the days following, Bush declared a "War on Terror," which would result in years of Muslims being targeted on the basis of collective punishment and scapegoating. In 2009, President Barack Obama said, "America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace." Instead, Obama perpetuated the War on Terror's infrastructure that Bush had put in place, rendering his words entirely empty. President Donald Trump's overtly Islamophobic rhetoric added fuel to the fire, stoking public fears to justify the continuation of the War his predecessors had committed to. In Innocent Until Proven Muslim, scholar and organizer Dr.Maha Hilal tells the powerful story of two decades of the War on Terror, exploring how the official narrative has justified the creation of a sprawling apparatus of state violence rooted in Islamophobia and excused its worst abuses. Hilal offers not only an overview of the many iterations of the War on Terror in law and policy, but also examines how Muslim Americans have internalized oppression, how some influential Muslim Americans have perpetuated collective responsibility, and how the lived experiences of Muslim Americans reflect what it means to live as part of a "suspect" community. Along the way, this marginalized community gives voice to lessons that we can all learn from their experiences, and to what it would take to create a better future. Twenty years after the tragic events of 9/11, we must look at its full legacy in order to move toward a United States that is truly inclusive and unified.

Guilty

Guilty
Author: Jack G. Shaheen
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-12-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1623710200

“Nothing will be the same again.” Americans scarred by the experience of 9/11 often express this sentiment. But what remains the same, argues Jack Shaheen, is Hollywood’s stereotyping of Arabs. In his new book about films made after 9/11, Shaheen finds that nearly all of Hollywood’s post-9/11 films legitimize a view of Arabs as stereotyped villains and the use of Arabs and Muslims as shorthand for the “Enemy” or “Other.” Along with an examination of a hundred recent movies, Shaheen addresses the cultural issues at play since 9/11: the government’s public relations campaigns to win “hearts and minds” and the impact of 9/11 on citizens and on the imagination. He suggests that winning the “war on terror” would take shattering the centuries-old stereotypes of Arabs, and frames the solutions needed to begin to tackle the problem and to change the industry and culture at large.

Changing Minds, Winning Peace

Changing Minds, Winning Peace
Author: Edward P. Djerejian
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 79
Release: 2007-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780615157429

A reprint of the historic report of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, this document was submitted to the US Congress in 2003 as a first step toward reforming America's dilapidated strategic communication infrastructure. The bipartisan Advisory Group, chaired by Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, made a series of recommendations in this report that helped re-shape US public diplomacy.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
Author: Mahmood Mamdani
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2005-06-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 038551591X

In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen? Mamdani dispels the idea of “good” (secular, westernized) and “bad” (premodern, fanatical) Muslims, pointing out that these judgments refer to political rather than cultural or religious identities. The presumption that there are “good” Muslims readily available to be split off from “bad” Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times. This book argues that political Islam emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. Mamdani writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing America’s embrace of the highly ideological politics of “good” against “evil.” Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the “moral equivalents” of America’s Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a provocative and important book that will profoundly change our understanding both of Islamist politics and the way America is perceived in the world today.

Silent Victims

Silent Victims
Author: Aladdin Elaasar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2004
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781418410551

Army Reserve Captain Kevin Shroud is assigned to an extraordinary Reserve Unit in Los Angeles, California. He thinks he and his beautiful four year old daughter, Marie are on their way to fulfilling the American dream. Unknown to Kevin he was specifically selected to join the 666th Support Battalion. Kevin should have listened to his brother, Charles an ex-LA gang's member, who warned him that the Army was just one big gang. A Criminal Investigation Division Officer, Major Christine Bradley, daughter of the Secretary of Defense, approaches Kevin. After their conversation Kevin finds himself reeling; not only from what she says, but from how she looks. Christine looks exactly like his deceased wife. Stryker a CIA agent working for the battalion relentlessly pursues Kevin, suspecting he has become an informant for the CID. Kevin is forced to try and outwit the battalion, their powerful cohorts and save the life of his daughter and himself. The Pentagon, covert government operations, love, greed, murder and particularly the political details that occur behind a conspiracy being played out in America and her Armed Forces are chief elements of Reserve Affairs.