• From the Western perspective:
Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the US:
They are mostly presented in many forms by the mass media in the US. Stereotyping Arabs are usually presented in the form of literature, theatre, media and other expressions. These representations had always been negative. In American text books, there are also negative stereotypes for Arabs and Muslims. Rudolph Valentino’s roles in The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926) set the stage for the negative representation of Arabs in the Hollywood films. Both portrayed Arab characters as thieves, charlatans, murderers, and brutes.
Other foreign movies in the 1920s presented similar negative stereotypes of Arabs by attaching them to the theme of power-hungry & brutal, which are defeated by the Westerners. These movies are: The song of love (1923), a cafe in Cairo (1924) and The Desert bride (1928)
Simon in his book “Arabs in Hollywood: a UN reversed image” states that the movie “A son in the Sahara (1924) is the strongest movie of 1920s to attack the Arab culture. Also in 1970s and beyond, these same portrayals prevailed.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, the director of media relations for the American Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee wrote a report called “100 years of Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim stereotyping”. In this report, he presented “The three B-syndromes” which indicates how Arabs in TV and movies are portrayed as bombers, belly dancers or billionaires. These indications were given in reference to the portrayal of Arab men as either terrorists, or wealthy oilmen while portraying Arab women as sex objects. Not only that, the report also included cartoons as used for insulting Arabs & Muslims, and focused on the Arabs living in the US, since they were defini...
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...urbans on camels. Also the movie begins with a shifty Arabic merchant who’s trying to buy stuff of which some are broken. Only the introduction depicted the Middle Eastern man as untrustworthy. Then the image of Aladdin escaping from guards shows or portrays that the Middle East people are greedy.
Perception of bias in the Media 2013 Survey
An American survey conducted by the Arab American National Museum, the National Network for Arab American communities and the National Voices Project. The aim of the survey was to measure the portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the media and its impact on children. The initial findings of the survey represents that the persistent negative bias in the media is the highest for Arabs and Arab Americans, compared with other racial/ethnic/religious groups. Nearly half of the adults (44%) believe that media is biased against Muslims.
On September 11, 2001, since the terrorist attacks, many American Muslims have been stereotyped negatively in the United States. Salma, a Muslim woman, says that the way Muslims have been recognized in the media has played a big role in the antagonisms directed to her. “I don’t know how many time I heard my classmates accuse me of being al-Qaeda or a terrorist” (Mayton 2013). Salma, along with other Muslims, even after a decade, are still struggling with trying to find their “American” and “Islamic” identities, while facing verbal attacks for their ethnicity. Too often, the general Muslin population gets lumped in with the immoral acts of a few because of the lack of knowledge about their culture.
This study examines stereotyping of Arab Muslims in the New York Times for the past forty years. Theorists suggest that stereotyping of a minority group effects the public's opinion of that group. Other communication media theorists say that only under extreme conditions will the negative stereotypes reflect the publics' opinions of the portrayed minority group. The parallel theory between propaganda and stereotyping by the mass media is examined. Theorists including Thomson, (1977) & Myers, (1992), related to mass media effects strongly agree claiming that repetitive and non-contradictive images in the media are an effective form of propaganda. The research samples are random article reviews of the New York Times for the past forty years. Using every fifth year and 2 random numbers ranging from 1 to 12 is used to select an article search date. Islam was the search term. The Gudykunst & Kim( ? ) method of analyzing a stereotype is used to evaluate the 8 New York Times articles. The results indicate 95% of the articles were "vague," labeling entire group rather than individual. Out of the total 100%, 70% of the article used unfavorable trait characteristic labeling.
Sabbagh, S. J., & American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, W. C. (1990). Sex, Lies, & Stereotypes: The Image of Arabs in American Popular Fiction. ADC Issue Paper No. 23. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
The usage of media is huge in nowadays. People rely on different kinds of media to receive information in their everyday life because they are thirsty for the diverse and informative content. However, inaccurate portrayals of people from different races always appear in the media and audience will exaggerate those portrayals by their inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the portrayals’ cultural groups without considering individual variation (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012); in fact, it is also called as stereotypes. According to a study by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University (Stein, 2012), racial stereotyping continues to occur in media and the mainstream media's coverage of different cultural groups is full of biased reporting, offensive terminology and old stereotypes of American society. It specifically emphasizes that majority of the stereotyped characters in media will only bring out the dark side of their cultural groups which many of them might not be true, especially for the portrayals of black community: African American.
In a media platform where Islam is often portrayed as radical, terrorist and subservient religion, the television program Little Mosque on the Prairie, serves to combat modern day Orientalism and Islamophobia through education and humor. Filled with richly diverse characters and viewpoints, Little Mosque offers viewers an alternate depiction of muslims within popular culture and successfully illustrates Forbes and Mahan’s religious and cultural typology. Additionally, Little Mosque attempts to bring awareness and greater understandings of Islamic practice and culture, while highlighting ongoing gender discourse within both the muslim and secular community.
Movies, one can argue, are one of America’s greatest pastimes. Unfortunately, after 9/11, films have become increasingly prejudiced against American Muslims. In movies Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively. According to James Emery, a professor of Anthropology, Hollywood profits off of “casting individuals associated with specific negative stereotypes”. This is due to the fact that viewers automatically link characters with their clichéd images (Emery). For Muslims, the clichéd image is of the violent fundamentalist, who carried out the terroristic attacks on 9/11. As a result, the main stereotypes involved in movies display Muslims as extremists, villains, thieves, and desert nomads. An example of a movie that has such a negative character role for Muslims in film is Disney’s cartoon Aladdin, depict...
In the essay, the writer acknowledges the misunderstandings that come from media images by explaining the contrasts between these images and the teachings of the faith to support her claim that fear is the reason for this misconception. The conception that many people have of Muslims is that they are terrorists, anti-Semites, and fanatics. This conception exsists because television news and newspapers support that stereotype. The broadcast of such stereotypes encourages fear and accusations of the Islamic relegion's teachings. The writer explains that Islam teaches peace, tolerance, and equality. She further states that Muslims shown in the media have violated these teachings ...
The first type of stereotyping we’ll look at is racial stereotyping towards Middle Eastern people. First, Americans from Middle Eastern descent are often depicted as belly dancers and oil sheiks. For example Aladdin is shown in the movie with his belly button exposed. This is a false image of Middle Eastern people today and even in the past. Another stereotype is that Arabs all live and the desert and ride camels. This angers many Arabs because that is not the lifestyle they live at all. Lastly many Arabs in movies and shows are shown as villains and terrorists. Not every Arab person is bad so why show them as bad people. These stereotypes are unfair to the Arab culture.
The moving caravan of overused stereotypes has been traveling behind the camera for centuries now. It has adopted the culture and color of everywhere it has been, but the final print of this reel project is black and white. Hollywood over the years, has continued to misrepresent the enriched Arab culture and the religion of Islam and it’s people with degrading stereotypes shown in movies which a tremendous amount of viewers watch, questioning the integrity of arabs and muslims. I have been researching this topic due to the complexity of power behind these images we see throughout movies. The question bounces around in my head and I have a hard time understanding why the same stereotypes are continuously used, over and over again. It’s proof that orientalism still exists in modern day, and it affects how people may see Arabs and muslims.
Shaheen, Jack. “The Media’s Image of Arabs.” Writing on the River. 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw,
In the context of the book, Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts, it has been questioned that why western media associates Muslims as violent oppressors? Through their media and visual framing they emphasized the notion that there are certainly Muslims who commits various human rights violations. This book is illustration of media framing that how media covers and represent the images and how people will perceive it in different parts of the world. As media is considered one of the most powerful tool. In the
People being generalized based on limited and inaccurate information by sources as television, cartoons or even comic books (Tripod). This is a definition that seems to go against many public standards. The above words are the exact definition of stereotypes. Stereotypes as understood from the definition, goes mostly hand in hand with media -- only not the regular meaning of the innocent media we know. Media propaganda is the other form of media that is rather described as media manipulation. In this paper, the following will be discussed: first, how stereotypes of ethnic groups function in propaganda, why does it function so well, and finally, the consequences of these stereotypes on the life of Egyptians in particular in society. A fair examination will be conducted on this example of stereotypes through clarification examples and research results from researches conducted from reliable sources. The real association between Egyptians’ stereotypes and propaganda discussed in this paper shall magnify the association of stereotypes and propaganda in general.
There are billions of movies around the world whether it involves comedy, horror, drama, action etc. There are also many movies that include different races and cultures such as Italians, Greeks, Britain’s, Africans Americans, Arabs and so many more. What I will be focusing on is how Arabs are portrayed in movies. Many movies that are encountered around the world which include Arabs are very informative, interesting and rich in history. What I will be writing in this paper is how Arabs are portrayed in “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” and analyzing is as well. A famous actor named Adam Sandler was the main character in this movie in which he also produced this comedy genre movie. Even though this movie didn’t get the best ratings, reviews and it was stereotypical in a way, however, I liked it because of the fact that it involves Israel’s and Palestinians and since I am a Palestinian, I was interested in watching this movie, even if it upset me because it reminded of what is currently going in Palestine now and the fact that they tried to make Zohan look like an angel in this movie. However, Palestine and Israeli has been an issue for thousands of years and this movie touches some base on it. So I will be giving a description of this film, my opinion on it and some history that involves this film about the Palestinians and Israel’s.
After 9/11 has induced negative attitudes towards Muslim peoples who tend to be strongly associated with any act of terrorism. The media has played a colossal role in developing such negative association wherein it constantly portrays Muslim people in combination with violent terrorist acts. It does so in a way that they both go hand-and-hand. In other words, it has made it as though the Islamic religion is synonymous with terrorism. The media has perpetuated Muslim stereotypes over the years that followed the 9/11 incident. Because of this, society has developed, and still has developed, this prejudiced mindset about the Islamic religion and the Muslim communities around the world. People immediately assume that any violent act being depicted through the media is the direct result of Muslims. They automatically generate this idea that the act was performed by a Muslim terrorist even when they were not involved whatsoever. Regardless of whether it was true or not, Islamic religion and its Muslim adherents are at the top of societies’ agenda just waiting for the evidence to be generated so that they can then safely blame them for such world affairs. Again, this has led to the attack on the Islamic religion itself wherein people have come to postulate Islam as an act of oppression, violence and hatred towards non-Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiments and campaigns have resulted from such misinformation the media has been generating and feeding its viewers.
...ry, this project specifically looks at broadcast media; it does not include the representations of Muslims in print media. Furthermore, the use of focus groups creates an artificial group. Systematically picking a group for the purpose of this experiment excludes many other age groups, ethnicities, beliefs, and other demographics. In focus groups, some people are not always keen to say their views and might end up agreeing with what others say. Furthermore, demographic profiling may be an issue because just because they have the same socio-economic background, that does not mean that attitudes and perceptions are the same. With the hope of understanding audience perceptions about Islamophobia, the data acquired from this research should aid in understanding of what approaches and methods can be employed when tackling bias and impartial views imposed by the media.