The representation of September 11th and American Islamophobia in non-Western cinema

Introduction

The American film industry has tackled the issue of Islam and Muslims in the West for a very long time. According to Jack Shaheen (2001), Hollywood has been actively involved in the vilification of Arabs and Muslims since the beginning of the 20th century. Movies such as True Lies (dir. James Cameron, 1994) and The Siege (1998) are just two examples of how Hollywood negatively pictures some Muslims as conspiring to destroy America. After the events of 9/11, a growing anti-Islamic sentiment prevailed in the West and in the United States, in particular, because of the criminal act of a few extremists. In terms of media framing, there was a growing trend to dehumanize the enemy and present him or her as an animal (Steuter and Wills, 2010). As for cultural productions, various films, TV series, books, theatrical plays and comics were produced to depict the Western reaction to 9/11. For example, there were over 60 ‘memorial’ programme productions on 9/11 throughout the week of 11th September 2002 that were aired on national US TV stations (Dixon. 2004: 4). Indeed, American patriotism was strongly echoed in films like United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass) and World Trade Center (dir. Oliver Stone) or in Jack Bauer’s TV series 24 (2001–2010) and 11’09”01 – September 11 (2002). According to Dixon (2004: 1), movies on 9/11 show different tendencies as ‘some films seem to encourage the warrior spirit, while still others question it, and others still avoid the issue altogether’. Dixon asserts that although

some contemporary films offer escapism, the bulk of mainstream American cinema since 9/11, whether the films were in production before the events of that day or not, seems centered on a desire to replicate the idea of the ‘just war’, in which military reprisals, and the concomitant escalation of warfare, seem simultaneously inevitable and justified. (p. 1)

This trend is understandable since the American audience want to see movies that offer some kind of ‘poetic justice’ where the bad guys are punished for their evil deeds. Movie critics and experts expected to see more films on the 9/11 attacks, but the main problem was related to the difficulty of achieving a happy ending, which is one of Hollywood’s preferred techniques (Serjeant, 2011).

There are few academic publications focusing on the cinematic productions that depict Muslims’ reactions towards Islamophobia and how it is affecting their lives. Films that are mostly available are the ones just cited which could be applicable not only to Muslims but also to other religious or ethnic groups and that Downing and Husband (2005) call ghettoization – the limited representation of minorities in the media. Amanda Haynes (2007: 167) attributes this phenomenon to the fact that ‘Western-owned and produced (often globally distributed) mass media continue to assume the centrality and normality of Whiteness and White privilege. In comparison, ethnic and “racial” minorities remain deviant, outside the norm, the standard of which is Whiteness.’ Indeed, the films discussed in this study function as a form of alternative media because they are important vehicles for expressing popular views and opinions about world events in ways that Hollywood failed to communicate. Indeed, many film production companies whether in India or Turkey started to feel the need to expand beyond their national borders. Ezra and Rowden (2006) argue that in today’s cinema transnationalism is a given fact that is continuously engaged with the representation of national identity and citizenship that can be linked to the growing contra-flow of information in developing countries (Thussu, 2007). Despite their small revenues, media contra-flows such as the case of Latin American telenovelas are crucial because they provide a counter narrative to the hegemonic discourse of Hollywood and other global media flows that exercise a wide monopoly in terms of their mass distribution and global appeal (p. 24). Another aspect of transnationalism is manifested in the growing tendency of film production companies to seek funding and technical assistance outside their borders as ‘film now belongs to an enormous multinational system consisting of TV networks, new technologies of production and distribution, and international co-production’ (Chaudhuri, 2005: 2). The next section provides a brief discussion of Islamophobia and 9/11 since it is relevant to this article and to the prevalent popular attitudes in America after the 9/11 attacks.

9/11 and Islamophobia

One of the earliest attempts to study Islamophobia in its current usage and meaning was a report published by the British NGO, the Runnymede Trust (1997) which gave several examples from British society. The report was extremely influential in academic and diplomatic circles, prompting the European Union – the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia – to issue many reports on the same subject in the mid 2000s (Bleich, 2011: 1582). Based on a study of 104 public opinion polls conducted between 1998 and 2006 in Britain, Islamophobia was on the rise before 9/11 mostly because Muslims were viewed as ‘slow to integrate into mainstream society, feeling only a qualified sense of patriotism, and prone to espouse anti-Western values that lead many to condone so-called Islamic terrorism’ (Field, 2007). According to the Runnymede Trust, Islamophobia is defined as an ‘unfounded hostility towards Islam’ or the ‘practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities, and to the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affairs’ (Runnymede Trust, 1997: 2). Another definition comes from Erik Bleich (2011) who used Gary Goertz’s (2006) analysis of social scientific concepts. Bleich examined all the previous definitions and concluded that Islamophobia is defined as ‘indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims’ (Bleich, 2011: 1582). The latter definition is probably more comprehensive as it sums up the main concept of Islamophobia.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Council on American–Islamic Relations reported that it received over 300 reports about harassment against Muslims in just three days, which was about half the number of similar reports it received throughout the previous year. The most famous phrase that people used against Muslim families was ‘Go back to your country!’ aside from the verbal and physical attacks and abuse (CNN, 2001). Indeed, the most abusive phase was within the first nine weeks following the 9/11 events, after which the number of attacks dropped due to several reasons, including the important intervention of law enforcement agencies to stop the violence. The attacks resemble those that occurred against Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor or during the Red Scare of the 1950s (Kaplan, 2006: 17). Bayoumi (2008: 3) states that ‘Bias crimes against Arab, Muslims, and those presumed to be Arab or Muslim spiked 1,700 percent in the first six months after September 11 and have never since returned to their pre-2001 levels.’ Also, one of the problems that occurred in America was the random arrests of Muslim suspects by the FBI. Almost 70 men were arrested, most of whom were Muslims, and they were held in prison sometimes for months, such as in the case of Abdullah Al-Kidd who was detained while trying to board a flight (Sherman, 2011).

In addition, many American-Indian Sikhs were attacked due to their appearance as they wear traditional turbans and sometimes carry small knives. Many Sikhs found themselves ‘falsely under suspicion by both police officials and their fellow citizens’ (Gottschalk and Greenberg, 2008: 68) and about 200 incidents of harassment were recorded against them (Kaplan, 2006: 17) including the killing of Balbir Singh, the owner of a gas station in Mesa, Arizona (CNN, 2001). Ironically, there is well-known animosity between Sikhs and Muslims in India that can be traced back over several hundreds of years. Katy Pal Sian (2010: 252) asserts that the ‘narratives of the martyrdom of Sikhs at the hands of Muslim authorities are part and parcel of Sikh upbringing, whether through religious institutions or family life.’ In the next section, a detailed discussion is given of six films that elaborately tackle the issue of 9/11 and Islamophobia aside from a few other non-Western films that refer to these two issues.

Interestingly, all the films investigated agree on rejecting Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ notion since all the films insist that Eastern and Western cultures are fundamentally the same and cannot collide unless political interests are at stake. Scholars like Naipaul and Huntington emphasize the disparity between Islam and the West by over-simplifying and categorizing various Muslim nations, on the one hand, and Western countries, on the other, into unified entities (Halliday, 1999: 892). Huntington seems to stress that the so-called Muslim Umma (nation) has distinctive features that set it aside from other cultures (p. 896), and some Muslims do believe that this ‘imagined’ global community exists (Güney, 2010), but there is a clear disregard for the variety of ‘ideological affiliations’ that shape Islamic countries; for example, Arab Muslims usually have three affiliations: local state, pan-Arab, and Muslim, whereas Turks usually have Turkish, pan-Turkic, Islamic, European affiliations. Other scholars like Sami Zubaida, Aziz al-Azmeh and Ervand Abrahamian insist that it is more accurate and logical to interpret the events taking place in Muslim countries within the context of geopolitics rather than religion since the former shapes and drives the lives of people more than the latter (Halliday, 2002). Even Al-Qaeda is regarded by some scholars as a ‘political group driven by an interpretive religious ideology’ that has been intentionally skewed and distorted (Gunaratna, 2002: 57, 14) by a group of criminals who use the name of Islam in order to serve its political goals (Wedgwood and Roth, 2004). Further, in their investigation of 2,668 suicide bombings that were conducted between 1980 and 2009, Pape and Feldman (2010) found that the majority of attacks were triggered based on revenge, socio-political or nationalist motives, while less than 10 per cent of attacks involved terrorists who crossed their own border to fight in another country or those who attacked from within their own countries in sympathy for a transnational cause.

The films

In this study, six films are discussed which include the Indian production of Hope and a Little Sugar (dir. Tanuja Chandra, 2006), New York (dir. Kabir Khan, 2009) and My Name is Khan (dir. Karan Johar, 2010), the Pakistani film Khuda Kay Liye (2007), the Egyptian film The Baby Doll Night (dir. Adel Adeeb, 2008), and the Turkish Five Minarets in New York (dir. Mahsun Kirmizigül Boyut, 2010). Most of the films investigated here had the largest budgets and were the highest earning movies in the countries where they were produced.

These films share similar themes and arguments since they deal with basic human feelings of fear, love and prejudice, and all the main characters presented are shown to be in great shock while witnessing the 9/11 attacks, exhibiting great sympathy and compassion towards the victims. It is relevant to link the kind of feelings shown by the major characters with Birgitta Höijer’s (2004) classification of the forms of compassion or what Steven Tudor (2001: 88) calls ‘emphatic projection’. Despite the distance between the event and media consumers, there is a sense of empathy towards the suffering of others, making the audience cosmopolitan citizens because of their shared sense of humanity (Chouliaraki, 2006). Höijer (2004) identifies four types of compassion: tender-hearted, filled with blame, filled with shame, and powerless. Aside from compassion filled with shame, the remaining three forms are relevant to this study. Tender-hearted compassion emphasizes the ‘suffering of the victims and the responses of pity and empathy it gives rise to in oneself as a spectator’ (p. 522), while compassion filled with blame refers to the feelings of ‘indignation and anger’ that are ‘directed towards someone seen as responsible for the excesses’ (p. 523). In the films discussed below, militant Islamic groups such as Al-Qaeda are detested and blamed since they are presented as deviant, corrupt and evil. Finally, powerless compassion describes the feelings of ‘impotence and powerlessness’ of TV spectators as they watch the suffering of others without being able to change the reality. This was also relevant to the way the major characters in the films observed the 9/11 attacks on TV without being able to change the reality of events.

The first film discussed is the Indian Hope and a Little Sugar (2006), directed by Tanuja Chandra. It centres around the Indian Muslim character of Ali Sidiqi (Amit Sial), a photographer who lives in New York in the year 2001. He left India to find a better world, especially after witnessing the killing of several of his friends and family members due to ethnic violence. In India, it is known that Hindu nationalists are the most antagonistic Indians who confront Muslims by ‘scavenging upon existing prejudices … through their writings, speeches, public action and social work they foster’ that ultimately ‘generate and produce knowledge of the “Muslim Other”’ (Anand, 2010: 266). Anti-Muslim sentiments in India are manifested in various ways such as the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party with some of its controversial policies (Halliday, 1999: 898). Indeed, the film uses the 9/11 attacks in the background to discuss India’s internal problems, starting from the conflict between Hindus or Sikhs, on the one hand, and Muslims on the other.

Sidiqi meets Saloni Oberoi, an Indian Sikh, who is married to Harry and falls in love with her. In one incident, Harry’s Sikh father, who was an army commander, recalls his military experience in Arabia with bitterness, stating: ‘Those damned Muslims! They used to bomb us each and every single day.’ The statement communicates the cultural gap that exists between the two religious groups that Sidiqi cannot overlook.

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, Sidiqi watched with shock and was greatly distressed. The film stresses the way stereotypes of Muslims were so prevalent with a focus on the way Muslims reacted towards accusations of being terrorists. After Harry is killed during the September 11th attacks, his father begins to show great hostility towards Sidiqi for being a Muslim. Harry’s father addresses Sidiqi, asking: ‘What do those people want? Do they want to burn this world? Why don’t you go back to your homes? Why don’t you burn your own home? Why don’t you kill your own people?’ Sidiqi refutes the accusations of terrorism since, as an artist, he is far from being an extremist. He responds angrily: ‘I didn’t kill your son, Colonel! I didn’t do it!’ The kind of animosity and threats he got from Harry’s father changed Sidiqi and made him more unstable and violent. When Sidiqi’s friend saw him carrying a weapon, he told him: ‘You’re not a killer’ to which Sidiqi coldly responds: ‘Everyone thinks I am!’

Ironically, the colonel, who wears a traditional Sikh turban, was himself beaten by some Americans calling him ‘Osama’ because they thought he was a Muslim. The prejudice he showed Sidiqi was fired back at him and he learned his lesson. The film ends with a meaningful statement from Saloni: ‘I think there is nothing in this world that cannot be taken care of. Some hope and a little sugar.’ Hope and a Little Sugar uses the events of 9/11 to delve into India’s multicultural reality and the challenges of harmonizing different religions and cultures into one melting pot. All the events in the film are presented in an American context, suggesting that these kinds of religious extremism and ignorance are transnational since they are all caused by human folly.

The second Indian film discussed is New York (2009), directed by Kabir Khan. The main character is Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh) who is studying at New York State University on a fellowship. There he meets Maya and Sameer Sheikh who later got married and had a son, Daniel. Sameer is shown as a very successful student who is fully integrated into American culture as he engages in all the university activities. The film uses flashbacks to trace the way Sameer becomes involved in a terrorist cell in the US in an attempt to explain how some militant Muslims become involved in terrorism.

One of the important scenes in the film is when Omar is watching the events of 9/11 on TV. He is shocked but keeps looking at the faces of other students on the university campus to express his dissociation with the criminal act. Despite his previous sincere efforts to integrate into American society, he feels that after the events of 9/11 he remains an outsider in a culture that is suspicious towards him – something that is later exemplified in his arrest by the FBI. Even though he was innocent, Omar was detained and interrogated, and asked to infiltrate Sameer’s cell that was suspected of being a terrorist group.

In a flashback, Sameer is arrested at an American airport in a story that is similar to the one of Abdullah Al-Kidd cited above. In prison, he was subjected to heinous torture methods such as those practised at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention facilities. He later described how ‘for months, we lived in a detention center like animals’. In the end, Sameer broke down and cried, and his whole outlook and character changed. After being released from prison for lack of evidence, he got involved with a terrorist cell using a secret code supplied by a prison inmate. In the end, Maya and Sameer are both killed by the FBI. According to a study conducted by George Washington University and the University of Virginia in 2006, American prisons that have had about 9,000 inmates who ask for Islamic services have become places of indoctrination for Islamic extremism (USA Today, 2006). Indeed, many inmates have become radicalized through being in contact with radical groups (Hamm, 2008) or for other reasons that are not related to martyrdom, such as the urge to take revenge after being wrongly accused, humiliated and tortured (Lankford, 2009).

The third film is My Name is Khan (2010), directed by Karan Johar. The main character is Rizwan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), who is an autistic Muslim man, while Mandira (Kajol) is a Hindu woman working as a hairdresser. Mandira had a son from her first marriage called Sam or Sameer. Khan later marries Mandira and treats Sameer as his own son. This is probably the most detailed film on the feelings of Indian Muslims after 9/11 attacks.

In flashbacks, the couple are both in bed as they watch the 9/11 attacks. They are shocked, and the feeling is shared by Zakir, Khan’s brother, and his wife. Khan went to show respect for the dead wearing traditional Islamic dress and paid Zakat (charity) to help the families of victims. The couple participated in the 9/11 anniversary to commemorate those who died, but when he innocently recited a verse from the Quran, some of the attendants left in disgust.

The film shows the aftermath, which is based on accounts similar to the real ones cited above. For example, some shops owned by Muslims were ransacked by mobs in Dearborn, Michigan, while in Brooklyn, New York, a Sikh father and his son were chased by a car driver. A seemingly Muslim man with a traditional short beard was shown with bruises on his face as he was trying to shave his beard to conceal his identity. Further, Mandira’s shop lost customers and she was finally forced to look for another job. At her work place, Zakir’s wife, who wears a veil, got attacked by a man who pulled her veil and shouted: ‘Get out of my country!’ She later removes the veil in order to avoid harassment. During Khan’s quest to see the US president, he met a Hindu motel owner in Kentucky whose window was smashed by an American man, who thought the motel belonged to a Muslim. Finally, the Sikh journalist working for PBC channel, Babi Ouja, used to wear a traditional turban but removed it after 9/11 in order to avoid mistreatment.

Sameer’s closest friend, Reese, had a father who was killed in Afghanistan during the war on terror campaign, which caused a separation between the two friends. After the 9/11 attacks, even Sameer’s class teacher was not immune from prejudice. Sameer himself got many letters in his locker enclosing photos of Osama Bin Laden, and later died from a lethal blow from other students. Mandira blames Sameer’s death on Khan’s Islamic faith and decides that they should separate. In order to get rid of him, she asks Khan to go on a quest to meet the American President and say to him: ‘My name is Khan, and I’m not a terrorist.’

But during President Bush’s visit, Khan was beaten by the police and arrested for saying: ‘My name is Khan, and I’m not a terrorist.’ He was put in prison, interrogated and tortured. After his story was covered by an Indian Sikh journalist, he was released. The TV journalist ended the report on Khan with the following statement: ‘My name is Babi Ouja and I’m not a terrorist!’ The efforts of the Sikh journalist to uncover the truth give hope by emphasizing unity and brotherhood among American-Indians.

Many Americans regarded Khan as a true American hero after he rescued the inhabitants of Mama Jenny’s village in Georgia from a flood. Jenny’s son was killed in Iraq and, during the memorial service at a church, the pictures of their two deceased sons were placed together, symbolically bridging the cultural and religious differences that were mostly caused by political differences and represented the unity of human suffering. The film ends with an Obama look-alike speaking to Khan and affirming that he is not a terrorist. Khan responds by saying: ‘And this is my son, he wasn’t a terrorist either.’ By emphasizing the prejudice against Muslims and loss of human lives as a result of the war on terror campaign, My Name is Khan stresses that ordinary people like Mandira and Reese were the ones most affected by 9/11, rather than politicians and militant preachers.

Moving from India to Pakistan, Khuda Kay Liye (2007) deals with similar events to the ones presented in the Indian films above. The film has two plot lines running in parallel. The first chain of events centres on a Pakistani-British girl called Miriam (Iman Ali) who is in love with a British man, Dave, but her traditional father takes her to Pakistan and forces her to marry one of her relatives who lives in a remote village. Despite the fact that Miriam’s father is married to a British woman, he remains ignorant and bound to his old rural culture that denies women’s freedom.

The other plot revolves around a Pakistani musician, Mansur Hasan Khan (Shaan Shahid) who comes from an affluent family in Lahore and goes to the US in 2000 to study music. His character is similar to the Indian photographer, Sidiqi, in Hope and a Little Sugar. Mansur falls in love with an American girl, Janie, who studies music, and later marries her. Despite the cultural differences highlighted by Mansur, the marriage between Jane and Mansur shows that people from different religions and backgrounds can live in perfect harmony.

The film focuses on the cultural differences between Pakistan and the West, namely the UK and United States, in an attempt to show the shortcomings of some cultural practices in Pakistan and the crimes that followed the war on terror campaign in America. Similar to the Indian films, 9/11 and its aftermath are used as a backdrop to elaborate on the internal problems of Pakistan, such as forced marriages, the deteriorating condition of women’s rights, and the growing powers of Islamic extremists. Similar to the previous Indian films, Mansur wakes up in his apartment to watch the 9/11 attacks on TV. He is utterly shocked. Fear starts to spread among his Muslim fellows that violent and negative reactions would begin.

Drawing on the tension between Indians and Pakistanis, mostly over the issue of Kashmir, Mansur and his wife meet a drunk Indian Sikh who wears a small label on his chest stating: ‘I am not a Muslim’ in order to avoid confrontation with others. The Sikh starts accusing Mansur of being a terrorist. As the landlady overhears the conversation, she calls the FBI, and Mansur is taken for interrogation. He is subjected to severe torture and suffers brain damage that leaves him paralysed. He ends up being deported from the United States.

In fact, the conversations that take place in the prison are very important because they show how moderate Muslims view the 9/11 attack and what justification was given. The interrogator asks: ‘Why do Muslims hate America?’ and answers his own question: ‘I think they are jealous of our progress.’ Mansur becomes agitated and responds: ‘Your progress is the only thing they respect you for. Muslims hate Americans because they think that America is on some countries’ backs that are killing Muslims and doing injustice to them.’ Mansur’s response resonates with Philip Taylor’s (2008) claim about the misunderstanding and tension between Islam and the West, claiming that it is mostly due to the West’s inability to know itself and see how others view it. Mansur later becomes more direct and violent in his speech, saying ‘Muslims are the only nation that has been subject to injustice’ and mentions places such as Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. He asserts that Muslims ‘have been waiting for justice for the past fifty years’. Again, geopolitical reasons are cited as the main causes of tension rather than religious ones. In another film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (dir. Mira Nair, 2012), a young and successful Pakistani man called Changez watches with utter shock the 9/11 events on TV. Despite having secured a high income job in America, Changez decides to return to Pakistan because of the harassments he routinely receives. Khuda Kay Liye (dir. Shoaib Mansoor) is similar to The Reluctant Fundamentalist in many aspects as Mansur and Changez both fall in love with American women and integrate well into US society. Despite all the harm inflicted on them, their love and admiration for America do not change.

Turning to Turkey, Five Minarets in New York (dir. Mahsun Kirmizigül Boyut, 2010) deals with the domestic struggle between the state and some members of a militant Islamic group. Turkey’s internal problems are highlighted in the film with 9/11 attacks looming in the background. The film begins with an assassination attempt, while other militant attacks against the US Consulate in Turkey and a Jewish synagogue are planned.

The main character is Hadji Gümüs who is wrongly believed to be ‘Dajjal’, which means a fraudster in Arabic. Gümüs represents a moderate sufi version of Islam that is contrasted with the teaching of the real ‘Dajjal’ who is a militant salafi preacher. The comparison between the two opposite religious trends is emphasized in another Turkish film that deals with Iraq called Valley of the Wolves (dir. Serdar Akar, 2006) (Al-Rawi, 2009).

In New York, David Becker, the FBI officer, had a brother who was killed in the 9/11 attack, which made Becker become antagonistic towards Muslims. When one of the Turkish officers is about to leave the United States, he protests against Becker’s animosity against Muslims, saying: ‘You cannot blame the whole Muslim community for the action of a few mad men; it just isn’t fair.’ Becker agrees: ‘Sometimes it’s hard to forgive especially if it’s your brother.’

Near the end of the film, the real Dajjal enters into a discussion in the prison cell with Gümüs which is important because it shows how the two ways of interpreting the religion of Islam collide and cannot meet. Gümüs wins the argument with his simple and direct reasoning that is contrasted with Dajjal’s ideology. Again, the film stresses the local problems people face and criticizes some of the old cultural practices similar to the way Miriam’s father was condemned in Khuda Kay Liye due to his narrow-mindedness.

The other film discussed is the Egyptian The Baby Doll Night (dir. Adel Adeeb, 2008) which starts in New York on Thanksgiving morning 2007. The film presents Housam recalling the attack on the Twin Towers which he personally witnessed, and the scene showed his shock and fear. The recollection and images shown from 9/11 last 76 seconds after which Housam is immediately shown near the Ground Zero site; a subtitle in both Arabic and English displays a statement by Abdul Hay Adeeb (1928–2007), the film’s script writer: ‘The noblest act is the resistance of occupation. The worst crime committed against humanity is justifying terrorism.’ After the attacks, Housam was subjected to political harassment by a group of American fanatics. In a bar, he was beaten by an American man whose brother was killed in the 9/11 attacks. He argues that it is not fair to carry prejudice since ‘not every Arab is a terrorist’ and ‘not every Arab is Osama Bin Laden’.

The film deals with the life of Awadain (Nour El-Sherif) who worked as a journalist in Iraq during the US-led invasion. It traces the way he became a militant Muslim and starts from the time he was a child when he was in love with a Jewish girl called Layla. Awadain met her again in Baghdad after many decades when she was working as a journalist for a US channel. The couple decided to get married, but when she went to Gaza to cover the second Intifada, she was crushed by an Israeli tank. This left Awadain in great distress. He was later arrested by the US army as he was filming the American atrocities against Iraqi civilians. The movie recaptures the torture scenes at Abu Ghraib prison by showing similar pictures to the ones that were leaked to the public. In the prison, he was raped and his genitals were cut by a US female soldier. When he returned to Egypt, he resorted to violence to seek revenge. In the Egyptian press, he was shown as the most wanted terrorist because he wanted to bomb a tourist ship carrying civilians.

The main message in the film is that Awadain became an extremist and was regarded as a terrorist as a result of US neo-conservative policy since the real person responsible for the whole chaos was ‘Bush’, as Sarah, an American activist stresses. However, the political debates in the film are forced into the plot and they sometimes mar the flow of events and the realistic depiction of characters.

The last film discussed is produced in Arabic and is called Amreeka (dir. Cherien Dabis, 2009); it is an American, Canadian and Kuwaiti production that documents the life of Muna Farah, a divorced mother, who lives with her son Fadi. They move from Bethlehem to emigrate to the United States during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In America, Muna stays with her sister whose husband works as a physician. Like Mandira in My Name is Khan, he lost many clients after 9/11 and the war on Iraq since many of his customers thought he was a Muslim, even though this was not true.

Similar to Sameer’s experience at school in My Name is Khan, a discussion on Islam and terrorism is encouraged by the teacher. Fadi faces a difficult time adapting to the new environment, especially with the growing anti-Arab and anti-Islamic animosity among young Americans. In the class, the teacher asks: ‘What are the reasons behind terrorism?’ Fadi’s cousin, who is also his classmate, answers: ‘Political injustice and resistance to occupation’, but another student whose brother was sent as a soldier to Iraq refutes this and suggests that Fadi has come to America because ‘maybe he’s planning to blow up the school’. The Jewish school principal explained to Muna that for some students ‘when they hear about one Muslim extremist; suddenly all Muslims are extremists’.

Muna was later forced to work at a fast-food restaurant in order to earn her living. One day at work, some of Fadi’s colleagues pass by and start harassing her: ‘How is your son? Yeh, everybody knows Osama’ and ‘Why don’t you go out of here. Go back where you came from, okay!’ In another episode of harassment, Muna’s family get a threatening letter equating them with Saddam, stating: ‘After we kill Saddam Hussein, we will come and kill you.’ However, the family did not report the incident to the police since they had no hope of finding out who sent the letter. These two incidents are meant to emphasize the fact that 9/11 and its aftermath negatively affected the lives of Muslim and non-Muslim Arabs. The film ends with a potential romantic relationship between the Jewish school principal and Muna which is symbolic because Muna herself fled from Palestine due to the routine harassment she received from Israeli soldiers, but she ended up befriending a kind Jewish man. The human bond that is created between the two transcends all types of prejudices and religious differences.

In conclusion, the films discussed above offer an alternative view to the one that is repeatedly shown by Hollywood on Muslims, Islamophobia and the 9/11 attacks. They mainly function as a protest against some US accusations that Muslims condone terrorism and stress that prejudice and stereotyping against Muslims only lead to marginalization. The FBI’s random arrests and systematic torture in prisons result in polarization and extreme assertion of faith instead of having positive outcomes, while the Abu Ghraib scandal in particular seems to have had a tremendous negative impact on the perception of America in the Muslim world as many films tried to replicate the same techniques used. Indeed, Bush’s war on terror campaign seems to have further divided nations around the world. Unfortunately, most of the characters are treated as guilty and had to pay the price of being Muslim, thus reflecting a social reality. In fact, after the 9/11 attacks, many Muslim Americans ‘have been compelled, time and again, to apologize for acts they did not commit, to condemn acts they never condoned and to openly profess loyalties that, for most U.S. citizens, are merely assumed’, according to Sally Howell and Andrew Shryock (cited in Bayoumi, 2008: 5).

Huntington’s concept of the clash of civilizations is not valid or relevant in the films discussed here since the majority of characters are well integrated into Western societies and find no differences between their faith and the cultures they live in, especially in relation to their core values. All the main characters denounce terrorism in the name of Islam; however, the only characters that believe in Huntington’s hypothesis are the Muslim militants and the American neo-conservatives since both share rigid stances and limited perspectives. The difference between the two is that Muslim militants mostly attribute geopolitical reasons as being behind their animosity towards the West, whereas the neo-conservatives mostly blame Islam itself as the cause of tension between the Islamic world and the West. Interestingly, the films reject projecting stereotypes and prejudice about the West by distinguishing between the people and their respective governments; for instance, Sarah in The Baby Doll Night mentions that ‘not all Americans are like Bush’, referring to the American people’s difference from the majority of policy makers. Further, in Amreeka, a discussion takes places at Muna’s house, during which one of the guests wonders about immigration: ‘They don’t even like us there [in America]. They’re prejudiced against us.’ Muna responds by affirming: ‘Maybe that is their foreign policy, but I’m sure the people are different.’ Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric towards Islam is seen as a positive turning point in dealing with Muslim nations as this is implied in the films of My Name is Khan and Five Minarets in New York.

Finally, the most emphasized scenes in these films are the characters’ viewing of the 9/11 attacks and the kind of tender-hearted, powerlessness and blame-filled compassion they exhibit. Indeed, 9/11 attacks are used in the background to criticize old cultural practices and discuss the internal problems of the countries tackled, such as the conflict between Muslims and Sikhs or Hindus in India, the clash in Turkey between sufis and salafis, and the continuous struggle between the state and militant groups, the conflict in Kashmir and Afghanistan, and the Egyptian government’s effort to combat home-grown terrorism that is sometimes inspired by the Palestinian cause. The notion of a unified umma and that Muslim countries are homogeneous is rejected due to the differences in the local contexts. The explicit and implicit message is that, despite the differences in cultures and people’s backgrounds, they are not at war as they share similar values and aspirations for peace, but foreign policies affect these relationships in today’s world. The adherents of religions cannot be held responsible for the action of a few unrepresentative members, while nations as a whole cannot be blamed for the mistakes of a few political leaders.