In the decade since 9/11, the liberal media's patently false insistence that American Muslims were or would soon be the victims of a massive wave of hate crimes at least had the benefit of plausibility. The same can't be said of an effort to suggest that Islam can't get a fair shake in left-wing Hollywood.
Yet a recent Associated Press article [1] uncritically detailed an initiative of the Muslim Public Affairs Counsel to bring 'a more representative picture of Muslim-Americans on the screen.'
MPAC has a Hollywood Bureau that lobbies network and studio executives to 'increase awareness of the diversity of American Muslims and to be a resource for writers and producers.'
The problem, according to the article, is that in the entertainment industry, 'the Muslim-as-terrorist plot line has been an accepted story for years.' The article offers no examples to back up that assertion and with good reason - there's a serious shortage of them.
Hollywood has in fact been extremely reluctant to paint anything but a positive portrayal of Muslims since 9/11. In the 2002 film adaptation of Tom Clancy's novel, 'The Sum of All Fears,' the villains from the book were changed from Islamist terrorists to neo-Nazis.
Another film, 'The Stoning or Soraya M.' (2009), won multiple awards at international film festivals, but failed to get a single Oscar nomination. Based on a true event, the film [2] exposes the corruption and cruelty of Sharia law as applied in a modern Iranian village.
Even comedy stars Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's October 'sanity' rally featured a performance from Yusuf Islam [3] (formerly Cat Stevens). In 1989, Islam endorsed the fatwah against the life of novelist Salmon Rushdie for blaspheming Islam in his gook, 'The Satanic Verses.' Islam said that burning Rushdie in effigy wasn't as good as 'the real thing,' and that, if he knew where Rushdie was, Islam would betray him.
'The goal [of the Hollywood Bureau] is not to spoon-feed Hollywood Muslim-friendly story lines,' the article assured readers. But given the kid gloves with which TV and movies treat Islam anyway, it's hard to imagine the Hollywood Bureau having any other purpose.
The idea that Muslims are maligned in the entertainment media is absurd. That the AP would help MPAC spread it, is sadly predictable.