What is Driving Surge in Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: Trump? Hollywood? Media?

[Riaz Haq]

Attacks against Muslim Americans are surging, according to a recently released FBI report.  There were 257 reports of assaults, attacks on mosques and other hate crimes against Muslims in 2015, a jump of about 67% over 2014. It was the highest total since 2001, when more than 480 attacks occurred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to New York Times.

Hate Crimes Against Muslims:

An American Muslim was 4.4 times more likely to be a victim of hate crime in America than an average American in 2015.  Anti-Muslim hate crimes accounted for 4.4 precent of all hate crimes in 2015 when Muslims made up just 1% of the US population.

Hate crimes against Muslims surged 67% from 154 in 2014 to 257 in 2015, the second highest number on record since national reporting started in 1992. In 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks anti-Muslim hate crime peaked at 481, and had been in a range of 105 to 160, until 2015’s jump. Anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2015 showed a significant increase in the proportion of hate crimes from the previous year as well.

Why the Surge:

The recent surge in hate crimes against Muslims is being attributed to President-Elect Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric against Muslims and other minorities in the United States. Islamophobia did not begin with the Trump campaign but it appears to have contributed to it in the last two years. Other factors include stereotyping of Muslims in the entertainment and news media coverage of terrorist attacks traced to individual Muslim perpetrators.

Trump Campaign:

President-Elect Donald Donald Trump's Muslim ban and Muslim registry have contributed to assigning the blame to all Muslims for acts of terror and the consequent hate crimes against Americans of Islamic faith.

Since winning the majority of the electoral college in US presidential elections 2016, President-elect Trump has begun stacking his cabinet and staff with people known for their anti-Muslim statements. For example, Trump's national security advisor pick General Michael Flynn has called Islam "malignant cancer". Mr. Trump's chief of staff pick Stephen Bannon has described Islam as "a political ideology" and Sharia as "like Nazism, fascism, and communism."

Popular Television Shows:

The US entertainment media in Hollywood has been at the forefront of promoting the image of all  Muslims as terrorists. Popular television shows like "24" and "Homeland" have done it on a consistent basis.

In a recent roundtable discussion titled "Can Television be Fair to Muslims?", Showtime's "Homeland's co-creator Howard Gordon acknowledged that his show has fed Islamophobia in America.  Participants included both Muslims and Non-Muslims engaged in writing and producing popular TV shows such as Aasif Mandvi, Zarqa Nawaz, Melena Ryzik, Joshua Saffran, Howard Gordon and Cherian Dabis.

Roundtable Discussion:

Here's a brief excerpt of the exchange:

MELENA RYZIK: The F.B.I. has said that attacks against Muslims were up 67 percent last year. Do you have any anxiety about your shows being fodder for that?

HOWARD GORDON: The short answer is, absolutely, yes.

RYZIK: What can you do to handle that?

GORDON: On “Homeland,” it’s an ongoing and very important conversation.

For instance, this year, the beginning of it involves the sort of big business of prosecuting entrapment. It actually tests the edges of free speech. How can someone express their discontent with American policy — even a reckless kid who might express his views that may be sympathetic to enemies of America, but still is not, himself, a terrorist, but is being set up to be one by the big business of government?

For me to answer, personally, that question, it’s a difficult one. “24” having been the launching point for me to engage in these conversations, which I have been having for 10 years, and being very conscious about not wanting to be a midwife to these base ideas. We’re all affected, unwittingly, by who we are and how we see the world. It requires creating an environment where people can speak freely about these things. It requires this vigilant empathy.

Mainstream News Media:

The mainstream US news media, particularly the cable news channels, have contributed to anti-Muslim hysteria after each terror attack traced to a Muslim perpetrator. The 24X7 coverage of such tragedies fails to put them in perspective.

President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade?  And how many Americans have died in gun violence.

Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after yet another mass shooting--this time in rural Oregon:

“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”

The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:

Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.

Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.

In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.

Summary:

Hate crimes against Muslim Americans are surging, rising 67% in 2015 over the prior year. A Muslim American is 4.4 times more likely to be victim of a hate crime than an average American. President-Elect Donald Trump's Islamophobic campaign and the American news and entertainment media are contributing to the rise of hatred against Muslims. The situation of Muslims is likely to get worse unless Mr. Trump speaks out against hate crimes and his administration takes steps to check organized hate groups. At the same time, the news and entertainment media need to play their role to put this genie back in the bottle.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Funding of Hate Groups in America

Hollywood: America's Ministry of Propaganda? 

Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia

US Gun Violence 

Money is Free Speech in America

King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America

[Riaz Haq]

Did an #FBI informant/agent encourage first #ISIS claimed #terrorist attack on #American soil in #Garland, #Texas?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terrorism-in-garland-texas-what-the-fbi...

It’s mostly been forgotten because the two terrorists were killed by local cops before they managed to murder anyone. In looking into what happened in Garland, we were surprised to discover just how close the FBI was to one of the terrorists. Not only had the FBI been monitoring him for years, there was an undercover agent right behind him when the first shots were fired.

Anderson Cooper: After the trial, you discovered that the government knew a lot more about the Garland attack than they had let on?

Dan Maynard: That’s right. Yeah. After the trial we found out that they had had an undercover agent who had been texting with Simpson, less than three weeks before the attack, to him “Tear up Texas.” Which to me was an encouragement to Simpson.

The man he’s talking about was a special agent of the FBI, working undercover posing as an Islamic radical. The government sent attorney Dan Maynard 60 pages of declassified encrypted messages between the agent and Elton Simpson – and argued “Tear up Texas” was not an incitement. But Simpson’s response was incriminating, referring to the attack against cartoonists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo: “bro, you don’t have to say that...” He wrote “you know what happened in Paris… so that goes without saying. No need to be direct.” 

But it turns out the undercover agent did more than just communicate online with Elton Simpson. In an affidavit filed in another case the government disclosed that the FBI undercover agent had actually “traveled to Garland, Texas, and was present… at the event.”

Dan Maynard: I was shocked. I mean I was shocked that the government hadn’t turned this over. I wanted to know when did he get there, why was he there?

And this past November, Maynard was given another batch of documents by the government, revealing the biggest surprise of all. The undercover FBI agent was in a car directly behind Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi when they started shooting. This cell-phone photo of school security guard Bruce Joiner and police officer Greg Stevens was taken by the undercover agent seconds before the attack.

Anderson Cooper: The idea that he’s taking photograph of the two people who happen to be attacked moments before they’re attacked.

Dan Maynard: It’s stunning.

Anderson Cooper: I mean, talk about being in the right or the wrong place at the right or the wrong time.

Dan Maynard: The idea that he’s right there 30 seconds before the attack happens is just incredible to me.

Anderson Cooper: What would you want to ask the undercover agent?

Dan Maynard: I would love to ask the undercover agent-- Are these the only communications that you had with Simpson? Did you have more communications with Simpson? How is it that you ended up coming to Garland, Texas? Why are you even there?

We wanted to ask the FBI those same questions. But the bureau would not agree to an interview. All the FBI would give us was this email statement. It reads: “There was no advance knowledge of a plot to attack the cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.”

If you’re wondering what happened to the FBI’s undercover agent, he fled the scene but was stopped at gunpoint by Garland police. This is video of him in handcuffs, recorded by a local news crew. We’ve blurred his face to protect his identity.

Dan Maynard: I can’t tell you whether the FBI knew the attack was gonna occur. I don’t like to think that they let it occur. But it is shocking to me that an undercover agent sees fellas jumping out of a car and he drives on. I find that shocking.

[Riaz Haq]

Religion Scholar K. Armstrong: #Islamist #violence is "in part a product of #Western disdain" #Islamophobia #terror

https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-karen-armstrong-islami...

Armstrong: The Prophet has been caricatured in the West as a violent, epileptic, lecherous charlatan since the time of the Crusades in the Middle Ages; this distorted image of Islam developed at the same time as our European anti-Semitism which caricatured Jews as the evil, violent, perverse and powerful enemies of Europe. 
So yes, the attack on the magazine was in part a product of Western disdain. The attack on the Jewish supermarket, which seems to have been backed by ISIS, was directed against Western support for Israel. Here too, there is an element of disdain: there has been little sustained outcry against the massive casualties in Gaza last summer, for example, which seems to some Muslims to imply that the lives of Palestinian women, children and the elderly are not as valuable as our own. 

Where do you see the roots of this disdain?
Armstrong: The Enlightenment ideal of freedom was, in practice, only for Europeans. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who were deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, proudly proclaimed that "All men are created equal" and enjoyed the natural human rights of life, liberty and property. But they felt no qualms about owning African slaves and driving the Native Americans out of their ancestral lands.
John Locke, the apostle of tolerance, wrote that a master had "absolute and despotical" rights over a slave, which included the right to kill him at any time. This continues: many of those who marched for freedom of expression in Paris were leaders of states that have supported regimes in Muslim majority countries that denied their subjects basic freedoms; Britain and the US, for example, continue to support the Saudi regime. Again, a disdain: our freedom is more important than yours.
Shouldn't we also look at certain Koranic verses and their interpretation throughout history to explain the phenomenon of Islamist terror?
Armstrong: "Throughout history", these Koranic verses have not inspired terrorist activities. Any empire depends upon force; this is true of the Indian, Chinese, Persian, Roman, Hellenistic and British empires and it is also true of the Islamic empires. Furthermore, until the modern period, Islam had a far better record of tolerance than Western Christianity. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they slaughtered the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the city in a massacre that shocked the Middle East, which had never seen such unbridled violence. And yet it was 50 years before there was any serious Muslim riposte. There is more violence in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament than there is in the Koran.
Most Christian theologians would disagree.
Armstrong: Those theologians who claim that there are no passages in the New Testament like Koran 2.191–93 have perhaps forgotten the Book of Revelation, which is the preferred text of many Christian fundamentalists who look forward to the battles of the imminent End Time that will destroy the enemies of God. They interpret these texts literally and quote them far more frequently than the Sermon on the Mount. The aggression towards the enemy commanded in Koran 2:191 concludes: "If they cease hostilities, there can be no further hostility." (Koran 2. 193). No such quarter is allowed those who fight the Word of God in the battles of Revelation.

[Riaz Haq]

Anti-#Muslim rallies across #US denounced by civil rights groups. #Islamophobia #America #Trump

 

So-called ‘anti-Sharia’ rallies across almost 30 US cities come as hate crimes on the rise, prompting criticism and counter-protests

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/10/anti-muslim-rallies...

 

A wave of anti-Muslim rallies planned for almost 30 cities across America on Saturday by far-right activists has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights groups and inspired counter-protests nationwide.

 

A number of small protests took place and in many places, including New York and Chicago, a few dozen “anti-sharia” demonstrators were outnumbered by counter-protesters.

 

Hundreds of counter-protesters marched through Seattle on Saturday to confront a few dozen people claiming sharia was incompatible with western freedoms. The counter protesters banged drums, cymbals and cowbells behind a large sign saying “Seattle stands with our Muslim neighbors.” Participants chanted “No hate, no fear, Muslims are welcome here” on their way to City Hall, while a phalanx of bicycle police officers separated them from an anti-sharia rally.

 

Later, Seattle police used tear gas to disperse rowdy demonstrators and made several arrests. The department said it was still reviewing how many people were arrested and what charges they might face.

 

Elsewhere, in St Paul in Minnesota, police made seven arrests as fights broke out during demonstrations there.

 

The rallies have been organized by Act for America, which claims to be protesting about human rights violations but has been deemed an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The demonstrations prompted security fears at mosques across the country and come at a time when hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise.

 

 

A coalition of 129 national and local organizations amplified concerns on Friday in a letter urging mayors to denounce the marches, which also coincide with Ramadan, the holy month in which Muslims fast during the daylight hours.

 

The Saturday rallies in Chicago occurred near a building developed by Donald Trump. Giant letters spelling out “Trump” loomed on the high-rise over the more than 100 protesters.

[Riaz Haq]

Donors vs Voters


http://archive.jsonline.com/news/opinion/election-donors-vs-voters-...


It's both comical and depressing at the same time. One commercial says Mitt Romney will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000 followed immediately by an ad claiming President Barack Obama's plan will raise taxes on the same people by $5,000. The next ad tells us that Romney wants to throw Grandma out in the cold by dismantling Medicare. Two minutes later, an earnest voice informs us that Obama has "stolen" $700 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare and its government death panels.

After almost two years of nonstop recall elections, we in Wisconsin have grown so inured to political advertising that it amounts to little more than irritating background noise. But to someone from the 41 non-battleground states, the incessant politicking must be pretty astonishing.

Maybe people from California or Texas might feel as though they are being taken for granted when they see the amounts being spent in Wisconsin. Perhaps they're jealous at all the special attention being lavished on Wisconsin by the next president. But what does all that spending really amount to?

Yes, it is easy to tune out the ads and to roll your eyes when one comes on every 15 minutes, but there is something very disturbing going on beneath all this that isn't so amusing. Because today's politicians rely so heavily on television advertising and believe that they absolutely have to have it to win their elections, raising money has become their primary mission.

It's why Gov. Scott Walker spent so much time out of state at big-ticket fundraisers before his recall election, all the while claiming the recall effort was being driven by out-of-state interests. It didn't matter how hypocritical it looked; money was what he needed to win the recall election.

It's why Romney spent so little time campaigning even as his campaign was faltering after the Republican National Convention; he apparently believed fundraising was more important than campaign rallies in front of actual voters.

It's why Obama still attends as many Wall Street-sponsored fundraisers as he can, even as he simultaneously campaigns on the evils of the unregulated greed of the big banks. It's all money all the time.

What gets lost in this sea of campaign cash is the average voter's voice. If Romney thinks he absolutely has to win Wisconsin to get elected, he should be practically living here, telling us what he is going to do to make our lives better. Instead, he's in Texas, which he will carry by 15 points because that's where the big campaign donors live.

So the next time you hear an ad telling you that Obama has destroyed the country or that Romney's only purpose in life is to make the lives of the super-rich even cushier, remember what you aren't hearing is what the candidate is going to do for us here in Wisconsin.

Remember that the commercial cost a lot of money to produce and put on the air. Remember that the candidate got that money from someone who has his own agenda and it probably isn't the same as yours. Remember the candidate's loyalty that may have been bought by the donor.

Then remember how a democracy is supposed to work, and let's all try to figure out a way to get back to that.

[Riaz Haq]

George W Bush:

“Bigotry in any form is blasphemy against the American creed......Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions..... Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seem more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/19/full-text-george-w-bush-sp...

Our identity as a nation – unlike many other nations – is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed. (Applause.)
And it means that the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation.

We need a renewed emphasis on civic learning in schools. And our young people need positive role models. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.

Finally, the Call to Action calls on the major institutions of our democracy, public and private, to consciously and urgently attend to the problem of declining trust.

For example, our democracy needs a media that is transparent, accurate and fair. Our democracy needs religious institutions that demonstrate integrity and champion civil discourse. Our democracy needs institutions of higher learning that are examples of truth and free expression.

In short, it is time for American institutions to step up and provide cultural and moral leadership for this nation. 

[Riaz Haq]

Ex #FoxNews Executive Quit Over #FoxNews's Anti-#Muslim Rhetoric."Scaring people. Demonizing immigrants. Creating, like, a fervor — or an anxiety about what was happening in our country"Says Ex #News Corp. Senior Vice President Joseph Azam. #Islamophobia https://n.pr/2TkJF8U

In recent days, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel and some of its corporate siblings have faced renewed and withering criticism for the way they depict Muslims and immigrants. Calls for boycotts of shows and pressure campaigns on advertisers ensued.

Last weekend, a Muslim news producer said she quit Fox's corporate cousin, Sky News Australia, over its coverage of Muslims following the massacre at two New Zealand mosques. Her post went viral.

Now, add the voice of one of Murdoch's former senior executives, who says he left his job in late 2017 over the coverage of Muslims, immigrants and race by Fox News and other Murdoch news outlets.

"Scaring people. Demonizing immigrants. Creating, like, a fervor — or an anxiety about what was happening in our country," former News Corp. Senior Vice President Joseph Azam tells NPR in his first public comments on his former employer.

"It fundamentally bothered me on a lot of days and I think I probably wasn't the only one," he says.

Azam was also group chief compliance officer for News Corp.'s corporate headquarters, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the HarperCollins book publishing house, among other properties. He worked for News Corp. from 2015 until late 2017, leaving, he says, without any nondisclosure agreement. While News Corp. is technically separate from the corporate parent of Fox News, they are both controlled by Murdoch and his family.

In separate interviews, a longtime friend of Azam's and Azam's wife said he relayed his concerns to them about News Corp. and Fox News at the time. Both women said that was his reason for deciding to leave the company.


For Azam, his decision to leave News Corp. was a matter of personal pride as well as principle: Born in Kabul, Azam came to the United States as a toddler, part of a family of immigrants and war refugees seeking haven from the conflict caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan nearly four decades ago.

And Azam says the rhetoric coming from some of his corporate colleagues sickened him: Muslims derided as threats or less than human; immigrants depicted as invaders, dirty or criminal; African-Americans presented as menacing; Jewish figures characterized as playing roles in insidious conspiracies.

Azam says he saw it throughout the Murdoch media empire — especially on the popular opinion shows of Fox News, including Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, and Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs.

Azam's public remarks to NPR arrive after a slew of controversies for Fox News.

[Riaz Haq]

What the Zaira Wasim controversy reveals about contemporary India
The teenage Muslim actress's decision to quit Bollywood for faith reasons brought India's Islamophobia to the fore.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/zaira-wasim-controversy-r...

On Sunday, Zaira Wasim, an 18-year-old Kashmiri Muslim Bollywood actress, caused a stir in India by announcing her decision to "disassociate" from the film industry. The actor took to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to declare that while the five years of being in the industry had brought her a "lot of love, support and applause", it had also led her to a "path of ignorance" as she had transitioned out of "imaan" (faith) and her relationship with her religion.


In her native Kashmir, however, many were less concerned with a young girl acting, as they were with her participation in an industry that is seen as being aligned with Indian national interests; Islamophobic; and misrepresentative of the Kashmiri struggle against Indian rule. Bollywood celebrities came to her defence, and Wasim was lauded as a role model of integration for Kashmiri youth, a nomenclature that Wasim herself resisted at the time

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Bollywood is certainly not a reputable industry. It is ensnared by nepotism, rampant sexual harassment, and drug and alcohol abuse. It thrives on jingoism (as seen in the most recent incident over the Pulwama attacks), materialism, and scandal. 

When it comes to the role of women, Bollywood is also hardly a source of female empowerment, a modern Constitution notwithstanding. Actresses are literally paraded around as "item numbers" and as with general celebrity culture, pressured to fit normative bodily ideals. Female stars are routinely harassed to lose weight in order to remain relevant. Marriage is often a death sentence for women in lead roles. 

A number of stars, including Deepika Padukone and Wasim herself in 2018, have gone public with their struggle with depression and anxiety. 

Research has also identified significant gender bias, stereotyping, and acts of sexual violence against women in Bollywood films, and the effect they have on how people behave in real life, including the phenomenon of eve teasing. 

With this in mind, why is it so difficult for people to accept the kinds of struggles that led to Wasim's decision, especially given the young age in which she entered the industry? Why is Wasim's choice to leave considered regressive, but not an industry that is sexist and patriarchal, thriving on the objectification of women? Furthermore, why is criticism directed towards an 18-year-old Muslim actress, and not the countless Bollywood stars that have cosied up to the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi, under whose watch lynching of Muslims in India has become rampant? Besides a handful of notable exceptions, where is the outrage over the actual radicalisation of the Indian public? If liberal journalists like Lakshmi and Dutt cast aspersions on the legitimate and constitutionally protected beliefs of others, it is little wonder that the Muslim polity in India can be treated with disdain. 


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The irony is that in a world that is so obsessed with a Muslim woman's agency, when Muslim women do express that agency in ways that do not seek to disparage or distance themselves from their religious faith, they are deemed to have undergone indoctrination or radicalisation.

What the response to Wasim reveals once more is that one has to absolve oneself of any sense of Muslim-ness to be accepted into the odd terrain of secular and Hindutva fascism that undergirds contemporary India.

And while the attention has been on Wasim, perhaps the limelight should be on Bollywood and why an 18-year-old Muslim woman from a conflict zone on the cusp of superstardom would choose to step away from its clutches.

[Riaz Haq]

Riz Ahmed, Pillars Fund Announce Muslim Inclusion Initiative

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/riz-ahmed-muslim-study-usc-annen...

The project spawned from Ahmed’s 2019 speech at CAA’s Amplify conference, where he made an impassioned plea for the entertainment industry to reevaluate its role in perpetuating negative stereotypes about Muslims and the real threats members of the community face in their everyday lives, no matter how famous they are.

“With all my privilege and profile, I often wonder if this is going to be the year they round us up, if this is the year they’re going to put Trump’s Muslim registry into action, if this is going to be the year they ship us all off,” he said. “The representation of Muslims on screen — that feeds the policies that get enacted, the people that get killed, the countries that get invaded.”

[Riaz Haq]

The (Bollywood) film (Sooryavanshi) does not even pretend to mask its agenda — which is the right-wing Hindu nationalist agenda of Modi’s government. It justifies the abrogation of the special status accorded to Kashmir, where thousands of youth were detained and an Internet blackout was imposed in 2019. Like the government, the film argues that the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution has wiped out terrorism from the valley.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/15/why-an-indian-fi...

If the filmmakers had read any news about Kashmir, they could have had a brush with reality. But who wants to talk about reality when the purpose is propaganda?

Propaganda sells, obviously. News just gets in the way.

Recently the police in India filed a case against 102 Twitter accounts that include journalists, activists and lawyers who spoke out against the anti-Muslim violence that unfolded in the northeastern state of Tripura in October. Hindu nationalists vandalized mosques and attacked Muslim homes, but the Tripura police went after those who spoke against it, accusing them of sedition.

For weeks in New Delhi, Muslim Friday prayers have been obstructed by Hindu nationalists. The Muslims were finally displaced, and a grand Hindu prayer service was organized in the presence of a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Nov. 5.

In this context, a film like “Sooryavanshi” is not just entertainment. The film makes a point of repeating attacks carried out by Muslims, ignoring the numerous episodes of violence carried out by Hindu radicals. Kumar’s protagonist speaks about the 1993 blasts in Mumbai but conveniently ignores the 1992 anti-Muslim carnage that preceded it. He conveniently ignores the 2002 riots of Gujarat, the Malegaon blasts of 2006 that killed Muslims after Friday prayers and the Malegaon blasts of 2008, where retired officers in the Indian army were implicated.

In India, Muslim seminaries and organizations are being hounded by the Modi government for allegedly spreading terror in the country using foreign money. In the film, a Muslim scholar and priest who runs an organization is seen as the mastermind of a terrorist nexus that receives funding from Pakistan. The filmmakers should have at least given writing credits to Modi and his allies.

Disappointingly, the film is produced by Karan Johar, a well-respected director who made a film called “My Name Is Khan.” That movie addressed the demonization of Muslims post-9/11. But that was before Modi. Johar’s new worldview is celebrated by the government; he recently received one of country’s highest civilian honors in the presence of the prime minister and his powerful minister of home affairs, Amit Shah.

“Sooryavanshi” is dangerous. After watching it, it’s impossible not to think of Nazi Germany, where Hitler cultivated a film industry that paid obeisance to him and made propaganda films against Jews. In a sane world, India’s film industry — and actors, directors and producers from all over the world — would denounce it for its criminal and brazen Islamophobia. But maybe I’m asking too much. If Bollywood continues this aggressive descent into nationalism and hate, it will have blood on its hands. No box office record will be able to change that.