Changing How Films Portray Muslims
An initiative to promote the inclusion of Muslims in filmmaking has been created by an advocacy group with the support of the Walt Disney Company, following a report issued this year that found that Muslims are rarely depicted in popular films and that many Muslim characters are linked to violence.
The project, the Pillars Muslim Artist Database, was announced this month by the Pillars Fund in Chicago. It produced the earlier report on the depiction of Muslims in popular films along with the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and others.
Kashif Shaikh, a co-founder of Pillars, said those in the industry often said they did not know where to find Muslim writers or actors. The database aims to give Muslim actors, directors and others the chance to compose online profiles that can be reviewed by those hiring for film and television productions.
The report on depiction, “Missing & Maligned,” was issued in June and analyzed 200 top-grossing movies released between 2017 and 2019 across the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Of 8,965 speaking characters, 1.6 percent were Muslim, it said, and just over 60 percent of primary and secondary Muslim characters appeared in movies set in the historical or recent past. Just under 40 percent appeared in three movies that took place in present-day Australia, the report said, and most of those characters — including “the only present-day Muslim lead” — appeared in one movie, “Ali’s Wedding,” released in 2017.
Pillars, along with the Inclusion Initiative and the British actor Riz Ahmed and his production company, Left Handed Films, also released a companion report titled “The Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion.” Before the reports were issued, Mr. Shaikh said, Pillars had begun conversations with Disney, which supported the creation of the database with a $20,000 grant.
Latondra Newton, chief diversity officer of Disney, said in a statement that the support was part of an ongoing effort “to amplify underrepresented voices.”
Some of Disney’s best-known offerings have been criticized for including
A resource to find cast and crew members that are diverse.
racist imagery and caricatures. “Aladdin,” an Oscar-winning animated movie released in 1992, featured an opening song with lyrics about a faraway place: “Where they cut off your ear/If they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Disney said in 1993, after objections by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, that the ear-cut-* ting reference would be removed but the word “barbaric” remained.
Over the last several years, however, the company’s executive chairman, Robert A. Iger, has emphasized diverse casting and storytelling.
And when Disney released a live-action remake of “Aladdin” in 2019, the word “chaotic” replaced “barbaric” in the opening song.