....me on my corner

Whereas foreign films often more readily recognize Islam’s role as an integral part of the fabric of many people’s lives, American films tend to represent Islam almost exclusively through plots driven by the supposed irrational rage of fanatical Muslims bent on destroying the freedom of others. Furthermore, despite the fact that only a small percentage of the world’s Muslims are Arab, filmmakers repeatedly depict Arabs and Muslims as identical. This raw identification encourages viewers to draw some clumsy conclusions, such that Islam is practiced only in Arabic-speaking nations, that Iranians and Turks are Arab (and also all Muslim), or that all Muslims confront exactly the same set of political and social concerns in relation to “western” powers.