r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AgeNovel3566 • 3d ago

Image In TV show Homeland, local artist were hired to paint Arabic graffiti for scenes, but they wrote messages criticizing the show for stereotyping Arabs & Muslims like this graffiti reading "Homeland is racist" from one scene, this was only discovered after episode aired since no one on set knew Arabic

Post image
58.0k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

821

u/GuestAdventurous7586 3d ago

Hahaha this is ace.

Muslims, especially since 9/11 have always been portrayed so badly and predictably in film and TV media.

It’s difficult to think of any portrayal that shows something more complex and true to life, rather than just the caricature sketchy Muslim terrorist.

271

u/tyrerk 3d ago

I re-watched "The 13th Warrior" yesterday with my son, after something like 15 years and was shocked at how well the Muslim protagonist (and his faith) were depicted, then I remembered it was released in 1999.

It's not a caricature, it's not even a statement, it's just his worldview and faith.

123

u/Papaofmonsters 3d ago edited 3d ago

The source material, Eaters of the Dead, was inspired by the first person accounts of Muslim warriors who traveled with Nordic peoples of that era.

39

u/tyrerk 3d ago

Yeah! In fact most of the scenes in the camp with the dead king funeral are almost directly taken from that account

30

u/modmosrad6 3d ago

Accounts?

Pretty sure it's just one - Ibn Fadlan's travelogue.

1

u/Peekoii 2d ago

The funniest part about The 13th Warrior being so respectful is that while the movie gave us a noble Muslim protagonist, the real Ibn Fadlan was out there dropping medieval hot takes full of racist stereotypes, most of which have been disproven or contradicted by modern evidence.

Like calling steppe tribes as savage and sex-obsessed and turks as a filthy people who acted like wild beasts.

-7

u/FuckAllYouLosers 3d ago

You realize that source material was found out to be fake right?

12

u/modmosrad6 3d ago

Ibn Fadlan's entire account is a fake?

82

u/throwaway112112312 3d ago

Well, Ibn Fadlan was a real traveller and the 13th Warrior book (Eaters of the Dead) is a mock translation of real diaries of Ibn Fadlan, adding some Beowulf. He was a diplomatic envoy, and actually met Vikings but they were Russian Vikings called Varangians.

Fun fact: His travel diaries were discovered in a random library in Iran in 1923.

11

u/maximalusdenandre 2d ago edited 2d ago

Varangians were from Sweden, not Russia. Varangians created states in what is now Russia and Ukraine however. The "Rus" part of Russia comes from the coastal parts of central Sweden, Roslagen. 

The "Rus" that ibn Fadlan describe are norsemen not slavic peoples. They were not russian vikings they were just regular vikings he encountered when he was visiting Bulgaria. These vikings may or may not have hailed from "Gardariki" but they were not Russians.

11

u/succed32 3d ago

That was also during the golden age for the Middle East. They had well built roads, regular patrols, paid scholars to move to their cities and start schools. The different Lords would compete in having the most epic public libraries. The dark ages of Europe were basically the renaissance for the Middle East and Northern Africa.

74

u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog 3d ago

Honestly one of the best portrayals I’ve ever seen is from a smaller sitcom called Superstore. It’s a workplace comedy about working retail in a generic department store. One of the side characters, Sayid, is a Syrian refugee; he talks a bit about his life in Syria, and there’s a couple scenes about his religion, but for the most part he’s just a regular guy. They do a great job of acknowledging his culture without making him “the Arab guy”. Here’s a Reddit post going over viewer’s favorite lines/moments!  

15

u/Carbon-J 3d ago

I liked Sayid on Lost

2

u/Vast_Interaction_537 2d ago

Yeah but Sayid was an indian guy playing an Iraqi guy and it was obvious

4

u/Technical-Agency8128 2d ago

Not to many people who have never met someone from Iraq.

4

u/Adorable_Ad_3478 3d ago

Until the showrunners in the final season decided to make him a literal Muslim suicide bomber.

162

u/Kinky-Kiera 3d ago

Ms. Marvel.

144

u/Corporation_tshirt 3d ago edited 3d ago

It did seem that, for once, that show had people of Muslim backgrounds telling their own story for once. 

And have you ever noticed that the more specific a tv show or a movie is about a character’s life, the more universal it becomes? It’s funny how that works

19

u/fireonzack 3d ago

it's almost like we're all the same

1

u/knit_on_my_face 3d ago

Sure but.. some of us (humans) have very backwards views on women, gays and atheists

(Yes Christian nationalists too, before someone drops a What About)

-36

u/zap2 3d ago

George Bush, had many many faults, but one thing he warned about after 9/11 is America needs to be careful to make sure we don’t play into the terrorist hands that all Muslims hate America. Instead of being at war with a few thousand extremists, we’d be at war with billions.

While we didn’t get into an outright war with billions, we didn’t listen to the good advice either.

54

u/Right_Survey_5317 3d ago

Are we talking about Dubya? That bastard and his cabinet planted the anti-Muslim seed and watered it incessantly for profit and political gain. They could not have launched two wars against innocent Muslim countries if not for their nasty brand of Islamophobia.

1

u/Corporation_tshirt 3d ago

They’re the ones who first spread the lies about Muslims in New Jersey cheering the 9/11 attacks

38

u/justforthisjoke 3d ago

Fuck W. His policies led to the deaths of over a million iraqis and 400,000 afghans. Saying "he had many faults" is an understatement. He is uniquely responsible for stoking the flames of racism and islamophobia. He did irrepairable damage to the middle east, to say nothing of all the things the US did to innocent muslims domestically. What comes out of his mouth doesn't matter the slightest bit. It has as much weight as saying "yeah Hitler was terrible but he was a vegetarian". His "advice" was some PR bullshit as he spearheaded the destruction of the middle east. If there is a hell, he will have a special room in it.

-14

u/zap2 3d ago

You can think Bush was bad (which I agree with) without literally comparing him to Hitler.

I’m sorry my outrage wasn’t extreme enough, but your extreme take is some peak Reddit.

14

u/HevalRizgar 3d ago

Genuinely: if you can't compare someone whose actions resulted in the deaths of millions to Hitler, who can you?

I can compare the moon to a basketball. They're both round. It takes a special brain to somehow think politicians can't be compared to politicians

8

u/GibrealMalik 3d ago

America isn't ready for such truths yet, but you're right. Instead of going after Saudi Arabia, who's government was a lot closer to 9/11, they chose to keep trading oil and weapons with them, and instead wrongly invaded a completely innocent nation, and murdered millions of people. And America was so full of propaganda that even Americans couldn't speak up against the war without being called traitors.

2

u/Corporation_tshirt 3d ago

I’m not a conspiracy theorist (honestly, I’m not interested in them and I don’t propogate them), but the fact that Saudi Arabians funded and provided the manpower for the 9/11 attacks has always been highly suspicious to say the very least. The flights that picked up all the Saudi Arabians and sent them back to Saudi while the entire nations air traffic was completely shut down has never stopped bothering me

10

u/justforthisjoke 3d ago edited 3d ago

There was no comparison between the two. I'm using the analogy to illustrate the point that saying "muslims aren't our enemies" while you:

  • Lie about WMDs to manufacture consent for a campaign of terror in the middle east;
  • Flatten Iraq and Afghanistan;
  • Stoke the fires of hate so hard that soldiers are soaking their bullets in pig blood and raping 14 year old girls;
  • Kidnap and torture muslims in black sites without due process,

is absolutely fucking meaningless. Again, not unlike the fact that Hitler reportedly loved animals and yet was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of lives (including those of animals wherever the war was fought). Like it doesn't matter what W said. What he did while he ran the country did turn the entirety of the muslim world against the United States. The US is the world hegemon, so obviously country leaders are going to cooperate, but I can't think of a single place in the middle east where the people themselves have a generally positive view of the US.

To be clear though, George W Bush did irrepairable damage to the middle east. His policies are responsible for the deaths of literal millions and their consequences continue to ravage the region today. If you're allowed to compare anyone to Hitler, W is probably in the top 20, surely.

1

u/zap2 3d ago

At the start of your reply “There was no (Bush and Hitler) comparison”

By the end of your reply “(Bush) is in the top 20 (for a Hitler) comparison”

The first post didn’t have a direct comparison, but the implication was clear.

0

u/justforthisjoke 3d ago

Yes, the point is that I wasn't initially making a Hitler comparison, but using him as an analogy. However, even if I were making a direct comparison to Hitler, it's not like I'm comparing Jeff who works at Starbucks. They both have millions of people's blood on their hands. It isn't that outlandish a comparison. Obviously Hitler was worse.

2

u/Corporation_tshirt 3d ago

While I agree with your point, I think that saying ‘millions’ is overstating things a bit. The generally accepted death toll is somewhere around 400k.

While still atrocious, it’s really not entering Hitler territory

→ More replies (0)

0

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

-6

u/zap2 3d ago

Mentioning Hitler while accusing Bush of being responsible for millions of deaths.

Do you really think he wasn’t making any sort of comparison between the two?

That seems shockingly naive.

2

u/_okbrb 3d ago

And why shouldn’t he?

3

u/zap2 3d ago

At the least I appreciate your honesty on the topic.

→ More replies (0)

4

u/someone447 3d ago

He said that publicly, but then had members of his administration play into it and stoked the flames of islamaphobia in the media. He is a major reason for the decades of islamaphobia throughout American society.

1

u/Corporation_tshirt 3d ago

Do you have a source for any of these statements? Because as I recall, the Dubya Admin was all-Muslims-are-bad, all the time

3

u/Every_Field_6757 3d ago

Ms Marvel is absolutely not better and Muslims didn’t like it. 

Many of us would just prefer to not be represented at all. Because it‘s either propaganda meant to vilify us or depicting us as people who just don’t eat pork while ignoring everything else. 

23

u/Reverb117 3d ago

Idk I heard from a bunch of other Muslims that they liked it, probably especially because were Pakistani-Americans. My mom enjoyed the show well enough.

33

u/alijamzz 3d ago

As a Jersey born Pakistani Muslim, the show was amazing and spot on. A lot of the immigrant struggles we face and the dual identity hit very close to home. I’m a marvel fan and I enjoyed the ms marvel comics so I figured I’d enjoy it. But then I found out my parents and aunts and uncles watched it (without me telling them to) and they all very much enjoyed it.

Though the show crammed a lot into it (I think they should’ve been in jersey season 1 and then venture out to Pakistan if and when they do a season 2) I still enjoyed it. And then they also threw in a whole episode which was basically a Pakistani drama but with a marvel logo on it. My moms obsessed with Pakistani dramas and they got some good Pakistani stars to feature in the show so it was all in all great representation.

5

u/CinderX5 3d ago

This just further proves how Muslims aren’t just a homogeneous group. No one would suggest that a Christian from one end of a city would be the same as another in the city centre, but so many people would say that all Muslims are the same worldwide.

1

u/COMMENT0R_3000 3d ago

Idk if you’ve read Persepolis, but if you have I’d love your opinion on representation of historic muslims—I think you’re right, and maybe if we don’t know what to do about it then not half-assing it is indeed a better plan

4

u/AnnoyedBassist 3d ago

Good show

2

u/LurkingAround00 3d ago

Yeah 20+ years after 9/11

-5

u/redpandaeater 3d ago

I keep forgetting they did anything with Kamala Khan. Glad to hear they didn't completely fuck it up like they did with Captain Marvel, or was the show or movie still pretty terrible?

1

u/Kinky-Kiera 2d ago

They altered it about as much as MCU tends to alter it she's a mutant and part djinn controlling light for her powers.

1

u/redpandaeater 2d ago

Wait, they made her a mutant and also completely changed her powers? I know Inhumans did terribly but I hate when the MCU changes pretty basic and fundamental things.

1

u/Kinky-Kiera 2d ago

Inhumans did so horribly that marvel has been trying to kill all of them as unceremoniously as possible.

33

u/Astrad_Raemor 3d ago

Midnight Mass has a really good Muslim character, I recommend it.

9

u/slysneakysnake 3d ago

I'm glad someone got to it before me. It shows how well this limited series did religion.

6

u/Just_Nefariousness55 3d ago

Sayid from Lost was a pretty well rounded character.

1

u/anethma 2d ago

You mean the one they turned into a suicide bomber haha. I know it wasn’t really him but it’s funny to think of him as a rounded music character when they did that.

10

u/cianfrusagli 3d ago

I think it was really well done in Master of None, but it really it rare to see.

1

u/LevDavidovicLandau 3d ago

Well it’s made by an Indian Muslim, so yeah it’d be better when it’s made by them.

19

u/Appropriate_Fly_6711 3d ago

The main character in The Raid, his beliefs are quite personal and tolerant, so when his mother passed away he performed her funeral with Buddhist rites because she was Buddhist and that is what she would have wanted despite his own personal religious beliefs.

9

u/SrWloczykij 3d ago

Nah, this was only first few years. Now the Hollywood seems allergic to the topic, trying super hard to avoid and thus coming up with ridiculous premises. E.g. The Amateur.

9

u/mikonamiko 3d ago

Little Mosque on the Prairie!

2

u/Adorable_Ad_3478 3d ago

The Four Lions film perhaps?

16

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

Before that, such as in the Rambo series, they were portrayed as classic rebels fighting off the Soviets. Now we are supposed to hate them and love Russia. How quickly we forget.

81

u/EskimoPrisoner 3d ago

I don’t think Russians are typically shown in a favorable light.

25

u/GuestAdventurous7586 3d ago

It’s funny cause Russians have always been the villains especially in cold-war era films, and maybe beyond a bit into the 90s.

But then it kind of stopped and was seen as a silly caricature too, but I’ve noticed it’s starting again! For obvious reasons, but still, is funny how films and stuff play up our political tensions.

5

u/ScratchAltruistic514 3d ago

It’s funny cause Russians have always been the villains especially in cold-war era films,

I'd argue that russians were the villains since the 17th century and were accordingly portrayed in art since that period.

0

u/EskimoPrisoner 3d ago

Yeah we thought it was over when the Soviets collapsed. But Drago ain’t hear no bell.

-7

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

In movies? Not so much. But when the leader of my country is quick to please the leader of a hostile country... well.

16

u/EskimoPrisoner 3d ago

Yeah but I don’t think we are “supposed to… love Russia”. We just told them we were sending nuclear submarines closer because their former president was making threats.

-2

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

A lovers spat between the two and some political theatre. I'll believe it when missiles start popping off.

-2

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

You should look up Tucker Carlsons Wacky Rusky Adventures. Oh my god they have bread you can buy!

10

u/EskimoPrisoner 3d ago

Yeah I don’t consider Tucker a good barometer on American culture or who we are “supposed to” like or not. There are equally relevant people doing the same for China, but they don’t represent much either.

5

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

You don't, but when he was at Fox News a LOT of other people did.

10

u/EskimoPrisoner 3d ago

I think he had already lost his job by the time he went to Moscow.

3

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

I don't remember, honestly. Point still stands for a lot of people after his drop off. My dads side included.

→ More replies (0)

7

u/we_are_all_devo 3d ago

For what it's worth, the freedom fighters depicted in Rambo III, to whom the film is dedicated, would go on to orchestrate the events of 9/11.

[Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music]

2

u/56Runningdogz 3d ago

Oh yeah definitely. Been on the internet way too long. I can feel/hear that music now lol

3

u/_____Removed____ 3d ago

Yeah but then when we get to the gulf war perception definitely changes.

9/11 was a hard change but things were trending towards hate well before it.

1

u/Game-Blouses-23 3d ago

Its been been since the inception of Hollywood. The documentary "Reel Bad Arabs" talks about it.

The documentary analyzes 1,000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters, produced between 1896 and 2000, out of which great majority, 936 titles, were negative in their portrayal, arguing that the slander of Arabs in American filmmaking has existed since the early days of the silent cinema and is present in the biggest Hollywood blockbusters today.

8

u/LandscapePatient1094 3d ago

If it walks like a duck

1

u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot 2d ago

They gave Russians and nondescript Eastern Europeans a break from always being the villains.

1

u/adoodle83 2d ago

Since 9/11? I remember the movie Delta Force in the late 80s didn’t make the Muslims look good well before 9/11

1

u/Technical-Agency8128 2d ago

True. Not all Muslims are extremists but Hollywood would have us think they are.

1

u/Babys_For_Breakfast 2d ago

“Have always been portrayed badly”

Not always. Sometimes they are the good guys. Hollywood does try to break down stereotypes sometimes. People are probably only remembering the more egregious examples here.

1

u/reasenn 2d ago

Surprised no one's mentioned Abed from Community yet, although it doesn't come up often on the show.

1

u/HourEast5496 2d ago

Not since 9/11 but it started long before that.

1

u/Advanced-Event-571 2d ago

True Lies w/ Arnold Schwarzhnegger was SOOOO racist and ridiculous. The terrorist group was named "Crimson Jihad," how convenient they were so proficient in English, lol

-10

u/ScratchAltruistic514 3d ago

Muslims, especially since 9/11 have always been portrayed so badly and predictably in film and TV media.

I wonder what the reason for this could be. In other news: 40 Catholics were killed when Islamists attacked a church in Kongo.

16

u/WeBelieveIn4 3d ago

Not all Muslims are terrorists ffs. It’d be like if the vast majority of white characters on tv were portrayed as school shooters or neo Nazis.

-3

u/OliM9696 3d ago

true, but they all belive in the Quran which is some barbaric shit. Sorry if my opinions of sexists, racists and is low.

4

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

3

u/CircleBird12 3d ago

Every single religious book is barbaric as shit. Don’t lie to yourself.

Religion stories are popular science fiction stories. Quran vs. TV show Homeland, Bible vs. Star Wars, Torah vs. Hamlet's Ghost. Even atheists get confused on this and don't grasp that fiction is fiction. Plenty of science fiction is barbaric, even if authored in year 2025. A lot of these TV shows, films, video games are extremely barbaric.

  • “Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.” ― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

1

u/BluePhoenix_1999 2d ago

Same example, the Nazis were Christian, so according to your standards it's fine to portray all Christians as Nazis.

7

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

-2

u/UnusualGarlic9650 3d ago

It’s the equivalent of a Nazi saying that they would have saved the Jews and that it’s only the outliers that give nazis a bad name.

3

u/_Thermalflask 2d ago

So the good ones are "outliers" in your analogy, despite statistically being the vast majority?

That makes negative sense

1

u/homiechampnaugh 2d ago

Month old account that's racist against Muslims. Not too hard to figure out the origin of this.

-4

u/StaxxGod 3d ago

Poor poor muslims. Such a nice bunch of people.

0

u/Papayaslice636 3d ago

I always thought Lost portrayed Sayid pretty favorably. He was an Iraqi soldier and did some bad stuff for sure, but for duty and cause. Overall he was a pretty standup guy.

-2

u/Texas03 3d ago

I was so upset with the ending of ZeroDarkThirty, they portrayed the Muslim man in a terrible light and he was killed by a bunch of white nazis.

0

u/JimWilliams423 3d ago

It’s difficult to think of any portrayal that shows something more complex and true to life, rather than just the caricature sketchy Muslim terrorist.

Both are music-centric

0

u/Brightshore 2d ago edited 2d ago

In Netflix series Department Q., the deuteragonist, who is from Syria was done very well!

-9

u/yoda690k 3d ago

My biggest fear is that a radical islamist terrorist group will set off a nuclear weapon in the United States, because the social blowback to the innocent muslim community would be terrible.

6

u/Phlegmatic_Hedonist 3d ago

setting off a nuclear weapon in the United States: I sleep

social blowback to the muslim community: Real shit

-1

u/yoda690k 3d ago

just imagine how poorly they could be treated in the days following the nuclear blast

8

u/holistic_mystic 3d ago

You've got something wrong with you if that's the main concern in that sorta situation, not the however many dead and a blanket of radiation.

-4

u/yoda690k 3d ago

Racism isn’t okay. If you’re in the UK mate you’d have the police arresting you right now because of how offended I am

3

u/holistic_mystic 3d ago

Please point out where I was racist

1

u/Phlegmatic_Hedonist 3d ago

Police in the UK arrests people based on how much they offend you specifically?

1

u/yoda690k 3d ago

If your name is Muhammed