Okay so
1)this is NOT my article, I'm just sharing it to get all of your opinions on it. The original author is Tasbeeh Herwees on good.is
2)the article specifies Hollywood and the movie/tv industry but I'd say it goes further into media in general. Books and other entertainment platforms share the guilt on this one.
3)share your thoughts and opinions in the comments down below. As a community of Muslim authors and readers, let's have a dialogue about this sort of representation.
4)The last paragraph annoyed me...
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The Only Muslims Hollywood Likes Are The ‘Secular’ Ones
by Tasbeeh Herwees
July 6, 2017 at 12:00
There’s a phrase that’s become common in the reviews and write-ups of “The Big Sick,” a romantic comedy that debuted in theaters in late-June: “culture clash.” The film, which was produced by Judd Apatow, stars Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani. It’s Nanjiani’s first lead acting role, and the movie — which is based on his real-life romance with white American screenwriter Emily V. Gordon — documents their courtship, and his efforts to reconcile their relationship with the expectations of his parents, who continuously try to set him up with “young, single Pakistani girls.”
This is where the tension of the plot lies: between Nanjiani and his family, between a white girl and his Pakistani heritage. When Gordon suddenly falls sick and is hospitalized, Nanjiani is compelled to choose between the two.
Early on, the film sets up an obvious narrative conflict. On one side, we have Emily, played by a blonde Zoe Kazan, and her parents, Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Romano). Nanjiani meets Gordon at a comedy club, on what is ostensibly a one-night stand that turns into something more. Her parents, who show up when Emily gets sick, are flawed but well-meaning; their shortcomings are eclipsed only by the obvious love and affection they have for their daughter.
On the other side, we have Nanjiani, son of Pakistani Muslim immigrants, Azmat and Sharmeen, played by Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff. The two characters embody every stereotype conceivable about brown Muslim parents: overbearing, disappointed in their American offspring, eager to get their hapless son married to the nearest single brown young woman. Nanjiani’s parents appear almost exclusively in scenes where they invite young women to family dinners in the hopes he might fall in love with them. These young women appear, too, with no backstory or very little dialogue, clinging hopelessly to an antiquated tradition. How silly these women are — not like Nanjiani, who is enlightened enough to pursue a white woman. In one critical scene in the film, as he’s arguing with Emily about the viability of their relationship, he yells, “I’m battling a 1,400-year-old culture!”
Perhaps it’s significant, then, that this film is being billed as a “culture clash” comedy. It’s a phrase that evokes another expression, used commonly in the field of international relations: “clash of civilizations,” coined by the famous political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington’s theory argued that contemporary conflicts were not ones driven by politics or economics but by identity and culture. He believed there existed an inherent antagonism between “the West and the rest.” The West, he said, had embraced modernism, and the rest of the world remained hindered by archaic ideologies (like Islam) and Old World traditions. Huntington focused much of his thesis on interactions between Islam and the West.
Notable scholars like the late Paul Berman and Edward Said have debunked Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory, arguing that its logic is not only flawed but ignorant.
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