From Harem Girls to Jihadis: The Depiction of Muslim Women in Hollywood

Think Muslims in films or television and you may recall Tasneem Qureishi from Homeland or, more recently, Nadia Ali from Bodyguard. Or you may recall a completely different Muslim woman (if you even can come up with one). The one thing that remains consistent is that the character is frequently a caricature or gross misrepresentation of Muslim women. In fact, as this paper will go on to argue, the broad majority of current female Muslim characters on-screen today can fall into one of two categories: the terrorist and the oppressed one. These narrow, primarily negative representations of a group of people is one of the defining qualities of Orientalism. Orientalism, in conjunction with imperialist motives on the part of Western nations, influenced the depiction of Muslims in popular media such as films and television series. This image of a Muslim has been shaped by eurocentric thinking that viewed Europeans and Americans as being superior to the rest of the world and, in turn, justified imperialist action. The paper will start with the advent of film in the late 1800s and discuss the orientalism evident in the films of the time and its connection to colonialism. This portrayal of the Muslim as the “exotic” would shift in the late 1940s as the U.S. began to play a greater role in the Middle East and once again in the early 2000s with 9/11 and the beginning of the Global War on Terror. Notably, the Muslim went from being the curio to the villain. A rise in Islamophobia led to Muslims almost without exception being cast as the terrorist, which helped strengthen popular perceptions of Muslims as such while also helping rationalize U.S. military and political efforts in Muslim majority countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The main focus of this paper, however, is on Muslim women. In particular, this paper will look at the issue of veiling and show how the veiling and unveiling of Muslim woman in Hollywood films and television shows exemplifies the influence of orientalism. Specifically, the aspects of exoticism and assumed inferiority will be discussed. The issue of veiling also largely represents imperialist points of view, which use the veil to designate the Middle East as being backwards and to emphasize the “otherness” of Muslims