Stereotypes Of Arabs Research Articles

Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal

Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal

Countering Post-9/11 Stereotypes: Arab American Playwrights Make Their Voices Heard

Before 9/11Arab-American drama was sporadic and inconsistent in the sense that there was a relative absence of Arab-American theater or playwrights who made their voices heard across the USA. However, after 9/11 the American theater scene witnessed a surge of Arab-American drama and theater that aimed at addressing the American audience in order to voice the concerns, fears and anxieties of Arab Americans. They wanted to dispel much of the stereotype attributes which have been wrongly associated with them because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavors of Arab-American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance and theater in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab-American dramatists and theater groups write back to the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which has madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. Viewed in light of the anti-Arab American literary discourse, Arab-American playwrights and performers have taken giant steps towards changing the stereotypes of Arabs, and countering the loud voices of those who try to add fuel to the blazing flames of Islamophobia. To assess the contribution of Arab-American dramatists and performers to make their voices heard loud and clear in countering the stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, Yussef El Guindi (1960-) is going to be discussed in this paper because he has been fighting the stereotypes of Arab Americans and Islamophobia in his drama and theater. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what it means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of his plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance; stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theater; and acculturation and clash of cultures. Keywords: Arab American, Identity, Theater, Stereotypes, Diaspora, Acculturation

Combating 9/11 Negative Images of Arabs in American Culture: A Study of Yussef El Guindi’s Drama

This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavours of Arab American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance, and theatre in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab American dramatists and theatre groups attempt to counter the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which have madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. In this context, this study examines Yussef El Guindi, an Egyptian-American, and his work. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what this formation means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of these plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance, stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theatre, and acculturation and clash of cultures.

When Caliban writes back: Alameddine’s appropriation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

ABSTRACT Arab American Rabih Alameddine’s novel The Angel of History appropriates Shakespeare’s The Tempest to comment on its representation of Caliban and his mother, Sycorax, and show how distorted images of Arabs and Muslims have been disseminated in US popular culture in the post-9/11 era. Alameddine’s novel, like Shakespeare’s romance, is populated by spirits, demons, and angels, and his protagonist, Jacob, is referred to at one point as “Caliban” due to his dark skin colour. He shares Caliban’s “bastard” origins and his status as the “devil’s son”. Both Caliban and Jacob learn a new language to relate their versions of history: Alameddine’s protagonist uses English to narrate his mother’s story – one suppressed in The Tempest. Through its innovative narration and use of the language of the colonizer, the novel subverts dominant stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, exposing both contemporary US consumerist attitudes and 17th-century European prejudice towards “the other”.

Terrorcraft: empire and the making of the racialised terrorist threat

Terrorism is so associated with Arabs, Muslims and South Asians that it has become common sense in the post 9/11 world. Drawing on various bodies of scholarship, this article traces the complex evolution of ‘race’ in relation to Arabs and Muslims from the 1960s to mid-’80s, alongside changing notions of ‘terrorism’, to advance an argument about the historically contingent nature of the racialised terrorist threat. The author argues that ‘terrorcraft’ – or terrorist racialisation – is a process. First, the racialised terrorist was crafted deep in the US empire. Counter-insurgency doctrine was instrumental in the US security state’s creation of the ‘Arab terrorist’ through racial profiling. Second, the ideology of terrorcraft followed, rather than preceded, the security state’s racialising practices, though racial stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims pre-date the 1960s. The ‘Arab terrorist’ is a new project of racial formation, the author argues. Third, the US’s strategic alliance with Israel after 1967 and two conferences organised by the Israeli Jonathan Institute laid the basis for the transatlantic production of terrorcraft. Over time, it evolved from its initial focus on Arabs to include Muslims during the 1980s and South Asians in the 1990s.

Negative Stereotypes of Arabs: The Western Case

The article explains negative stereotypes of Arabs as conceptualised by the West. The findings suggest that negative stereotypes about Arabs are increasing, provoking further misunderstanding and distortion of the Arab image. Stereotypes reinforcing the majority-minority bias are rooted in the long history of conflicts and unfriendly relations with Arab nations.

Jack G. Shaheen 1935–2017

Pioneering author and media critic, Dr. Jack Shaheen devoted his life to identifying and contesting damaging stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in American media and pop culture. Arabs and Muslims were offered up as cartoon caricatures—dagger wielding, evil, ridiculous, hypersexualized, inhumane and incompetent “others.” Dr. Shaheen quickly recognized their shared genealogy to the portrayals of other racialized groups including Jews, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and African Americans. Always in the spirit of engaged dialogue, he was outspoken in defense of any group that was wrongfully stereotyped and vilified.

Race, religion and identity: Arab Christians in the United States

In social terms Arab American Christians lie both inside and outside the category of ‘white’ by race. Seemingly ‘white’ via their religious affiliation with the majority and non-white through their Arab and Middle Eastern backgrounds, at times they have access to privilege and power, and at other times face discrimination as non-white and foreign. In this study, there was a connection between those who identified as white, age, and residence in the wealthy suburbs of Virginia and Maryland. The younger generation of professionals who live in the city of Washington DC, as well as activists and academics, tended to be more ambiguous about their own perceived whiteness. Women and men faced differing challenges from prevailing stereotypes of Arabs and gendered expectations of race. The term ‘ancient Christian’ was used to denote a non-Muslim identity and claim an original Christianity located in the Middle East.

Wacana 'barbar' dalam film animasi Aladin

This article discusses the discourse of Arab barbarism constructed in animated film Aladdin produced by Walt Disney Picture Animation in 1992. The story of Aladdin is originated from the Arabian folktales, Alf Layla wa Layla which was translated into English version of “Arabian Nights”. Arab stereotypes in Hollywood cinema has been studied by many researchers, and this article will find out how Hollywood constructs the discourse of Arab barbarism in animated film Aladdin, and whose interest or ideology constructed in the discourse. This study applies Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, through its three levels of analysis, micro, macro and mezo. The analysis shows that the discourse of Arab barbarism is constructed as a politics of identity for othering the Arabs through natural ways of the film. In this film, Aladdin is able to transform the antagonist Jafar, helped by the Jinn implies the notion that the power of technology and humanitarianism is constructed as the tools to overpower the powerful barbarian. Hollywood and America’s interest in projecting the friend and foe in its international relation through the cultural product needs to be scrutinized critically.

Exploitation and New Orientalism in Sam Kadi’s The Citizen

September 9 /2011 (henceforth 9/11) is a global cultural moment as it redefines the way America interprets the world and the way the world interprets the US. This is especially true in the representation of Arabs in Hollywood films as the Arabs were seen as the culprit of the momentous event. It inevitably cements the idea that the Arab as the other, this has become a fundamental structure of the American psyche. Pre 9/11, Hollywood has produced a significant amount of films covering Arab characters in a variety of Arab stereotypes, which were limited to what was known from the stories of the orientalist European and their legends about the mysterious East. We argue that while the negative stereotype continues in post 9/11 films, the ideological workings, however, are different. We have observed that Hollywood post 9/11 are keener to hire Arab actors to play Arab characters, which usually were played by Pakistani or non-Arab actors. Therefore, this paper examines the exploitation of Arab characters played by Arab actors in Hollywood films post 9/11 by focusing on The Citizen (2012) directed by Sam Kadi . Employing New Orientalism theory, this paper uses textual analysis as the method, focusing on how the Arab Characters are being exploited in this film.

TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE: THE ROUTES OF ‘AFRICAN SEXUALITY’

AbstractThe idea that homosexuality is ‘un-African’ is widely regarded, at least among Western scholars, as a myth concocted during the colonial era. The evidence adduced to support this consensus is largely convincing, but it does not account for all the features of contemporary African leaders’ homophobic discourses. In particular, it does not account for differences between Christian and Muslim rhetorics with respect to a putative ‘African sexuality’. Historical, ethnographic, and literary evidence suggests these differences can be traced in part to the trans-Saharan slave trade, which gave rise to racialized sexual tropes of blacks and Arabs that circulated and continue to circulate on both sides of the Sahara. In Nigeria and perhaps elsewhere, it seems that sexual stereotypes of Arabs and black Africans derived from both the trans-Saharan trade and European colonial rule have been respectively, if unevenly, mapped onto Muslims and Christians, in a way that hinders national integration. This is so even when the leaders of both groups seem to be in agreement, as when they join forces to condemn homosexuality. To ignore such religious, racial, and sexual contradictions is to ignore some of the major cultural faultlines within contemporary African nation-states and the continent overall.

Mass deception: moral panic and the U.S. war on Iraq

he attacks of 9/11 pre-empted a war against the nation of Iraq, although there was no clear-cut evidence that the nation's leader Saddam Hussein was linked to Osama Bin Laden's Baath Party. Five years later, with the execution of Saddam Hussein and no proof of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. is still embroiled in a war with Iraq. Why would such a war garner so much acceptance in its primary stages? This book offers empirical evidence that the deceptive rhetoric of the Bush administration actually manufactured US public support of invading Iraq. Bonn examines a theoretical position that the war was legitimized by an elite-engineered moral panic precipitated by the Bush administration and reinforced by the news media which exploited pre-existing negative stereotypes of Arabs and influenced public opinion on support for the invasion of Iraq. Bonn also asserts that the Bush administration is guilty of elite deviance, stating that moral panic constitutes elite deviance and the invasion and occupation of Iraq are state crimes in violation of international law.

From Nostalgia to Critique: An Overview of Arab American Literature

One major purpose of this special issue of MELUS is to introduce scholars, critics, teachers, and students of ethnic literary works to an understudied and undervalued area of ethnic literature. This essay provides an overview of the history of Arab American literature, with particular attention to the history of Arab immigration. In addition to introducing readers to the major figures and major themes in the literature, it also points to the future by considering unresolved questions and unexplored subjects. Arab American literature mirrors the patterns of Arab American history, which scholars have traditionally divided into three phases, based on the three distinct waves of Arab immigrants who came to the US. (1) The first wave (1880-1924) of immigrants was made up of Greek Orthodox, Maronite, and Melchite Christians from Mount Lebanon and the surrounding Syrian and Palestinian provinces. For the first several years, immigration documents identified these Christians as Turks because they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The immigrants, however, despised their repressive Ottoman overseers and preferred to identify themselves as Syrians. Unskilled and often illiterate, many of these early Christian Arabs found work as itinerant peddlers, fanning across the country, and often spending months on the road. It was a lifestyle which accelerated assimilation because it provided ample opportunities to learn English and mix with the local populace. Later, the Syrians settled in widely dispersed communities across the country, where many opened retail shops. Generally hardworking and law abiding, the immigrants enthusiastically embraced American values. Immigration from Greater Syria came to a halt during World War I, when famine and war ravaged the homeland. Although immigration resumed after the war, it came to a virtual standstill when harsh quotas were imposed on Syrians and other unwelcome ethnic groups in 1924. With immigration slowed to a trickle of approximately one hundred people a year, the population of the once vibrant, scattered community was not replenished. Despite the publication in the United States of numerous Arabic-language newspapers, the Syrians were increasingly cut off from events in their country of origin. As Alixa Naff notes, many Syrian Americans were largely unconscious of the nationalist aspirations in their homeland that led to the formation of the new Lebanese state in 1947 (16). The second wave of immigration began in the decade following World War II. Unlike the first wave, which was predominantly Christian, the new wave contained a significant number of Muslims. This second wave of immigrants consisted of educated, skilled professionals, who were more likely to be familiar with the nationalist ideologies that permeated the Arab world. Unlike the Syrian Christians, they staunchly identified themselves as Arabs. Included in this group were a number of Palestinian refugees who had been rendered stateless as a result of the catastrophic 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The third major wave of immigration, which began in 1967 and continues to this day, accelerated the trends of the post-World War II immigration period. In 1965, new liberalized immigration laws abolished the long-standing quota system. As a result, large numbers of West Bank Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims from Southern Lebanon fled to America after the 1967 war with Israel and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. The Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s produced a further flood of refugees. Imbued with anti-colonial sentiment and Arab nationalist ideas, this new group was highly politicized. For the first time, Arab American organizations were formed to defend the Arab point of view and to combat negative stereotypes of Arabs in the popular press. Newly sensitized to their ethnic identity by worldwide political events, the descendants of first- and second-wave immigrants joined their newly arrived countrymen in support of Arab concerns. …

Western Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims

Western Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims

Arab Stereotypes and the Limits of Honest Journalism

Review of The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage by David Lamb.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Stereotypes in Literature: Through the Hebrew Looking-Glass: Arab Stereotypes in Children's Literature. . Fouzi El-Asmar. ; An Ugly Face in the Mirror: National Stereotypes in Hebrew Children's Literature. . Adir Cohen.

Stereotypes in Literature: Through the Hebrew Looking-Glass: Arab Stereotypes in Children's Literature. . Fouzi El-Asmar. ; An Ugly Face in the Mirror: National Stereotypes in Hebrew Children's Literature. . Adir Cohen.

Stereotypes in Literature: Through the Hebrew Looking-Glass: Arab Stereotypes in Children's Literature, by Fouzi El-Asmar/An Ugly Face in the Mirror: National Stereotypes in Hebrew Children's Literature, by Adir Cohen

Stereotypes in Literature: Through the Hebrew Looking-Glass: Arab Stereotypes in Children's Literature, by Fouzi El-Asmar/An Ugly Face in the Mirror: National Stereotypes in Hebrew Children's Literature, by Adir Cohen