c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Atif Harden could barely contain his emotions.”Shame, shame, shame on Hollywood,”said Harden.”Here we go again with deja vu all over again.” Harden is an African-American convert to Islam made angry by the upcoming 20th Century Fox film”The Siege,”which depicts a fictional U.S. military mass roundup of American Muslims and Arab-Americans following a series of terrorist attacks in New York City.

After years of cinematic stereotyping of blacks, said Harden, the entertainment industry is now subjecting his adopted faith community to similar negative treatment.”Not only did I have to go through this as an African-American, now I’m going through it as a Muslim,”he said.”This kind of crap has got to stop!” Harden, executive director of the American Muslim Council, spoke Wednesday (Oct. 14) at a news conference called by several Washington-based Muslim and Arab-American groups to invite moviegoers to visit mosques around the nation on Nov. 7 _ the day after”The Siege”is scheduled to open across the country.”The general public is used to seeing the Hollywood Islam,”said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).”We would like to show the real Islam. We want to educate people of other faiths to the real Islam.” Community members will spread the word on Nov. 6 by handing out flyers at theaters showing”The Siege,”a big-budget thriller starring Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington and Annette Bening.

A telephone number _ 800-78-ISLAM _ also has been established to disseminate the locations of participating mosques.

Earlier reports that the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee would picket theaters showing”The Siege”were incorrect, said spokesman Hussein Ibish.

Muslim and Arab-American activists have for months been meeting with Fox executives and the film’s director in an attempt to get changes in”The Siege,”which they view as both offensive and dangerous to their communities _ which overlap, but are not one in the same. Not all Muslims are Arabs, and not all Arabs are Muslims.

The activists first sought to get director Edward Zwick, whose credits include the film”Glory”and the TV show”thirtysomething,”to totally revamp the film’s story line. Instead of Arab-Muslim terrorists, the activists suggested, to no avail, that the terrorists be anti-government Americans, as was the case with the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.

The Muslims and Arab-Americans then asked Zwick and Fox to alter some of the film’s content, particularly scenes emphasizing the terrorists’ religious and ethnic backgrounds. Although some”minor”changes were made, the film’s”overall impression … links directly Islamic religious practice with terrorism,”said Awad.”It shows sincere, practicing Muslims killing innocent people, women and children. Sincere, practicing Muslims having no respect for human life”in contradiction to the tenets of Islam, he continued.”It shows common Muslims as all being potential terrorists.” Muslims and Arabs who have engaged in terrorism”are extremists”and not representative of their communities, Awad said.

A Fox spokeswoman said Wednesday that the studio”strongly disagrees”with characterizations of”The Siege”as”anti-Muslim or anti-Arab. Rather it is anti-prejudice and shows the tragic consequences of racism.” In interviews, Zwick has said his film is intended to show how quick repression and racism surface in times of societal stress.

With the film’s opening just weeks away, Muslim and Arab-American activists admit getting more changes incorporated into”The Siege”is a long shot.

Instead, they now hope to turn”The Siege”into an opportunity to sensitive Hollywood to their concerns, while also educating other Americans about their communities.”We’re not concerned if millions more people go to see the film because of the attention we have drawn to it as long as they are sensitized beforehand,”said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director.”We’re trying to be pro-active.” Hooper and the other activists, who were invited by the studio to see a”rough cut”of the film said”The Siege”does have some positive elements. They pointed to the film’s criticism of the fictional hysteria that leads to the government overreaction and the unconstitutional detention of large numbers of innocent Muslims and Arab-Americans.

However, added Awad,”the stereotyping of Muslims and Arab-Americans remain largely unchallenged. The film links Islamic religious practices such as prayer, the call to prayer, supplication, Islamic dress and beards, Koranic recitation and even the color green (a symbol of Islam) with terrorism.”The trustworthiness and peaceful intentions of the American Muslim and Arab-American communities are made suspect by the film’s plot line,”he said.

Hooper said the activists would not be so concerned about”The Siege”were it not one in a string of recent films they view as harmful to their communities.

Citing”Executive Decision,””True Lies”and other recent productions in which Muslims or Arabs were depicted as threats to the United States, Hooper said”there never seems to be any balance when it comes to those communities. They’re Hollywood’s new bad guys and that’s dangerous and unfair to us.”

END IR