9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 From True Lies to American Sniper, from 24 to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Western media is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 full of images of evil brown people who need to be 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 wiped from the earth by noble, righteous white men 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 heroically fighting for freedom and justice. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And sure, it’s so commonplace by this point 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that maybe you don’t even bat an eye at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 old-fashioned American Islamophobia 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in our media. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Whoa! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Even Back to the Future, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that beloved comedy classic, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 takes a moment to toss in a few scary 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brown men to menace and terrorize our white heroes! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Unfortunately, we can’t hop in Doc Brown’s DeLorean 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and undo all the harmful representations of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Muslims, Arabs and Middle-Easterners that have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 haunted our stories since... 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 well, basically the Crusades. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But we can try to make sure history 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 doesn’t keep repeating itself. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Okay, maybe that’s not entirely fair. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In some ways, things have changed. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Once upon a time, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 non-white actors could hardly get 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 any work in Hollywood at all. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 These days, shows like Homeland and movies 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like Executive Decision are providing some brown 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 actors with ample opportunity to portray scary 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 terrorists who get gunned down while screaming 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 something absurd like “Death to America”. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It doesn’t even matter if you’re not actually of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle-Eastern descent! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you’re vaguely brown, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you can stick around (to play bad guys). 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, sure, not every Middle-Eastern character in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 films is a villain. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In the 1921 box-office smash 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Sheik, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the dashing hero gets the girl in the end. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But the Arab world of the film is presented as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 exotic and dangerous, and the sheik himself, the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 one good, heroic Arab, is played by 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Italian-American heartthrob Rudolph Valentino! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You see, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 since he’s not really Arab, he’s allowed to get the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 girl in the end. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you think this kind of racist coding to signify 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the difference between “good Arabs” and “bad Arabs” 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 went away with the advent of talkies, think again. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Have you ever noticed how, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in Disney’s Aladdin, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the good guy might as well be a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 tanned American surfer dude... 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ...but the bad guys look and sound a little 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more…”Arab”? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 While Hollywood historically has sometimes given 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 “good Arab” roles to non-Arab actors, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it has also sometimes given not-so-good Arab 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and South Asian roles to white actors, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 too, denying brown people work and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 decent on-screen representation in one 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fell swoop. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s the world’s worst Catch 22! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For example, take “Mr. Habib,” the scheming 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle-Eastern villain in Father of the Bride Part 2 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who is played by Eugene Levy. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Those aren’t even real words he says to his wife! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s just vaguely Middle-Eastern sounding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 gibberish! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the written equivalent 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of this is very common as well: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 video games and TV shows constantly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just toss up some squiggly text 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and try to pass it off as actual Arabic! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well, this one is Arabic, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but it sure doesn’t say 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what the Homeland producers wanted it to! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As insidious as it is to flatten entire cultures 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and populations into The Land of Squiggly Writing, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there is nothing so pervasive and damaging as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Hollywood’s tendency to constantly portray vaguely 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle-Eastern people as generic terrorists. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s so common that on screen, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brown skin has practically become synonymous 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with bad guys who have little or no 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 character development beyond 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hating America and freedom fries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One of the biggest problems with this is that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it erases the actual lives and cultures of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle-Eastern people, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and leads many Western viewers to lump all of them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 into the same group. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So let’s start by clarifying a few terms whose 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 meaning has been obscured by media that paints the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 entire Middle East with the same 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 broad, shallow, ignorant brush. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 First of all, we’ve done a lot of research on this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and as it turns out, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 words actually have meanings! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Weird, right? You can’t just lump Arabs and Muslims 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 together because they are not the same thing! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Arabs are a specific ethnic group, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 united by culture and language, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and who primarily originate from middle 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 eastern countries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Arab is not, repeat NOT, a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 racial category. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Got that? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You can be white, black, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brown and still be Arab. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But not all people from 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the Middle East are Arab and vice versa 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 -- like, oh say, ethnic Persians in Iran. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A Muslim is someone who practices Islam, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a religion with over 1.7 billion members 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 spanning a vast number of ethnic and cultural identities. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The “Muslim world” actually comprises a multitude of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 groups that folks often forget, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 including: Iranians, South Asians, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 North Africans, Indonesians, black Americans. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Islam is not confined 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to the Middle East, to olive-skinned people, or 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just people who speak Arabic. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a race, it’s vital for us to understand that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Islamophobia is racism. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you’ve been paying attention thus far, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 then you might be asking yourself, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 “If Islam isn’t a race, then how can 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Islamophobia be racism?” 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The answer lies in another 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 “-ism,” one many Westerners aren’t particularly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 familiar with: Orientalism. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In short, the term “Orientalism” refers to how, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for hundreds of years, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Western artistic and academic 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 history has perpetuated an ignorant and prejudiced 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 view of the East. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A view rooted in the idea of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Western culture as inherently 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more advanced and enlightened, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and Eastern culture as inherently more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ignorant, irrational, primitive, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and often, highly-sexualized. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Again, Muslims come from many different 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 races and span a myriad of cultural identities. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In fact, the former president of the Islamic Society 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of North America is a white woman, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Dr. Ingrid Mattson. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But let’s be real: nobody who spreads the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hate of Islam is talking about white ladies. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Western media has contributed to a level of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ignorance so great that for many people it has 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 resulted in equating Islam with scary brown people, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 particularly scary brown men, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from the Middle East. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s been so effective that most of you probably 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 didn’t even know that this man isn’t Muslim, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he’s Sikh! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Sikhism and Islam are two 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 completely different religions! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The fact that Sikhs are so often the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 targets of anti-Muslim hate crimes makes it crystal 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 clear that Islamophobia is all about race. The only 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 reason some Sikhs--those with brown skin--are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sometimes the targets of Islamophobic violence is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that they are also perceived as Middle-Eastern, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle-Eastern is perceived as Muslim, and Muslim 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is perceived as scary! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Whew! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Thanks, Jack Bauer, what would we do without 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It isn’t just film and television that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 perpetuates this kind of ignorance. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Here’s comedian 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Kumail Nanjiani on how video games often don’t put 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in even the absolute bare minimum of effort or 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 research when representing the Middle East. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Modern films, TV shows and games definitely 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 perpetuate Islamophobia, but it’s no exaggeration 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to say that ignorant representations of people from 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the Middle-East in Western media date back for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 centuries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Orientalist paintings of the 1800s were 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 often characterized by overly sexualized depictions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of daily life, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and Romantic Orientalist literature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the late 1700s and early 1800s served to justify 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 European imperialism by presenting Middle-Eastern 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people and cultures as inherently exotic and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 strange. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So there’s a conflation of Arab with Muslim, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and because our ideas about Islam are so deeply linked 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to stereotypes about terrorism and violence, both 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of those categories are associated 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with masculinity and men. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 While many male Muslim actors in Hollywood 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 can only find work playing bit parts as evil 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 terrorists, Muslim women are often erased 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 altogether. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The very real advances that Arab women 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have made in many parts of the world are ignored 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because depicting them would complicate the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 simplistic racist narrative about Arabs and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Muslims that Hollywood continues trying to cash in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s almost as if we don’t know how 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to contend with women as real people. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Filmmakers and TV producers know 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how to objectify women, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how to prize them for their physical 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 attributes and their appearance. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The stories we allow ourselves to tell about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the Middle East, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with its different cultural mores, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 don’t allow for the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 same kind of easy objectification of these brown [br][br]women’s bodies -- and so we resist including them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at all. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And when Arab or Muslim women do appear, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they’re either offered as mysterious, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sexually wanton creatures who offer 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 temptations for white male heroes: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 think belly dancing seductresses if the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 story is set in the past, or niqab-clad secret 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 purveyors of violence, if the story is set in the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 present. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 At least we can thank 24 again for casting the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 great Iranian actor Shohreh Aghdashloo in season four 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as a Muslim terrorist who 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is also a wife and mother! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But there are artists, critics, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 writers who are out there 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 speaking about what it means to be the target of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 all-this anti-brown racism, and a lot of the most 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 interesting critiques are coming from Muslim women 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 themselves. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Oh crap, I think we just missed a call 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from Muslim comedian, Zahra Noorbakhsh… 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 let’s see if she left a message, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cause I know she has feelings about all this. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Oh crap, I think we missed a call, I wonder who it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 could be. To the feminist answering machine. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There’s tremendous harm in centuries of images that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 reduce entire nations, cultures and religions to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the status of subhuman savages. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In the wake of the September 11th attacks 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 former “Worst President Ever” George W. Bush used 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the term “axis of evil” to describe nations 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 including Iran and Iraq, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in an effort to drum up 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 support for the “War on Terror”. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it worked. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 More recently, during the 2016 presidential 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 campaign Republican candidates tossed around the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” as if it were 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 some kind of magic spell they could use to make 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 votes appear out of thin air. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And again, it worked! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The only reason tactics like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 these have any effect is that, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to so many Americans, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people in the Middle East have never 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 been established as human beings, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with real lives, hopes, dreams, and struggles. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When almost every story you’ve ever seen 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about a particular part of the world 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 paints the people who live there 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as monolithic, evil, and scary, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you’re a lot more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 likely to believe that it’s actually true. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When people believe it's true, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they aren't just more likely to support politicians 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or policies that appeal to fear and ignorance 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about the Middle East. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're also more likely to act on that fear and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ignorance themselves. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Southern Poverty Law Center notes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that the number of anti-Muslim hate 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 groups tripled in the United States in 2016. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 noted the same increase after the release of patriotic 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fever dream, American Sniper. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 2016 also saw a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and there's no question that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Trump's racist, fear-mongering 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 rhetoric has played a part in this surge of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 xenophobia and violence. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Of course, Trump doesn’t 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 stop with rhetoric himself. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Within the first 100 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 days of his presidency: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He has repeatedly tried to push through bans 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 preventing the citizens of several Muslim-majority 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 countries from entering the United States. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He dropped the US military’s most powerful non- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 nuclear bomb on Afghanistan. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And he fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don’t know, some Middle-Eastern country 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 while eating the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Iraq, Syria, what’s the difference?! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was one of those countries the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 evil, scary brown people live in. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, I can already hear the army of Richard 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Dawkins-parroting, anti-feminist Twitter users typing 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 up their responses about how Islam is a religion 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 dedicated to oppressing women. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s amazing how suddenly everybody’s a feminist 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 when it lets them perpetuate hate against 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brown people or dismiss concerns about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how women are oppressed in their own 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 culture. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So let’s be clear, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 misogyny is not a problem with Islam; 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 misogyny is a problem that some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cultures which happen to be Muslim use the religion 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to perpetuate and justify. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Christianity has been used as a tool to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 oppress women around the world 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for millennia! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s specifically because our media 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 perpetually equates Islam 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 -- a religion followed by nearly ¼ of the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 world’s population -- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with evil, terrorism, and oppression, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that so many people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 believe that’s what Islam actually is. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And make no mistake: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Islamophobia is big business – 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - and not just for Hollywood. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Hundreds of millions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of dollars each year go into 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 feeding what activist 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Taz Ahmed calls “the fear industrial 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 complex that perpetuates racism.” 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Devious Russian generals and Nazi scientists 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from the Cold War won’t prop up our 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 defense industry anymore, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so we needed some new bad guys. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Come on it’s not like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we’re just going to stop making bombs, right? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Our entertainment media's insistence on constantly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 portraying people from the Middle East as scheming 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 oil sheiks, slavers, snake charmers and suicide 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bombers--but never as real people-- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 has real consequences. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Muslims here in the U.S., and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everyone who is or looks like they could be 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Middle Eastern, constantly face ignorance and racism. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They live in fear of the very real possibility of being 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 accosted or attacked because someone takes a look 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at them and associates them with everything they've 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 seen in the movies and everything the president has 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 said about people from the Middle East. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What we need now are more stories that dispel the deeply 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 harmful stereotypes and encourage us to see people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from the Middle East-- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 whether they're Arab or Muslim or neither or both-- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as what they REALLY are: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 human beings. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000