The Hollywood
Bureau of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
had its 22nd Annual
Media Awards Gala last Saturday at the Hilton in Long Beach, California, bringing
together “American Muslims, TV and film studio executives, public officials,
interfaith leaders, and media professionals to celebrate our honorees’
achievements in using the arts to foster positive social change.” “Positive
social change” in this context is Muslim Brotherhood-speak for “the fundamental
transformation of American culture.”
MPAC’s busy Hollywood Bureau, established
shortly after 9/11 and sharing the Brotherhood’s subversive
ideology, claims to serve as a professional resource to the entertainment
industry by providing accurate information on Islam and Muslims. It has consulted
with the producers of such TV shows as 24,
Bones, Lie to Me, 7th Heaven, The Good Wife, and Homeland. It offers script consultation (read: approval) for
filmmakers who want to get Islam “right,” and helps Hollywood professionals
connect with Muslim filmmakers, writers and actors.
For the past 21 years, MPAC has
honored “Voices of Courage and Conscience” who use art and media “to create
accurate portrayals and enriching dialogue around important social, cultural
and political issues.” A few of the “accurate and enriching” artists
and their works that MPAC has honored with awards in the past are
filmmakers Michael Moore (for Bowling for
Columbine) and Spike Lee (for Malcolm
X), producer Lawrence Bender (for An
Inconvenient Truth), George Clooney’s production company (for the morally
inverted Syriana), and actor Alec Baldwin (“for his courageous
commitment to social justice and civil liberties, and for standing up against
violations of Muslims’ civil liberties in national media interviews and at the
2004 Democratic National Convention”).
This year, MPAC honored three projects: the Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras, the Fox TV series Bones
and the Sundance Film Institute’s Feature Film Program.
Perhaps Burnat and his Israeli partner’s next film could
focus on the pressure that Israeli citizens experience in their own land, from
an invented people who assault them with everything from rocks to rockets, from
obsessive media distortion, and from the coordinated international condemnation
of Jew-hating leftists and Arab nations, who want to wipe Israel from the map.
But then, films like that don’t win awards.
Another honoree, the
TV series Bones has featured a
Muslim as one of its recurring characters for the last five seasons. “Committed
to introducing diverse and underrepresented narratives,” says MPAC’s website, Bones
“embodies the emerging diversity in portrayals of Muslims on screen and
television. The character ‘Arastoo Vaziri’ is a rare counter to the pervasive
negative stereotypes which have come to define such portrayals.” The
announcement doesn’t give any examples of “pervasive negative stereotypes,”
probably because MPAC would be hard-pressed to find any in the post-9/11 entertainment
world, which has bent over backwards to avoid offending Arabs and Muslims.
Even before MPAC’s Hollywood Bureau, the Muslim Brotherhood
legacy group CAIR,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations, worked hard to steer Hollywood
productions toward more and more sanitized depictions of Islam and Muslims. At
a White House rally almost exactly a year prior to the 9/11 attacks, CAIR’s
executive director asserted that
“Hollywood has not been our ally. Hollywood has distorted the facts. Hollywood
has shown freedom fighters as terrorists. Hollywood has done the work that
Zionists could not done [sic].” But since 9/11, Hollywood has indeed been
CAIR’s ally.
Accepting the awards for Bones
were writer Keith Fogelsong and actor Pej Vahdat, who plays Arastoo Vaziri. “Thank
you FOX for giving me something that I can relate to as an American Muslim,” said
Vahdat. “A part that’s not a terrorist.”
Founded by actor Robert Redford, the Sundance Film Institute’s Feature Film Program offers “professional
and creative resources to artists in Muslim-majority countries.” It promises “to
tell the stories of diverse and underrepresented peoples and to alleviate the
distorted images of regions of the world that are largely misunderstood.” In
this context, “distorted” and “misunderstood” mean “in desperate need of a PR makeover.”
MPAC Senior Adviser Maher
Hathout closed the event by thanking all the honorees for being “an
oasis in the large desert of mass mislabeling, prejudices and biases.” Speaking
of prejudices and biases, Hathout, who has close ties to the Muslim
Brotherhood, has characterized
Palestinian suicide bombings against Israel as “very understandable”; he
has supported attacks by Hezbollah,
whom he calls “freedom fighters”; and he has called Israel a land of “butchers”
who have imposed “racist apartheid.” Regarding MPAC’s 25-year existence, he
said at the gala, “We are knocking on the doors of the future and God willing
it will open really wide for our new generations to step in, into a better,
kinder, gentler, more creative, more just and more fair America.”
Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman was scheduled to attend the gala
and present the Media Award to 5 Broken
Cameras, but apparently he was too ill to attend. Instead, he sent an audio
statement in which he praised the filmmaker for his courage and conscience:
“Courage and conscience. These are virtues so greatly needed for this troubled
and confusing time.” Indeed they are. And if the West doesn’t find the courage
and conscience to rally to defend its culture, the future will be a very
troubled and confusing time indeed.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 5/1/13)
