As Samer Khalaf, the president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, noted, there have been hundreds of violent messages on Facebook and Twitter directed against Arabs and Muslims made by people who had seen “American Sniper.”
For example, tweets such as, “Great f*@##@* movie and now I really want to kill some f*@##@* ragheads,” “Nice to see a movie where the Arabs are portrayed for who they really are-vermin scum intent on destroying us” and “American Sniper made me…hate Muslims 1000000X more.”
Being of Arab heritage and Muslim, I had to know: Did the film really portray Arabs and Muslims in way that would naturally draw these types of hateful comments? Was the film a jingoistic jubilee, like a “Top Gun” for a new generation, but where the Muslims/Arabs are now the “evil empire” instead of the Soviet Union?
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