Reel Arabs. (editor's note).(Editorial)

Last month in this column I urged movie studios to fulfill their obligation to society by producing films that will help us cope with conflict in this new age of terrorism. That won't be easy. However, the greater challenge will be to accomplish this task without stigmatizing ethnic or religious groups in the process.

In fact, the American film industry would have to reverse a long tradition of stereotyping ethnic groups in times of inter national conflict. "Not so long ago--and sometimes still today--Asians, Native Americans, Blacks, and Jews were vilified" by the US cinema, says Jack G. Shaheen, a former CBS consultant on Mid-East affairs and professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University.

"Ponder the consequences," Shaheen says. "In February 1942, more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent were displaced from their homes and interred in camps; for decades blacks were denied basic civil rights; American Indians were displaced and slaughtered; and 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust." This is what happens when people are dehumanized, he contends. And filmmakers have played a major role in creating a climate that leads to such abuses.

Now the danger is that all Arabs--some 265 million people in 22 Arab states plus 3.5 million in the US and millions more living around-the world--will be stereotyped as terrorists in films and animations. Unfortunately, characterizing Arabs in this way has been the norm rather than the exception in the film industry since its inception. "From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy No. 1--brutal, heartless, uncivilized, religious fanatics and money-mad cultural `others' bent on terrorizing Westerners," writes Shaheen in his latest book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.

For his research, Shaheen reviewed nearly every Hollywood movie that featured ...