USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative Releases Muslim Representation Study

Rebecca Sun
·4 min read

USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has turned its eye to a quantitative and qualitative study of Muslim portrayals on television, and the verdict shows there is still vast room for improvement.

Erased or Extremists: The Stereotypical View of Muslims in Popular Episodic Series, conducted with support from Riz Ahmed and his banner Left Handed Films, the Ford Foundation and the Pillars Fund, analyzed the first three episodes from the 100 highest-rated shows in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand from 2018 and 2019. The 200-series sampling yielded one Muslim speaking character for every 90 non-Muslims (a 2 percent share in 2018 and less than 1 percent the following year). These Muslim characters came from a total of 16 shows (8 percent).

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“Muslims make up 25% of the world’s population yet were only 1.1% of characters in popular television series,” said AI2’s Al-Baab Khan, lead author of the study. “Not only is this radical erasure an insult, it has the potential to create real-world injury for audiences, particularly Muslims who may be the victims of prejudice, discrimination and even violence.”

More than 30 percent of the 98 total Muslim-speaking characters identified in the study were depicted as perpetrators of violence, while almost 40 percent were portrayed as the targets of violent attacks. Less than a third (30.6 percent) of characters were female, and Muslim women were also less often written to have jobs (21.6 percent of Muslim female characters, as opposed to 78.4 percent of their male counterparts). The plurality of “employed” Muslim characters were criminals (37.2 percent), while 15.7 percent were in law enforcement. (This mostly applied to men, as almost all of the employed Muslim female characters worked in medicine.)

“The findings in this study reveal how rarely content creators think about including Muslims in popular storytelling — particularly girls and women,” AI2 founder Stacy L. Smith said in a statement. “As a result, viewers would have to watch hours and hours of content before seeing even a single portrayal of a Muslim character — with even more time required to find a portrayal that is not linked to violence or extremism.”

More than half of Muslim female characters were portrayed wearing a hijab, whereas there was no prevailing costuming trend for male characters. The majority (nearly two-thirds) of all Muslim characters spoke English as a second language, with more than half speaking English with a foreign accent and nearly half speaking exclusively in a different language altogether.

“TV shows are the stories we bring into our homes. They play a big part in shaping how we understand the world, each other and our place within it. This study reminds us that when it comes to Muslim portrayals, we’re still being fed a TV diet of stereotyping and erasure,” Ahmed said in a statement. “For Muslims this sends a message that they don’t belong or don’t matter. For other people, we risk normalizing fear, bigotry and stigmatization against Muslims. Networks and streaming services need to embrace their responsibility to ensure Muslims of all backgrounds see themselves reflected in our favorite TV shows. And they would be wise to embrace this gigantic opportunity to reach and connect with an underserved global audience — not just as part of a passing diversity fad but as a decisive shift towards inclusive storytelling.”

Erased or Extremists echoes similar findings from AI2, Left Handed, Ford and Pillars’ Missing & Maligned study last summer on Muslim representation in film. The new report urges storytellers and content creators to cast Muslims in a more varied array of roles to emphasize their inclusion across broader society, and recommends that entertainment inclusion policies include faith-based communities alongside the pre-existing race/ethnicity and other identity groups.

“The Erased or Extremists study reveals the full extent of the problem facing Muslims in television, and the urgent need for solutions that allow for a more expansive landscape of stories,” Pillars Fund co-founder and president Kashif Shaikh said in a statement. “With the Emmy Awards just around the corner, it couldn’t be a more appropriate time to examine whose stories get told onscreen. We hope television industry leaders take the necessary steps to improve their industry’s standards, using resources like this study and The Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion, which provides concrete recommendations for production companies, drama schools, casting directors and others who are seeking to support Muslim storytellers.”

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