Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that'd be helpful.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.
My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.
All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes.
I think goodness is very powerful, but often evil is made more attractive in films. It's a challenge to make goodness appealing.
As an actor, I've given up judgement of evil, as long as it's human evil - we have to see ourselves for what we really are, and we're capable of horrific things.
The evil within the fantasy genre tends to be threatening to the heroes within the story, but not to the reader - or not to the viewer, in the case of cinema - and that's why I think it's more palatable and something that is more easily embraced for a lot of people.
Any film is about heroism: the triumph of good over evil. If you look back at my films, you will see that as a recurring theme.
A kind of racism still exists in the United States, and Islamophobia is a more convenient way to express that sentiment. There has also been an attempt to paint Muslims as enemies of the United States.
'Evil' is quite a blanket term. People aren't the demonic characters we would like them to be sometimes.
Even if you didn't see the movie, you'd see two words you'd never seen put together before - comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly - it's the least offensive word in our language.
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