Hollywood films often feature Muslim “savages” who are exterminated like flies. In True Lies (1994), Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a CIA agent who fights a legion of Arab terrorists who are killed with impunity. To be clear, these are not Muslim monsters: they are human characters (bad humans, but humans nonetheless). Still, the punishment of the Arab bodies is disturbing. Avi Nesher, a former Israeli commando who works in Hollywood as a consultant, “incensed by the sick humor of a scene in which an Uzi tossed down a flight of stairs inadvertently mows down a roomful of Arabs,” had this to say about the scene: “You were supposed to laugh? I fought Arabs and I had Arab friends, but this was completely dehumanizing a group.” This type of film narrative dehumanizes Muslims and helps validate the claim that we have a right to be violent toward the Other. Talal Asad calls this “the right to kill,” which is “the right to behave in violent ways against other people—especially citizens of foreign states at war and toward the uncivilized, whose very existence is a threat to the civilized order.”

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 629