Muslim Heroes on Screen 1st Edition

Daniel O'Brien
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Muslim Heroes
on Screen
Daniel O’Brien
Muslim Heroes on Screen
 Daniel O’Brien

Muslim Heroes
on Screen
Daniel O’Brien
Southampton, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-74141-9    ISBN 978-3-030-74142-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74142-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank:

Professor Michael Williams at the University of Southampton for pro-
viding valuable feedback during the early stages of this project;
Assistant Professor Ghassan Moussawi at the University of Illinois for
reviewing the introductory pages during the later stages of prepara-
tion; and
Gary Kramer for his heroic task of reading various chapter drafts and for
his comments that invariably sharpened my thinking.
Thanks also to Lina Aboujieb and Emily Wood at Palgrave Macmillan,
and Jasper Asir at Springer Nature.
Much gratitude to my parents, Susannah and Raymond O’Brien, who
indulged my childhood obsession with the films of Ray Harryhausen.
A final note of gratitude to the late Kerwin Mathews, whose portrayal
of Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad provided the initial impetus for
this book.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Thieves of Bagdad: The Cinematic Metamorphosis of an

Islamicized Hero 33

3 The Voyages of Sinbad: From Hollywood Cartoon Stooge

to Global Fantasy Icon 67

4 Moutamin and the Mahdi: The Honourable Muslim

Ally/Enemy in El Cid and Khartoum117

5 Saladin: The West’s Favourite Muslim?145

6 Representing the Unrepresentable: Muhammad, The

Message, and South Park185

vii
viii Contents

7 Epilogue: ‘The baraka has not deserted me’—American

Expansionism and Muslim Resilience in The Wind and the
Lion205

Bibliography217

Author Index237

Subject Index245
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) 10

Fig. 2.1 The Thief of Bagdad (1924) 43
Fig. 2.2 The Thief of Bagdad (1924) 45
Fig. 2.3 The Thief of Bagdad (1940) 54
Fig. 2.4 The Thief of Bagdad (1940) 55
Fig. 2.5 The Thief of Bagdad (1940) 56
Fig. 3.1 Invitation to the Dance (1956) 83
Fig. 3.2 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) 89
Fig. 3.3 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) 91
Fig. 3.4 Captain Sindbad (1963) 96
Fig. 3.5 The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) 104
Fig. 3.6 The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) 106
Fig. 3.7 Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) 110
Fig. 4.1 El Cid123
Fig. 4.2 El Cid123
Fig. 4.3 Khartoum138
Fig. 4.4 Khartoum140
Fig. 5.1 The Crusades (1935) 159
Fig. 5.2 The Crusades (1935) 161
Fig. 5.3 King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) 165
Fig. 5.4 King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) 167
Fig. 5.5 Kingdom of Heaven (2005) 178
Fig. 6.1 The Message (1976) 197
Fig. 7.1 The Wind and the Lion (1975) 212
Fig. 7.2 The Wind and the Lion (1975) 213

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Films drawing on Middle Eastern or Arabian tropes and characters have

been a recurrent aspect of Euro-American cinema since the silent era.
Many of these early productions feature heroes marked as both Western
and white, such as Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik (1921). There is, how-
ever, a counter-tradition of protagonists who, though usually played by
actors of European descent, are explicitly portrayed as ‘Other’ to Euro-­
American audiences. Yet these characters exhibit few of the problematic
traits this label routinely confers. Whether derived from folklore, such as
Sinbad, or history, notably Saladin, these figures are often conflated with
a wider cycle of ‘Arabian Nights’ fantasies that highlight ‘exotic’ spectacle
and are generally regarded as either escapist entertainment of negligible
importance or pernicious examples of ‘brownface’ and/or ‘whitewash-
ing’. This book makes the argument that Euro-American screen depic-
tions of Sinbad, the Thief of Bagdad, and other Arab-identified heroes are
more complex and nuanced than such limited readings allow. This is espe-
cially the case in terms of the multitudinous, ever-shifting concepts and
assumptions that inform their Muslim identity as Western filmmakers cre-
ate it.1 My concern is not so much the accuracy of this conferred status,

1
In fact, the majority of the global Muslim population are Indian, Pakistani, Indonesian,
Malaysian, or Bangladeshi. Yet Euro-American cinema and media discourse in general have
made the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ virtually synonymous (cf. Shaheen 4; Gottschalk and
Greenberg 5).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
D. O’Brien, Muslim Heroes on Screen,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74142-6_1
2 D. O’BRIEN

but the extent to and manner in which it imbues their overall representa-
tion that is notably at odds with the majority of screen Muslims who are
often rendered as bystanders, victims, or antagonists. I contend that these
characters, however Westernized, possess a cultural significance which
cannot be fully appreciated by Euro-American audiences—from whatever
interpretive vantage point—without reference to their distinction as
Muslim heroes and the associated implications and resonances of an
Islamicized protagonist.
At the risk of perpetuating Euro-American generalizations that sur-
round Islam, the latter is, at the very least, a complex, evolving network of
multi-faceted historical, geopolitical, cultural, and religious phenomena
which have been simplified, essentialized, and distorted in much Western
discourse. The post-9/11 tendency to (re)cast Islam as a retrograde, alien
ideology that threatens liberal democracies—which has roots in Medieval
European attitudes—shows little sign of abating (cf. Garcia 28; Dajani and
Michelmore 55; Morgan and Poynting 2). The Euro-American media
emphasis on exceptional negative stereotyping and open hostility renders
Islam in heavily ideologized, propagandized, and fictionalized terms that
offer minimal insight or analysis (cf. Said 1997: xlviii, lxx; Dajani and
Michelmore 53–4). I also draw on theories of Orientalism, popularized by
Edward Said’s seminal, if contested, 1978 study.2 Said argues that Europe
and America3 created a schismatic image of the ‘Orient’ as Other, con-
trasted and opposed to the Occidental world (2019: 1–2). ‘Orient’ in this
context refers to a perceived ‘geographical, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic
unit’, as constructed and reproduced by Western countries over the course
of centuries (2019: 50, 166, 201). Where Westerners are ‘rational, peace-
ful, liberal, logical’, what Said terms Arab-Orientals ‘are none of these
things’ (2019: 49) and, it seems, incapable of becoming so. In this

2
For example, Humberto Garcia criticizes Said for the anachronistic application of an
East-West binary to the early modern period (xi), while Daniel Martin Varisco and Joshua
David Bellin note the objection to Said’s implication that Orientalist fantasy transcends his-
tory, seemingly impervious to individual, cultural, or geopolitical circumstances (Varisco
2007: 252; Bellin 75). Nickolas Haydock endorses Said’s ‘mutual implication of imperialism
and representation’ yet observes that the latter’s scholarly credentials ‘have been devastat-
ingly questioned by many’ (2008: 127n.13). My own small contribution is to query Said’s
citation of Western governments as ‘stabilizing influences’ (2019: 201), in terms of
Orientalism or any other field.
3
For the purposes of this book, the terms America and American refer to the United
States, unless otherwise stated.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

scenario, only a Westerner can be entrusted to manage the Orient and to

know its totality (2019: 256). Thus, the Orient serves as both a validation
of colonial power, affiliated with knowledge, and an object of self-­
contemplation (cf. Said 2019: 1, 27, 32; Said 1997: xlix), while denying
the colonized any right or even ability of self-representation (cf. Said
2019: 32; Varisco 2007: 40, 290).
Furthermore, Europeans have repeatedly remoulded their identity and
shored up a sense of self via ongoing interaction with and reference to
non-Europeans (cf. P. O’Brien 16; Wade 38). This process remains ongo-
ing and new iterations of Orientalism, such as neo-Orientalism (Asef
Bayat) and fractal Orientalism (Ghassan Moussawi), address the further
complexities of continued colonialism. Islam in particular became a refer-
ence point, often framed in adverse terms, for the gradual construction
and assertion of European identity (cf. Jonker and Thobani 4). The
Muslim has been systematically and consistently Othered in religious, eth-
nic, and racial terms and consequently proved fundamental to shaping the
Western worldview, through the Reformation to the globalization era (cf.
Akbari 1; Blanks and Frassetto 2, 3; Jonker and Thobani 2).4 Simultaneously,
there has been considerable, if often unacknowledged, cultural similarity,
exchange, and assimilation (cf. Blanks and Frassetto 4; Morey and Yaqin,
207). In the American context, for instance, it is argued that Arab-Islamic
figures were appropriated by and woven into the fabric of American cul-
ture and collective consciousness during the nineteenth century, exerting
an influence on the national and personal imaginary (cf. Friedlander
363–4; Berman x–xi).
While this book is not intended as a study of Islam, I provide back-
ground material on this religious-ideological-political-sociocultural phe-
nomenon to anchor my arguments based around a series of film case
studies. My approach contextualizes characters and performers on various
levels—historical, economic, industrial, and racial—while examining their
reception in terms of media response. Primary research sources include
film-related journals such as Variety, Boxoffice, Monthly Film Bulletin, and
American Cinematographer, alongside more mainstream outlets, to
underpin my discussion of the films’ contemporary contexts, in terms of
both production and release. One of my methodological tools is textual

4
The situation is of course more complicated than this. For instance, Akbar S. Ahmed
states that hostile attitudes to Muslim men exist in India and even Pakistan, accompanied by
a comparable homogenizing essentialism (xvi).
4 D. O’BRIEN

analysis, and this book offers an in-depth study of a wide range of films,
many of which have not been examined previously in detail, especially in
terms of their Islamic content. I focus in part on the status of the protago-
nists in regard to narrative function and dialogue and visual factors, such
as costume, make-up, lighting, and framing. While relatively few of these
films are widely considered to be major contributions to cinema culture
and history, my analysis of particular roles and titles explores how Muslim
heroes have been deployed on the Western screen by a white, Christian-­
dominated industry across numerous eras.
If it is tempting to think of this relationship in terms of a symbiotic
interplay between West and East, Christian and Muslim, this approach
must be recognized as both problematic and inappropriate since Muslims
were largely absent from the case studies examined in this book. As noted,
the history of Euro-American Muslim representation is concerned largely
with self-identification and definition, rather than producing knowledge
of the Islamic world.5 Writing in 1997, Said stated that Western culture
and discourse had little place to contemplate, let alone articulate or por-
tray Islam in a sympathetic fashion (6). I argue that mainstream American
and European cinema has provided such a space, one where portrayals of
Muslims can be sensitive to cultural nuance and religious detail. These
depictions are often both conceived and received through an investigative
lens anchored in Orientalist framing, yet their modes of representation—
historical, romantic, or fantastic—may enable them to transcend its param-
eters and confines. Most of the Euro-American world, if not entirely
ignorant of Islam, will only ‘know’ it from a narrow, incomplete, and
biased interpretive viewpoint. Within this context, it is important to exam-
ine how and speculate on why some filmmakers depict Muslim figures as
heroic protagonists and the ways in which audiences may understand
them. In the following section I will outline Euro-American perceptions
and representations of Islam prior to the cinematic age. I then provide an
overview of the broader depiction of Muslims in film, a definition of the
term ‘hero’, and the criteria that signify ‘Muslim’ for these figures.
The term ‘Islam’ may be translated, or transliterated, as surrender or
submission, specifically to God’s will (cf. Gregorian 6). A monotheistic
Abrahamic faith originating in the Middle East, neither monolithic nor
wholly defined by its religious aspect, Islam can be characterized as a

5
As with Sir Richard Burton and his ‘studies’ of Muslim men’s sexualities during the nine-
teenth century.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

multiethnic, highly influential civilization built and advanced by Muslims

(cf. P. O’Brien 12, 13), which also refracts the great diversity of Muslim-­
majority countries and the retention of national individuality (cf. Varisco
2005: 1, 8; Khattak 9; Jung 1). By and large, Euro-American cultures have
taken an essentialist, reductive approach to Islam that ignores national,
political, sectarian, or ethnic affiliations, regarding it as an aggressive com-
petitor, not least in military terms, and as a challenge to Christianity (cf.
Said 1997: 4–5).6 A Muslim may be defined as one who submits to God
(cf. Gregorian 6), though some maintain that this is a relatively modern
term, little used before the second half of the twentieth century (cf. Berger
20).7 The Qur’an8 can be characterized as a collection of discourses deliv-
ered by the Prophet Muhammad during the last two decades of his life. It
consists mainly of short passages of religious or ecumenical teaching, argu-
ments against opponents, commentaries on current events, and rulings on
social and legal matters, all taken as the word of God, as dictated to the
Prophet via the angel Gabriel (cf. Gibb 3).
From the Middle Ages into the early Renaissance, Christian commenta-
tors depicted Islam, in Said’s phrase, as ‘a demonic religion of apostasy,
blasphemy, and obscurity’ (1997: 5). Suzanne Conklin Akbari notes how
medieval literary cultures both rejected Islam and sought to integrate
aspects of it, citing Dante’s vision of paradise as drawing on the Mi’raj,
which recounts Muhammad’s night journey to Heaven and Hell (5, 262;
cf. Khattak 50; Southern 55).9 Islam was both dangerous and alluring,
officially an unassimilable anathema yet also enculturated, however

6
David Tyrer argues that Muslim identities disrupt and implicitly challenge Western dis-
tinctions and categories relating to race, religion, and secularism, resisting Eurocentric clas-
sification (167, 168). Furthermore, specific historical geopolitical factors are often sidelined
in Western discourse on Islam, as with the late 1960s rise of militant piety, in countries such
as Egypt, Lebanon, and later Iran, as a reaction against secular modernity and the perceived
failures of socialism and Pan-Arabism (cf. Elgamri xi; McAlister 200).
7
Imam Dr. Abduljalil Sajid defines Muslims as an ethno-religious group who in Euro-
American discourse are often constructed or construed as a distinct race (1–2).
8
The title of this sacred text translates literally as ‘recitation’.
9
S.A. Nigosian stresses that the link can only be assumed rather than proven (81, 102,
128), while Annemarie Schimmel asserts that this possible influence ‘cannot be excluded’ as
the sources were well known in the medieval Mediterranean world (219; cf. Shalem 3). Karla
Mallette cites Miguel Asín Palacios’ monograph La escatología musulmana en la Divina
Comedia/Muslim Eschatology in the Divine Comedy (1919) as initiating this debate, while
stating that the author’s argument lacks ‘a plausible means of transmission of Islamic notions
of the afterlife to Dante’ (190).
6 D. O’BRIEN

superficially, on various levels (cf. Akbari 5; Shohat and Stam 58). Akbari
argues that the loaded term ‘Saracen’, frequently though not exclusively
applied to Muslims during the medieval era, manifested in European lit-
erature and cultural production as dark, malformed, and irredeemable (cf.
Blanks and Frassetto 3), yet also as white, well-proportioned, and assimi-
lable (Akbari 156). While the white European stood as the norm in medi-
eval discourses of masculinized bodily diversity, some Saracens came close
to matching him (160). For example, Baligant, in the French epic poem
La chanson de Roland/The Song of Roland (c.1040–1115), has an attrac-
tive, European-looking body (163). Thus, the supposed gulf between
Christian and Muslim could be problematized and implicitly challenged
within certain European cultural contexts.
The first significant Muslim presence in Europe remains a source of
contention. While the eighth century has been cited (cf. Obaid 12), others
maintain there was minimal Western awareness of Islam until the sixteenth
century, linked with the expanding Ottoman Empire (cf. Khattak 7–8).10
This era also marked a growing European interest in Islamic culture, man-
ifested in forms such as design, language, and theatre (cf. Khattak 50).
Hammood Khalid Obaid cites The Battle of Alcazar (1589), by George
Peele, as the first English play to feature a Moor in a major role, followed
by William Percy’s Mahomet and His Heaven (1601) (x). Obaid argues
that both works are topical constructions refracting contemporary local
and national issues and events; neither can be taken as representing exist-
ing knowledge of the Muslim Other (x). The Digby Mary Magdalene is a
late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century play, where the redeemed Mary
converts pagans to Christianity (cf. Wade 22, 23). As Erik Wade notes, the
term ‘Muslim’ is not used, yet the heathens invoke Muhammad, and their
association with idolatry and carnality refracts Christian propaganda of the
era (31, 22–3, 30, 32–3). Islamic characters and motifs featured frequently
on the Elizabethan stage (Obaid 2), just as Protestant Queen Elizabeth I
established relations with Muslim Barbary states, especially Morocco, both
parties recognizing a common enemy in Catholic Spain (137; cf. Hawting
74).11 While Islam was favourably regarded, in part at least, by
10
Andrew Jotischky argues that for most Europeans, Muslims were a distant reality before
the twelfth century, with rare exceptions such as the Iberian Peninsula (26; see Chap. 4).
Furthermore, Islam as a religion was barely understood in the West (26).
11
Elizabeth I also made successful overtures to the Ottoman emperor Murad III, believing
the latter to rule the only military power capable of maintaining the balance of control in
favour of anti-Spanish factions (cf. Inalcik 330; Ansari 26).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire, by the late nineteenth century

much of the Muslim world had been colonized (cf. Khattak 133). In this
context, many Western stereotypes developed to be employed and per-
petuated more or less unconstrained and unchallenged, even within
Muslim countries (cf. Khattak 133).12 Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst identi-
fies the 1857 Indian rebellion as the point when the hugely diverse Muslim
communities came to be defined by the British ruling elite as homoge-
nized, racialized, minoritized13 religious actors, and as subjects of empire
who must submit to imperial power (3, 7, 8, 49–50, 132). Furthermore,
they were regarded as possessing inherent, intractable, yet transmittable
traits that included the potential for jihad, a theological, textual, and legal
category here reduced to a violent religious fundamentalism (7, 12).14
Events from the 1970s, including oil disputes, the Iranian Revolution,
and the American hostage crisis,15 consolidated and calcified the predomi-
nant Western view of Islam as being a fixed set of premodern attitudes and
beliefs16 unaffected by the multiplicity of contextual factors in play since its
foundation in the seventh century (cf. Said 1997: l, 36; Dajani and
Michelmore 57–60; Ansari 389; Elgamri xi; Mamdani 18; Gottschalk and
Greenberg 124). This attitude has been encapsulated as a modern expres-
sion of medieval perceptions that advances Western political, military, and
industrial interests (cf. Dajani and Michelmore 55; Elgamri 5; Arjana and
Fox 3). Karen F. Dajani and Christina Michelmore address the idea of a
manufactured ‘Green Peril’,17 in the form of a threatening Islamic funda-
mentalism (55). The latter replaced the Soviet Red Peril at the behest of
the American foreign-military policy establishment, as an effective means

12
Addressing the British context, Humayun Ansari identifies a new sense of cultural supe-
riority emerging in the early nineteenth century; a combination of colonialism, stereotyping,
and technological advantage fed a prejudice towards non-white and/or non-Christian peo-
ples as mental and moral inferiors (59–60).
13
Defined by Morgenstein Fuerst as ‘the systematic process by which a ruling elite denies
one group access to power through local, national or […] imperial politics’ (50).
14
Jihad may be broadly defined as a struggle or striving, external and internal, to achieve a
praiseworthy goal in line with Divine precept.
15
Melani McAlister argues that these events led to Islam becoming the major signifier of
‘the imagined geography’ of the Middle East, rather than oil wealth, Arabs, or Christian
Holy Lands (200). The dominant American perspective reconfigured this political-religious
phenomenon into ‘the essential character of an entire region’ (200).
16
Often assumed to be also antimodern (cf. Mamdani 18).
17
A term attributed to Jules Régis Debray (cf. Mamdani 21), a French journalist and
academic.
8 D. O’BRIEN

of mobilizing popular support for defence expenditure and American

interventionism (55). Mahmood Mamdani notes how this menace is sup-
posedly even more fearsome than the USSR as it lacks ‘rational self-­
restraint’ (21), deriving from fanaticism rather than calculated geopolitical
powerplay.18 Khambiz GhaneaBassiri argues that, in times of crisis, national
unity may be sustained and strengthened ‘by ascribing undesirable values
to religious out-groups’, Muslims being an obvious and familiar target
(70).19 These attitudes and assumptions have been refracted, in various
forms and to varying degrees, in Euro-American film production.

Screening Muslims
Case studies aside, space does not allow for more than a partial survey of
Euro-American films that feature Muslim settings and characters. I will
confine myself here to examples from the late silent era, when cinema was
well established as an industrial and cultural entity, then discuss some later
titles before engaging with debates over films produced from the 1980s
onwards. With these provisos in mind, it can nevertheless be stated that
the history of Muslim screen representation is marked by an enduring
ambivalence, whatever the period or location. For instance, the German
film Der müde Tod/Destiny (1921), partly set in ‘the city of the faithful’20
during ‘The Holy Month of Ramadan’,21 depicts the muezzin call to
prayer and an imam22 with his Qur’an. Other Muslims, however, are
shown as blade-wielding fanatics who thirst for infidel blood. The caliph
likens the Christian in love with the ruler’s sister to ‘a mangy dog’ and has

18
Mamdani states that any actual peril from this source is a direct legacy of the American
attempt in the mid-1980s ‘to harness extreme versions of political Islam in the struggle
against the Soviet Union’ (119). Groups trained and sponsored by the CIA acquired three
key operative tools: terror tactics, holy war as political ideology, and transnational recruit-
ment (163). The long-term effects of this policy are vividly illustrated in the Franco-
Mauritanian film Timbuktu (2014), where a multinational jihadist force delivers strictures via
loudhailer yet exhibits little grasp of Islam—the troops are more interested in European
soccer teams—and is largely concerned with misogynist subjugation.
19
GhaneaBassiri also claims that the United States in particular has employed this strategy
as a pattern of governance ‘that has often obfuscated the political and economic sources of
the crisis to the benefit of the state’ (70).
20
Mecca? Bagdad?
21
The annual commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad’s first revelation.
22
An Islamic leadership role that is centred on the local mosque while also extending to the
wider community.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

him buried up to his neck. A more nuanced approach is found in Les contes
de mille et une nuits/The Tales of a Thousand and One Nights (1921), a
French production with a cast and crew consisting largely of Russian émi-
grés.23 The Muslim heroine, a shipwrecked princess, is shown at prayer,
her bowed head touching the sand. Stranded in a brutish pagan land,
where belief in Islam is a capital crime, the princess is saved by the king’s
son, who was secretly converted to the faith by the vizier who raised him.
This depiction of Islam allows for miracles, or at least divine intervention,
as when a written message descends from heaven, decreeing ill-fortune for
the king and his people if the prince is harmed. Having scorned this divine
warning, the entire court is turned to stone. The prince’s climactic rescue
of the princess is aided by heavenly fire which appears at his invocation.
Evoking a Euro-American literary trope of persecuted Christian lovers
(e.g., The Last Days of Pompeii, 1834; Quo Vadis, 1896),24 The Tales of a
Thousand and One Nights appears to depict Islam as the One True Faith,
and thereby displacing Christianity, though any potential controversy is
mediated by the explicitly fantastical setting. On a more personal level,
themes of persecution and exile would have held especial resonance for
Russian nationals who had recently fled the new communist regime.
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/Waxworks (1924) includes an episode based
around the Bagdad caliph Haroun al Raschid. As played by Emil Jannings,
a major German film star, he is a semi-comic figure, short and overweight,
with his bulk emphasized by a vast bulbous turban. A polygamist with
hundreds of wives, he prioritizes sexual exploits, pursuing a baker’s wife.
The put-upon baker finds sanctuary seated within the arc of an Islamic
crescent on a domed rooftop. Whatever the significance of this image,
religious or otherwise, the resolution highlights Haroun’s dubious patron-
age rather than Muslim values. The German animated film Die Abenteuer
des Prinzen Achmed/The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) has been
cited for its respectful treatment of Islam (cf. Shaheen 46). The film exhib-
its such Muslim-inflected tropes as a banner bearing a crescent moon and
a star, along with calls to prayer from minarets. However, a caliph’s oath,
‘By the beard of the Prophet’, is problematic, suggesting a trivialization,
or ignorance, of the religious context. Prince Achmed’s invocation of
Allah’s grace is linked with female capitulation to patriarchal control, often

23
The edition under review is an abridgement prepared for home viewing, entitled The
Arabian Nights. The original version is believed lost.
24
Both books had been adapted into films several times by the early 1920s.
10 D. O’BRIEN

cited in Euro-American discourse as a prime example of Muslim subjuga-

tion. The penultimate shot of the film, in its surviving version, is a long
view of four muezzins calling from towers, as the sun rises in the distance,
the men raising their arms then bowing (Fig. 1.1). This image is associated
with the restoration of normalcy and order, which could be read as an
endorsement of Islam. The final shot, framing Achmed with his family and
fiancée, may be interpreted as affirming this perspective, yet the adven-
tures depicted manifest little sense of an Islamic milieu.
The Hollywood-produced The Desert Song (1929) is a white saviour
narrative that depicts Muslims and their religion as fundamentally alien to
the West, or at least France, birthplace of the masked hero. The latter
serves as the leader of Moroccan Riffs, without their suspecting his true
identity. This implies an inherent superiority over a people who, it seems,
cannot comprehend the basic Western virtues, let alone embrace them.
Conversely, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), one of Universal’s
series of Arabian Nights spectacles (see Chap. 2), offers a clear wartime

Fig. 1.1 The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

 1 INTRODUCTION 11

parallel: better to die resisting tyranny than face a living death under the
foot of an oppressor. At the end, the Mongol flag emblematizing the
occupation of Bagdad is replaced by a green flag bearing Arabic script and
a crescent moon. Whatever the intentions of the filmmakers, this imagery
both invokes Islam and links it with deliverance and freedom. Later
American examples refract a conservative retrenchment whereby Islam is
casually trivialized, if not openly condemned. The Desert Hawk (1950), set
in ancient Persia, associates the Muslim faith with sexually available young
women, described as the ‘fairest flowers of Islam’. The eponymous hero
invokes the Qur’an and Allah to protest his romantic and marital fidelity,
yet at this point he is posing as the film’s archvillain, whose own appeals to
Islamic ideals are blatantly bogus. Counterexamples to this approach are
discussed in the case study chapters.
One of the more notable depictions of a historical Muslim protagonist
is Lion of the Desert (1980), the second and last feature film directed by
Moustapha Akkad, who made the birth-of-Islam epic Al-Risalah/The
Message (1976, see Chap. 6). Like its predecessor, Lion of the Desert was
Libyan financed, yet the production drew heavily on Euro-American per-
sonnel both sides of the camera. Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn plays
Omar Mukhtar, a Libyan Bedouin, who from 1911 to 1931 led the resis-
tance against occupying Italian forces. Associated from his first scene with
Islam, the Qur’an, and education, Mukhtar is calm and understanding,
finishing class early so that his pupils may watch street entertainers. His
insistence on making one final point25 underlines the conviction and deter-
mination that mark both his religious observance and his abilities as a mili-
tary leader. Walking through the burnt-out ruins of his home village,
Mukhtar question his decisions while holding a singed Qur’anic tablet,
which emblematizes both the dangers the rebels face on a daily basis and
the values which make these risks and sacrifices worthwhile. It is notable
that the politically savvy Mukhtar looks beyond Islam to further his cause,
seeking international recognition of the struggle for freedom. He refuses
to be lectured on Islamic doctrine by a condescending Italian bureaucrat
and knows that the honourable peace sought by his compatriots is impos-
sible under Fascist colonialism. Concerned with nation, ethnicity, and
tribe, Mukhtar is defined and represented largely through his religious
identity. A scene where he addresses his men in a cave evokes the Prophet

25
The importance of balance in all things, illustrated by the spectacles poised on
Mukhtar’s finger.
12 D. O’BRIEN

Muhammad’s similar refuge during the journey from Mecca to Medina

(see Chap. 6). Having been captured, his ritual prayer is witnessed by a
‘decent’ Italian officer who is well aware of his own side’s moral and spiri-
tual bankruptcy. Mukhtar’s sentence of death is calmly received as a return
to God and he is framed on the gallows, Qur’an in hand for a final reading.
A medium close-up emphasizes not so much the rope around his neck as
a last prayer, Mukhtar content to die at the hands of his enemies in the
service of a just cause.
The science-fiction film Pitch Black (2000) is unusual for its genre in
featuring a major character explicitly identified as a Muslim. Black actor
Keith David plays Imam,26 one of several spacecraft passengers who crash
land on a desert planet only to find their lives in further peril. Turbaned,
bearded, and robed, Imam is dismissed by the film’s antihero, Riddick
(Vin Diesel), as ‘some hoodoo holy man’.27 Leading his young followers
in prayer, Imam is on hajj or pilgrimage. He exhibits both optimism and
faith, finding signs from Allah where Riddick sees only self-interest and
brute survival. The location of water is treated as a cause for celebration.
Prayer rugs and beads have positive connotations, in contrast to their
depiction in many American films.28 Imam states that hajj refers to self-­
knowledge as well as knowledge of Allah. In this sense, he and his fellow
survivors are now on the same hajj, whatever their religious beliefs or lack
thereof. Iman serves as a trusted member of the group, in contrast to fugi-
tive convict Riddick, and in some ways is treated as just another person
trying to make the best of a bad situation. He speculates that the creatures
which threaten them operate largely by sound and rightly cautions his fel-
low humans that the phase of darkness referenced in the film’s title will be
long lasting. While it would be a stretch to argue that Imam’s Muslim
faith facilitates the redemption of Riddick, he does at least guide the latter
towards alternative ways of thinking which contribute to both men’s
deliverance. In the sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Imam is inte-
grated into both the public and domestic space, as community leader and
family man. Faced with alien invasion, he recruits Riddick’s help and draws
enemy troops away from his wife and daughter. Devout in the face of

26
The character is not otherwise named. Some coverage refers to him as Abu al-Walid,
though this name does not appear on the credits for this film or its sequel.
27
Hoodoo may refer to traditions of Black American spirituality, esoteric knowledge, or
folk magic, though the film does not pursue this angle.
28
See for instance Executive Decision (1996), discussed below.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

death, he submits to Allah’s will rather than be transformed, or converted,

to the dark religion of the Necromongers.29 Imam’s unshakeable faith
helps to ensure the survival of his family and spurs Riddick’s fight back
against the literally soul-stealing villain.
Rubina Ramji argues that cinematic Islam continues to refract and
endorse longstanding Euro-American perceptions that rarely stray from
the homogenous, monolithic, and essentialized (1). At best Islam is mys-
terious and exotic; at (usual) worst it is violent, confrontational, and bar-
baric (2, 1). Old stereotypes of lustful, desert-dwelling bearded sheiks on
camels have simply been replaced or supplemented by new stereotypes—
hijackers, kidnappers, and terrorists (2). Waleed F. Mahdi identifies three
distinct processes by which Hollywood has downgraded, or degraded,
Arabs and Muslims from human to nonhuman/animal status: denigra-
tion, naturalization, and alienation (148). While this approach may appear
overly schematic, not to say extreme, all three factors can be seen in play
across a variety of American films, with a consistency evocative of political
and ideological disempowerment (cf. Mingant 178). Similarly, Nolwenn
Mingant identifies a longstanding Hollywood practice whereby Middle
Eastern characters are denied proper voice and thereby stripped of their
humanity, whether in terms of fractured English and/or pleading tones
(Three Kings, 1999; The Hurt Locker, 2008), or muteness (The Hurt
Locker), coupled with bodies reduced to silhouettes to achieve an audiovi-
sual blankness (176, 178, 179).30
In Three Kings, set during the First Gulf War, the American hero has his
wounded arm treated by Muslim rebels to the sound of Muslim prayer, yet
exhibits scant regard for either their cause or their religion. His

29
The film plays on the theme of renouncing religious faith in the name of survival.
30
In a similar ploy, Muslims are rendered as mostly distant figures who barely impinge on
a narrative or diegesis concerned with Euro-American protagonists. See for example Jarhead
(2005), A Mighty Heart (2007), and Kajaki/Kilo Two Bravo (2014). Episode six of
Generation Kill (2008) gives screen-time to a young Iraqi woman, fluent in English, who
questions the American military presence, the need for permission to travel in her own coun-
try, and the reasons for bombing Bagdad, her native city. Though a rare shift in focus from
the central marine battalion, this scene can be read as tokenistic and didactic, not least when
the woman declares that the American operation is an oil-based war of aggression, not libera-
tion. Argo (2012) depicts the civilians of revolutionary Iran as either a threatening mob or
isolated individuals, such as a housekeeper loyal to her Canadian employers; American culpa-
bility for this upheaval is acknowledged then sidelined. In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), an
Afghan fixer refuses to work with an American journalist who puts both their lives at risk, yet
returns to her side as the narrative requires, negating his previous agency.
14 D. O’BRIEN

subsequent enlightenment and redemption are firmly entrenched in the

white saviour tradition. The Hurt Locker, set largely in Bagdad, does not
entirely silence the locals, though Arabic dialogue is untranslated. An Iraqi
professor and soldier speak fluent English in polite fashion, while the lat-
ter’s bafflement with the protagonist’s humour and demeanour is shared
by his American colleagues. An interpreter who seeks the protagonist’s
help to save an involuntary suicide bomber is treated dismissively as a nui-
sance rather than an asset. Physically the locals serve largely as background
colour and atmosphere.
Ramji cites Reagan-era films such as Iron Eagle (1986) and The Delta
Force (1986) to evidence her assertion that the Hollywood narrative of
Islamic threat ‘has become a constant imagination of impending terror-
ism’ (3). Both films explicitly reference the recent Iran hostage crisis that
arguably facilitated the President’s first election victory.31 In Iron Eagle,
the minaret and muezzin are visually linked with machine gun emplace-
ments and armoured vehicles, as the call to prayer dominates the
soundtrack. Yet any threat to the United States is nullified by an American
teenager who singlehandedly beats the aerial might of a (fictional) Middle
Eastern country. The Delta Force focuses on the terrorist hijacking32 of an
airplane filled largely with American tourists. The leader33 is framed in
close-up as he prays in Arabic, connoting a man of faith, yet is then shown
beating female flight attendants with his gun. Vocally anti-American and
anti-Zionist,34 the terrorists are equated with Nazis as they identify and
segregate Jewish passengers, then torture and murder an American ser-
viceman. Needless to say, the hijack is foiled by the eponymous heroes,35
with the terrorist leader flambéed into oblivion rather than paradise by
Reaganite action hero Chuck Norris.
The James Bond series, regarded as an Anglo-American enterprise, did
not follow this route. The Living Daylights (1987), references ongoing

31
Ayatollah Khomeini is a pervasive presence throughout The Delta Force, in terms of
images and verbal references. See also Argo.
32
The film prevaricates over the hijackers’ national origin, hinted to be either Palestinian
or Lebanese.
33
Played by white American actor Robert Forster, who wears brownface make-up and
speaks in accented English.
34
Here treated as synonymous with antisemitic.
35
Based on a United States Army elite special operations force involved in counterterror-
ism. The film evokes the 1976 Israel Defense Forces raid on Entebbe airport, in Uganda,
where Jewish hostages were held by Palestinian and West German hijackers.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

American-Soviet antagonism, focused on the latter’s invasion of

Afghanistan and American support for rebel mujahideen forces. Bond
(Timothy Dalton) forms an alliance with Kamran Shah (Art Malik), a local
leader. Shah’s first appearance plays on negative Muslim stereotypes: he is
abused in a Russian jail, his hands clutching the cell bars as he pleads for
mercy in an ‘ethnic’ accent, while the jailer mockingly invokes Allah.
Liberated by Bond, Shah reappears elegantly dressed and now speaking in
a refined ‘regular’ British-Asian accent.36 Unwilling to serve as Bond’s
lackey, Shah sets conditions for a joint mission that will benefit them both.
In visual terms, he dominates the frame as much as Bond does during
these scenes and is highlighted in imposing low-angle close shots as he
negotiates with 007. Shah also takes care of his forces, risking his life to
save an injured man from the advancing Russians. It is notable that the
film does not openly depict Shah as a Muslim, focusing rather on the char-
acter’s Anglicized traits—such as an Oxford education—and status as a
Bond confederate. The Living Daylights sidesteps more problematic
aspects of mujahideen activities. Rambo III (1988), which highlights the
Cold War context, also presents them as heroic freedom fighters against
the occupying Soviet troops. While Rambo’s mission—to rescue an old
army friend—is ostensibly personal, rebel leader Masoud regards the con-
flict as a holy war. After a Soviet massacre, Rambo declares that this is now
his war and effectively becomes a mujahideen. Offered Allah’s blessings by
Masoud and branded a terrorist by the Soviet commander, Rambo tri-
umphs as part of a collective endeavour that evokes, however spuriously,
an Islamic identity.
Navy Seals (1990) casts its shadowy Muslim antagonists as deceivers,
thieves, and murderers. The leader articulates his reasons for hating
Americans—condemned as invaders, hypocrites, and killers—and justifies
his own actions as retaliatory. This perspective is, however, given little
weight and his statements are contradicted by a female journalist, whose
half-Lebanese parentage invests her with both neutrality and authority.
These terrorists despise the West and care nothing for Islam, treating
Muslim pilgrims as hostages and human shields. The journalist records a
television feature on ‘True Islam’, which cites the religion in terms of tol-
erance, equality, justice, antiterrorism, and kinship to Christianity and

36
Malik is Pakistani-English.
16 D. O’BRIEN

Judaism. While this counter to negative Muslim stereotypes is tokenistic,37

and distanced from the viewer via the television framing, it is unusual for
an American film of this era.
True Lies (1994) has no interest in depicting such niceties, pitting
American secret agent Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) against ter-
rorist Salim Abu Aziz. The latter is played by Art Malik, who portrayed the
heroic mujahideen leader in The Living Daylights. Aziz, by contrast, leads
the Crimson Jihad, a name which invokes Western notions of bloody fun-
damentalist violence committed in the name of Islam. Aziz is introduced
undercover in a Washington DC art gallery. Having infiltrated the United
States capital, if not yet the Capitol, he reveals his base nature by verbally
and physically abusing a female cohort who displeases him. Though not
unhandsome by Western aesthetic standards, Aziz is framed in harsh, hori-
zontal shadows that mark and break up his face, stressing his sinister,
Othered essence. Aziz is known as Sand Spider, a less than human status
conveyed further through a series of images that highlight his wild fanatic
stare, as observed by Tasker on a monitor.38 Aziz is not depicted as an
overt sexual threat to Western women, yet his outrages are often gen-
dered, as when he uses a woman as a human shield, holds Tasker’s wife at
knifepoint, and kidnaps his teenage daughter. The danger posed by Aziz is
diminished through ridicule, such as camera batteries failing as he records
his threat to the American people, and a groin trauma that confirms his
ultimate impotence in the face of American resilience, both national and
familial.
Executive Decision (1996), another hijacking drama, associates the
Qur’an, prayer beads, and by extension Islam with terrorist atrocities.39
Aside from reworking The Delta Force, a decade on, the film ups the ante
by placing plans for an attack on America inside the Holy Book.40 None of
which is countered by the leader’s chief henchman belatedly turning

37
Images of Muslims at prayer and digs at CIA intransigence are unlikely to have gained
much traction at the time, especially in the film’s country of origin.
38
Once again, this brutal terrorist leader condemns Western nations, and America in par-
ticular, as killers of women and children, and as cowardly bombers of cities. The hypocrisy—
and illegitimacy—of this claim has already been established, not least in the image of Aziz
resting his hands on a stolen nuclear weapon. Similar strategies of representation continue to
be employed in American films, such as the recent Rogue Warfare trilogy (2019, 2019, 2020).
39
Images of Muslim men at prayer are associated solely with acts of violence.
40
After public complaints of anti-Islamism, most home video and television versions of the
film were reedited to remove perceived offensive content.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

against him and claiming their mission has nothing to do with Islam or the
will of Allah. Air Force One (1997) repeatedly invokes Iraq and Saddam
Hussain as a clear and present danger to the United States, yet the villains
here are Russian and Kazakhstani ultranationalists. While Kazakhstan is a
Muslim-majority country, albeit secular by constitution, the film makes
nothing of this. Perhaps the producers felt these antagonists lacked suffi-
cient audience recognition and impact without linkage to the number one
American bogeyman of the era.41 Black Hawk Down (2001), loosely based
on real events, is set in Somalia during the 1992–1993 civil war when
American-led UN Peacekeepers were assigned to keep order. The depic-
tion of Islam is clichéd, with an aerial shot of a minaret as the faithful are
called to prayer, then weaponized, as a man bowed down on a beach rises
to shoulder his firearm. Thus, Islamic imagery and observance are again
the province of militant fanatics (cf. Mingant 174). The film acknowledges
the presence of UN troops from Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country, yet
leaves their contribution vague, with the implication that they are not
equal to the Americans.
It is argued that the post-9/11 climate generated a more heteroge-
neous mix of films, which attempted to redress the previous imbalance of
Muslim representation, offering greater complexity (cf. Ramji 16; Mingant
168).42 Mingant identifies a tendency to give Middle Eastern characters ‘a
new power over language, word, and action’ (179). For instance, Syriana
(2005) is cited for its relatively nuanced depiction of Muslims, not least in
terms of ethnic and national diversity (cf. Ramji 10). A young Pakistani
immigrant in an unnamed Arab country is faced with language barriers,
unemployment, and police brutality, finding refuge in an Islamic school
that offers sustenance for both mind and body. Most of the non-English
dialogue is subtitled, still a rarity at this time. Complexity need not of
41
The Russian terrorist leader refers to the American mass murder of Iraqis for cheaper oil.
42
Even United 93 (2006), which reconstructs one of the 9/11 hijacks, hints at intragroup
tensions and disagreements among the terrorists. That said, stereotypes still proliferate (cf.
Ramji 16). Act of Valor (2012) has terrorists detonate a bomb in an ice-cream van, sur-
rounded by children. In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), the only visually promi-
nent Iraqi is an insurgent framed in prolonged close-up as he is stabbed in the neck by Lynn,
his head inverted in the frame and haloed by his blood. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
grafts anti-Muslim tropes onto an unrelated narrative of people-smuggling on the United
States-Mexico border, with prayer rugs, darker skins, and the Arabic language linked to an
assault on white America. The Swedish television series Kalifat/Caliphate (2020) replays the
argument that young Muslims cut off from their roots and/or alienated from their environ-
ment, whether community or family, are especially susceptible to radicalization.
18 D. O’BRIEN

course equate with subtlety, depth, or a radical revision of Muslim repre-

sentation to counter decades of ingrained negative stereotyping. Mingant
argues that Syriana highlights similarity as much as difference between
American and Middle Eastern characters (185). While these parallels are
present, the film also deploys familiar anti-Muslim tropes. The Islamic
school has an agenda of anti-West, antiliberal, and anti-Christian indoctri-
nation, not to mention a cache of stolen American weapons. The call to
prayer is heard over images of an American agent’s tortured, mutilated
body. The Pakistani youth, recruited by the school’s leader, records a mar-
tyrdom video before participating in a suicide bombing. In Rendition
(2007), Anwar (Omar Metwally) is an Egyptian chemical engineer long
resident in America and married to a white American woman. Westernized
and to a degree Americanized, though not a citizen, he is abducted,
stripped, shackled, and tortured on the order of a senior CIA operative.
While the film stresses the harshness and injustice of this treatment,
Anwar’s predicament is sidelined in favour of depicting the emotional toll
exacted on his supportive wife43 and the soul-searching of a conscience-­
stricken CIA officer. The film also equivocates over exonerating Anwar—
who has the expertise to make a bomb and confesses, under duress, to
contact with a known terrorist—while the key evidence against him, an
incriminating mobile phone, remains unresolved.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) employs a flashback structure to
depict how Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistan-born New York finan-
cial analyst, becomes a CIA suspect in a terrorist kidnapping back home.
A Princeton graduate, Khan subscribes to the American doctrine of equal
opportunity, seeking the high professional and social status he believes his
parents are now denied in Pakistan. Detached from his cultural and reli-
gious roots, he appears to be losing his sense of identity, rather than
becoming a ‘true’ American. Disoriented by television coverage of the
9/11 attacks,44 Khan responds less with anger or sorrow than a sense of
awe at the terrorists’ audacity, putting himself at odds with the ground-
swell of American public feeling. Despite this reaction, he claims that he
couldn’t choose a side after 9/11: the decision was made for him via

43
A match cut depicts both of them enveloped in shadow, suggesting that her mental suf-
fering is on a par with his torment.
44
Conveyed through a series of jump cuts.
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

government-sanctioned intimidation and humiliation (an airport strip

search,45 an FBI interrogation), alongside regular verbal abuse. The film
raises various strands of moral, political, and ideological complexity. As a
university lecturer in Pakistan, Khan teaches his students that violent revo-
lution may be viewed as an acceptable form of social change, with the
caveat that analysis and debate are not synonymous with endorsement,
propaganda, or indoctrination, whatever the CIA may believe. These con-
cepts gain little traction, with Khan stating that America and Pakistan both
follow forms of fundamentalism, in business and politics, treading a path
of amoral reductivism that wrecks innocent lives. His own stance seems
precariously balanced between (every)man of conscience and CIA stooge.
Body of Lies (2008) contrasts the tactics of CIA agent Roger Ferris and
Jordanian security chief Hani Salaam (Mark Strong) as they pursue terror-
ist leader Al-Saleem. As the film’s title suggests, Ferris is not concerned
with strict veracity, making empty promises of protection for informers.
Hani insists that their working relationship, and tentative friendship, must
be based on truth. Placed centre-frame in sharp close-up, with Ferris posi-
tioned on the side, out of focus, Hani has a visual dominance to underline
his laying down of terms. Where Hani recruits a jihadist as an informant,
claiming it will make him a good Muslim, Ferris frames an innocent man,
to draw Al-Saleem, and gets him killed. Hani disowns Ferris as a liar who
violated their friendship yet also spares the latter a painful death, emerging
from the light to rescue the captive CIA man from figurative and literal
darkness. Adopting a pragmatic, even Machiavellian approach to combat
terrorism, Hani succeeds where the CIA, with all its resources, could not,
capturing Al-Saleem through his inside man. While Ferris is fluent in
Arabic and affects a knowledge of the Qur’an, his ignorance of the local
Muslim culture leaves him both adrift and a liability in the Islamic world,
refracting the wider failings of American foreign policy.
Moustafa Bayoumi identifies a cycle of films, including The Siege (1998),
The Kingdom (2007), and Traitor (2008), which focus on Black American-­
Arab understanding and friendship, with a clear implication that the for-
mer ‘know better than whites how to talk to Arabs’ (117).46 Bayoumi links
this trope with a Black tradition of seeking transformative antiracist,

45
Lest the point be lost on the viewer, a medium close-up of the naked Khan merges with
a dust cloud formed by one of the collapsed Twin Towers.
46
Three Kings also plays on this idea, with a Black American praying alongside the Muslim
faithful, albeit to Jesus—a Prophet in Muslim doctrine—rather than to Allah.
20 D. O’BRIEN

anti-­imperialist alliance with Arab and Muslim regions (123). I suggest it

facilitates another agenda. The Black American serves as a mediator
between his white seniors and the Arab-Muslim ally; the latter thus
observes the American-decreed agenda without being fully incorporated
into the team or recognized as an equal. Any appreciation of their abilities
is depicted as the personal response of a figure whose own minority status
is rarely elided, even if not explicitly problematic.
In The Siege, Tony Shalhoub, a Lebanese-American actor, plays Frank
Haddad, a New York-based FBI agent partnered with Anthony Hubbard
(Denzel Washington). Depicted as a dedicated professional, Haddad
deploys both logic and instinct. He is also humanized, or rather
Americanized, employing local colloquialisms, playing football, and dis-
playing a keen sense of humour.47 His family life is depicted as warm and
affectionate and includes attendance at a religious service, alongside
Hubbard and other colleagues. Fluent in Arabic, Haddad serves as
Hubbard’s translator, often in high-risk situations. He advocates a hard
line with suspected Arab terrorists48 and, more contentiously, seems dis-
missive of American civil liberties laws. Haddad elbows a Palestinian sus-
pect in the face and is reprimanded by Hubbard, the film’s unwavering
embodiment of American fair play. Haddad’s perspective is challenged
after terrorist attacks in New York prompt the declaration of martial law
and the internment of Arab Americans, including his teenage son.
Referring to himself as an FBI ‘sand nigger’, he quits on the grounds that
his 20-year American citizenship and ten years with the Bureau count for
nothing in the new political climate. Haddad and his family are no longer
Americans, rather Arabs in America and therefore both automatically sus-
pect and disqualified from basic human rights. For all the rote melodrama
of these scenes, and the tokenistic resolution,49 the point is made that Arab
Americans, whatever their religion, have no effective public voice.

47
In terms of costuming, Haddad wears a blue shirt, which carries warmer, less formal
connotations than white. Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg argue that the Westernized
Haddad has minimal association with Islam, in contrast to the terrorist leader, which tends
to endorse the supposed link between Muslims and religiously inflected violence (62).
48
Haddad states that this is the way things are done in his (unnamed) home country, so
therefore neither originating in nor intrinsic to United States law enforcement practices.
49
Hubbard brings Haddad back into the FBI fold and their renewed bond is affirmed as
they jointly gun down their terrorist enemy. The mistreatment of Arab Americans, Haddad’s
family included, is attributed to a rogue general, downplaying any wider culpability, not least
in regard to institutional attitudes.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

The Kingdom features a Saudi Arabian police officer, Colonel Faris Al

Ghazi, played by Arab-Israeli actor Ashraf Barhom. After a terrorist attack
on an American oil compound, Faris is obliged to work with an FBI team,
led by Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx). Shown as a humane man, who pro-
tests a brutal interrogation, Faris acknowledges local problems but will
not accept criticism from patronizing American agents. Both sides are
depicted as plagued by internal dissent and interdepartmental conflicts
which hamper the fight against a common enemy. Depicted in his domes-
tic environment, Faris is a good husband, father, and son, and also a
devout Muslim, leading his family in prayer. Faris gradually bonds with
Fleury, their growing empathy affirmed with a series of prolonged close-­
ups and an image of the men firing their weapons in unison during a res-
cue operation.50 When Faris is cut down in the line of duty, another
exchange of intense close-ups shows Fleury holding his dying colleague,
and declared friend, assuring him that their mission was a success. Faris has
proved his worth, with the ultimate sacrifice, yet only Fleury bears testa-
ment to the fallen officer and the film makes it clear that the terrorist
threat will inevitably persist for generations to come.
Traitor conflates these two figures in the form of Samir Horn (Don
Cheadle), a Sudanese- American. Formerly with the United States Army
Special Forces, Horn now operates as a freelance arms dealer, first seen
offering explosive to Yemeni terrorists. Visually associated with confine-
ment and shadow, he is regarded by American intelligence as an opportun-
ist rather than a fanatic, and not trusted by any side, his darker skin
contrasted with both Arabs and white American agents. In jail, he is
mocked by fellow prisoners for his Muslim stoicism and observance, as
when he shares his food with a stranger. It is implied that this behaviour is
merely a strategy to gain the trust of an incarcerated fundamentalist
leader,51 yet the film has already hinted otherwise. A 1978 prologue shows
the young Samir’s Muslim observance, in terms of prayer and Qur’anic
study, just as his life is shattered by the car bomb that kills his father. This
scene subverts the Euro-American practice of equating Islam with

50
Fluent in English, Faris has visited the United States, training at Quantico, and enjoys
American sports and television shows. Thus, Fleury is not required to gain any understand-
ing of his new friend’s language, culture, or traditions.
51
The film’s visual motifs include a chess board, a conventional means of denoting schemes
and agendas as yet not fully revealed.
22 D. O’BRIEN

terrorism, the latter instead depicted as an assault and outrage upon the
former.52
Horn is revealed to be a deep-cover American agent who reports to an
older white man.53 Isolated in the frame, he expresses guilt over a covert
operation that resulted in unplanned casualties. A low-angle close-up
depicts the angst-ridden Horn seeking consolation and reassurance in his
faith, eyes closed, hands raised in prayer. This focus on a devout Muslim,
who serves as a willing agent for international security despite great per-
sonal cost, physically and mentally, is arguably unprecedented in Euro-­
American cinema. The film’s penultimate scene is a somewhat perfunctory
encounter with a white FBI man, whose exchange of Qur’anic quotes with
Horn—related to the taking and saving of innocent lives—appears to offer
a racially inflected establishment endorsement of the latter’s choices.54 The
problematic aspects of this scene are visually overwritten by the film’s final
shot. The relocated Horn is once more at prayer, his face tightly focused
in medium close-up. Samir’s head rises to be bathed in sunlight, connot-
ing at least a momentary sense of peace, harmony, and clarity informed by
his Muslim faith and identity.
More recently, a series of films depicting post-9/11 American opera-
tions in Iraq and Afghanistan refracts a wariness towards Muslims where
the development of mutual trust is possible but problematic and usually
fleeting. The British-produced Battle for Haditha (2007) is perhaps an
anomalous outlier to the cycle in its depiction of an actual incident in
2005 Iraq. Employing a nonprofessional cast of former American service-
men and Iraqi civilians, the film centres on the planning, execution, and
aftermath of an IED attack on an American convoy. Battle for Haditha
aims to humanize all parties, even those involved in terrorist acts or mili-
tary atrocities. Locals try to maintain a semblance of normal life, aware
that Al Qaida-led insurgency is worsening the situation. There is tension
between combat-weary home-grown fighters and more zealous foreign
recruits, with the former being paid to undertake missions. Fatigued
American ground troops regard any Iraqi as a potential enemy, not

52
Horn later asserts that the real traitors are the traitors to Islam, a loaded statement that
seems to be applied specifically to his current predicament.
53
The latter views their mission—as a war to be won at all costs, with pawns sacrificed
where necessary—in terms not dissimilar to those of Horn’s main terrorist contact.
54
The agent’s line ‘You’re a hero, Samir’ can be read as an empty valorisation, directed at
a man who will not simplify or sanitize his actions in these Americanized, or
Hollywoodized, terms.
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

realizing that the DVD seller who banters with them in English is an insur-
gent. Caught between Al Qaida and the Americans, noncombatants face
being killed as either collaborators or traitors. Post IED attack, the result-
ing panic, fear, and anger trigger lethal retaliation in almost any direction.
As the film makes clear, American slaughter of innocent Iraqis serves Al
Qaida’s interests in the propaganda war.
Green Zone (2010), set in 2003 Bagdad, is concerned with the search
for Weapons of Mass Destruction, with an emphasis on flawed American
intelligence, interdepartmental conflicts, coverups, and political and media
pressures. The key Iraqi character is Freddy (Khalid Abdalla),55 who warns
American troops of a Sunni Ba’athist plot involving General Al Rawi, an
associate of Saddam Hussein. Pinned down by a wary soldier, Freddy’s
agitated manner refracts the film’s overall visual design (unstable framing
and rapid edits). Embedded in this volatile environment, he is at least in
tune with what is happening at ground level. A veteran of the 1987 Iran-­
Iraq war, which impaired his body but not his will,56 Freddy is established
as a voice of experience and authority. He points out American ignorance,
irrationality, and misuse of resources to protagonist Roy Miller, an Army
Chief Warrant Officer. Aware that Americans distrust him, Freddy will not
be reduced to a Middle East cliché and stands up to Miller’s brusque treat-
ment. Uninterested in financial incentives, he is concerned with the people
and future of his country, pursuing an agenda that Miller does not com-
prehend. Freddy clashes with Miller over Al Rawi, who is an asset to the
American but a power-hungry traitor to the Iraqi. Freddy’s viewpoint pre-
vails when he kills Al Rawi, which effectively terminates Miller’s covert
mission. Placed centre-frame, Freddy assumes visual and narrative domi-
nance as he informs Miller ‘It is not for you to decide what happens
here’.57 While this statement may appear simplistic, given the geopolitical
complexities in play, it underlines Freddy’s perspective: whatever Miller’s
intentions, his actions serve the interests of America, not those of Iraq.
Lone Survivor (2013) is based on a real-life Navy SEAL mission in
Afghanistan. The target, a Taliban leader, is depicted with a montage of

55
Freddy gives his birth name as Farid Youssef Abdul Rahman. The film’s credits list him
only as Freddy.
56
Freddy has a prosthetic leg.
57
This stance is taken up in Mosul (2020), where a Nineveh SWAT team hunt down ISIS
forces in the title city. Drawing on conventions of the patrol film, Mosul highlights issues of
national identity and legitimacy; the low-key ending suggests that the long process of recon-
struction and reconciliation begins at the level of immediate family.
24 D. O’BRIEN

decapitation, spurting blood, and frenzied faces. The film is notable for an
extended sequence where the wounded protagonist, Marcus Luttrell, is
rescued from Taliban troops by Pashtun villagers.58 At huge personal risk,
they save Luttrell from beheading—evoking the earlier scene—and resist a
massed Taliban attack. This thematic and visual emphasis on a brave but
near-helpless Westerner finding deliverance at the hands of Afghan strang-
ers is uncommon in American cinema. While the villagers have conversa-
tions, the Pashto dialogue is not subtitled, leaving their reasons for helping
Luttrell unclear within the film’s diegesis. A caption presaging the end
credits explains that the villagers were abiding by Pashtunwali, a 2000-year-­
old code of honour whereby an individual must be protected from their
enemies at all costs. What the film does not mention is that Pashtuns are
Muslims and would also be abiding by Islamic codes of sanctuary. The
reasons for this omission must remain a matter of speculation. It is possi-
ble the filmmakers felt that any invocation of Islam unsettling established
stereotypes would complicate or compromise the film’s reception, not
least in terms of its box-office performance. Whatever the case, depicting
Muslims as selfless and courageous figures who save the American hero’s
life appears to have been an insurmountable issue.
The most commercially successful of these films is American Sniper
(2014),59 though this biopic of Chris Kyle is atypical of the cycle on vari-
ous levels. Set in Iraq, during Kyle’s four tours of duty, the focus is largely
on his mental state as he eliminates Iraqi men, women, and children who
seek to kill American troops. Close shots and flashbacks connote a man
troubled by what he does, yet also aware of his responsibility to brother
soldiers. Kyle’s stoic devotion to duty is contrasted with the sadism of an
insurgent leader, whose torture of an innocent boy causes the American
great distress. While not all Iraqis are depicted as threats, the civilians are
regarded as a liability for not following American dictates rather than as
people in need of protection. Sand Castle (2017), set in 2003 Iraq,
humanizes some of its Muslim characters, suggesting lives beyond the
immediate conflict, and challenges the default American suspicion of
locals. The film also stresses that any Iraqi who helps American troops is
risking their life, graphically illustrated by the burnt corpse of a school

58
One of the men, Mohammad Gulab, literally offers Luttrell a helping hand, and he
requires support to walk even a short distance.
59
The film achieved a worldwide gross of over $547 million on a budget of $59 million
(source: www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt2179136/?ref_=bo_se_r_1).
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

principal. 12 Strong (2018) places American troops in uneasy coalition

with an Afghan warlord in a post-9/11 counterstrike against Taliban
forces. While friendship is possible on an individual level, the warlord
stresses that America is just another tribe in his country, an ally one day, an
enemy the next.
As Battle for Haditha indicates, British-produced films have tended to
follow different routes in the depiction of Muslims, likely due to a combi-
nation of historical, sociocultural, industrial, and economic factors. In
Britain, Muslim settler communities can be traced back to the mid-­
nineteenth century, though British Muslims’ social behaviour and sense of
self have probably been determined as much by community, ethnic, famil-
ial, and cultural factors as by ideas of Islamic identity (cf. Ansari 24–5;
Kabir 56, 17). Discussing the late 1980s and early 1990s, Humayun
Ansari contends that essential notions of Britishness, steeped in nostalgia,
continued to be perceived as homogenous, Christian, white, and rooted in
past centuries (1), with minimal space or tolerance for nonconforming
aspects. The 1990s also witnessed a heightened hostility to British Muslims
in the context of the Salman Rushdie fatwa and the Gulf War, which slowly
eased off until reignited by 9/11 (cf. Ansari 338, 339). Even before this
seismic event, progress for British Muslims at the turn of the millennium
seemed minimal (cf. Ansari 391). The majority were still largely ghet-
toized, inhabiting diaspora communities forged along ethnic lines, physi-
cally segregated from the majority white population (cf. Ansari 391).
As Ramji notes, post-1980 British films with prominent Muslim char-
acters are often concerned with issues of personal and community identity
(5). My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), set in a Thatcherite Britain of amoral
entrepreneurialism, features Omar, a young Anglo-Pakistani man, negoti-
ating his sense of self on various levels, not least in terms of sexuality.
While Omar is implicitly Muslim, the film barely touches on religion,60
other than his capitalist uncle dismissing it as harmful to Pakistan’s prog-
ress and generally incompatible with making money. My Son the Fanatic
(1997), located in an unnamed Midlands town, East is East (1999), based
in Salford, and the Glasgow-set Ae Fond Kiss (2004) address the 1990s
growth of generation-gap tensions in Muslim communities (cf. Ansari
217). As Ansari observes, most young Muslims attempt to broker several
sets of expectations in terms of home, community, mainstream British cul-
ture, and the mass media (218). My Son the Fanatic concerns a Pakistani

60
Islam is not mentioned by name.
26 D. O’BRIEN

taxi driver, Parvez, whose son, Farid, is engaged to a white woman, the
daughter of a senior police officer. Inhabiting the social margins, Parvez
has faced a lifetime of racialized rejection and exclusion.61 Farid, though
offered the chance of greater integration via marriage, is moving towards
radical Islam and rejecting British values and conventions. Parvez has
adopted Western traits, including whisky and jazz, while his son eschews
cultural mix, looking to Islam for tradition, belief, and purity. Their grow-
ing estrangement62 is part of a wider schism sited at the local mosque,
where idealistic and confrontational youth clash with their more placid
elders. As the frame fills with angry young British-Asian faces, exclusively
male,63 the father-son conflict turns physical; any chance of reconciliation
heads into the distance alongside Farid and his new brothers-in-arms.
East is East is set in the early 1970s, though the issues explored relate
just as readily to the late 1990s: religious observance, sexuality, relation-
ships, and the realities of life in a multi-cultural inner-city district. Pakistani
immigrant Zahir regards himself as a good Muslim, yet his traditionalist
views put him at odds with his English wife and their Anglicized children.
While Zahir cites Islam as a religion of equality and community, East is
East highlights such contentious issues as arranged marriage, forced
mosque attendance, compulsory circumcision, and corrosive ideas of sta-
tus and honour. Despite the largely humorous tone, the controlling, phys-
ically violent Zahir seems a greater threat to his family than the external
prejudices emblematized by politician Enoch Powell and his pro-­
repatriation agenda. Ae Fond Kiss continues this debate while also refract-
ing the Western essentialization and demonization of Islam, here linked to
an aggressive, if minority white racism. The focal interracial romance,
between a Muslim man and a Catholic woman, incurs obstacles and intol-
erance from various factions. While the couple prove resistant to familial,
social, and religious pressures, the upbeat conclusion offers little more
substance than their drunken holiday toast to both Jesus and Muhammad.
The London terrorist bombings of July 7, 2005, form the backdrop for
London River (2009), which depicts how generational divides are not con-
fined to any particular religion or culture. In the aftermath of the attacks,

61
In a nightclub scene, racist remarks directed at Parvez are couched in terms of ‘good-
natured’ humour.
62
Underlined by Farid’s marginal presence for much of the film.
63
Despite their polarized viewpoints, neither Parvez nor Farid have much regard or con-
cern for the women in their community.
 1 INTRODUCTION 27

Ousmane, an African Muslim, and Elisabeth, a white English Christian,

search for their absent adult children, who turn out to be romantically
involved. Elisabeth, widowed by an earlier conflict,64 is wary of the Muslim
neighbourhood where her daughter lives, though the first men she speaks
to are polite, courteous, and helpful. Ousmane fears that his son, a virtual
stranger to him,65 could have become politicized and perhaps even
involved with the bombings. Elisabeth’s hostility to Muslims in general
and Ousmane in particular stems partly from anxiety that her daughter
may have been converted to Islam, with the implication of coercion. As
the parents tentatively bond through a common humanity, and a pervasive
fear for their offspring, Elisabeth accepts that she knew and understood
her daughter no more than Ousmane could relate to his son. The film’s
opening juxtaposition of Christian and Muslim religious observance sug-
gests that Elisabeth and Ousmane find at least a measure of solace in their
respective faiths. However, the revelation of their children’s joint fate as
passengers on the targeted bus, devastating in itself, also means that the
burial service required by Islamic custom will be denied to them.66
The satirical comedy Four Lions (2010) centres on a group of
Manchester-based suicide bombers.67 Opposed to Western imperialism
and materialism, they are nevertheless products of a society and ideology
they profess to despise, not least in their cultural reference points.68 Within
the group there is an ethno-generational clash, as the younger men, of
Pakistani heritage, argue with an older white man,69 who exhibits paranoid
delusions. A sequence in a Pakistan training camp addresses the distinction
between soldier and sociopath and also illustrates the national, cultural,
and linguistic divisions that afflict the supposedly united brethren. Four
Lions shares certain traits with the Palestinian drama Paradise Now (2005),
which contextualizes and humanizes the perpetrators of a terrorist attack
in Israel. Here, retaliation is determined and defined by the economic
hardships and daily degradations of living in an occupied territory built on

64
The British-Argentine Falklands War of 1982.
65
Ousmane readily admits that he played no part in his son’s upbringing.
66
While the film eschews graphic detail, it is intimated that there was virtually nothing left
of the victims.
67
One of whom appears to be mentally impaired.
68
As when the leader, Omar, uses Disney’s The Lion King (1994) to allegorize the bomb-
ing mission for his young son.
69
There have been white British Muslim converts since the late nineteenth century (cf.
Ansari 14).
28 D. O’BRIEN

an ideology of Palestinian inequality and inferiority.70 In Four Lions there

is comparatively little sense of how group leader Omar became radicalized
and ready to both kill and die for his cause. Paradise Now also addresses
the issue of indoctrination, where Allah’s name is invoked to validate
human choices, and the cultural pressures to redeem lost family honour.71
Both films explore the logistics, aesthetics, and language of martyrdom
videos, with a similar emphasis on technical problems, retakes, and off-­
message shopping advice. In each instance, the absurdity of the process
underlines the ideological, political, and spiritual vacuity inherent to these
homemade testaments in particular and to fundamentalist culture in
general.

The Hero Figure

Any attempt to define the term ‘hero’ must inevitably be partial, limited,
culturally informed, geopolitically grounded, and linguistically modu-
lated. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) is cited
as an influential work on comparative mythology, albeit more in terms of
popular success than scholarly rigour.72 The hero is linked to a rites of pas-
sage formula—separation, initiation, and return—which forms the basis
for Campbell’s concept of the monomyth (30).73 The hero’s ultimate
achievement is the realization of ‘unity in multiplicity’, a gift he offers to
all humankind (40). While Campbell references Islam, Muhammad, and
The 1001 Nights, the essentialist nature of his approach to the hero figure,
couched in psychoanalytic terms (cf. Rensma 106–7), is of limited applica-
tion for the purposes of this book. I will explore a more general set of
criteria originating in Euro-American concepts. Simon Williams, discuss-
ing what he terms the epic hero, identifies a number of key aspects.

70
The more recent Egyptian film, Arrest Letter/Detention Letter (2017), takes a pseudo-
psychological approach, with its terrorist leader driven by childhood trauma, class prejudice,
and female rejection.
71
There is furthermore the suggestion that martyrdom serves the Israeli cause in the long
run, making life even harder for the Palestinians left behind.
72
Campbell’s methodology has been criticized for, among other things, a loss of particu-
larity and distinctiveness, a disregard for cultural holism and, in his later work, a tendency to
equate the Oriental with the primitive (cf. Manganaro 165, 166, 176).
73
To paraphrase Campbell: a hero leaves the everyday world for a supernatural realm; hav-
ing won a decisive victory, he returns with the power to grant boons to his fellow man (30).
 1 INTRODUCTION 29

Embodying the most admirable human traits, a hero possesses an extraor-

dinary level of strength, energy, and courage coupled with great ambition,
a clear sense of their goals, and a fearless approach to achieving them
(S. Williams 1, 15). Though not perfect, they offer transient glimpses of
human perfection, often with a religious or divine inflection (1). However,
their exceptional abilities, such as fighting prowess, stem from innate
human strength, rather than supernatural powers or divine intervention
(15).74 A hero, whatever their potential or achievement, is not necessarily
moral or virtuous, especially if accompanied by a presumption or assertion
of authority and/or superiority (1). Thus, any hero who acknowledges or
lays claim to a heroic status is automatically problematic or suspect (1). A
chivalrous hero dedicates their services to causes and beliefs beyond them-
selves, often championing social ideals and norms, while remaining semi
or wholly detached from the wider society (S. Williams 15, 16; cf.
D.A. Miller 163–4).
John W. Roberts, discussing the Black folk hero, argues that the hero
figure should not be regarded or treated as a universal type, any more than
heroism is a standardized and acknowledged behavioural category (1; cf.
D.A. Miller 1). In reality, these qualities are largely determined by historic
and sociocultural factors, with figures and actions deemed heroic in one
context being viewed as unexceptional, questionable, or even criminal in
another. A hero may thus be defined as someone attributed with valued
traits and actions, usually masculinized, ‘that exemplify our conception of
our ideal self’, in terms of individual and collective history, perceived social
needs and goals, and present realities (Roberts 1, 2–3). In cinematic terms,
Richard Dyer states that hero figures are associated with centrality, the
embodiment of values, and self-sacrifice (2002: 75). These qualities are
sometimes linked with concepts of bodily perfection, which may also be
invested with a sensuality or sexuality (2002: 118).
Additional criteria must be invoked to signify a heroic protagonist as
Muslim. It may be argued that this status is not achievable, or even con-
ceivable, within the confines of Euro-American popular culture. Sophia
Rose Arjana notes how Muslim men, in particular, are systematically
dehumanized, stripped figuratively (of legal rights) and literally (as pris-
oners), and excommunicated from the human community (3, 4). While

74
There are notable exceptions to this qualification, including Heracles/Hercules and
Siegfried.
30 D. O’BRIEN

this stance may appear extreme, it invokes real-life instances that have
been repeated numerous times, with the Abu Ghraib scandal being one
notorious example. Arjana admits the existence of ‘positive and even
romantic treatments of Muslims’, such as Saladin (see Chap. 5), yet dis-
misses them as trivial in the context of the ‘overwhelmingly negative’
Western narrative about Islam (8). Obviously, I take a different view and
would point to scholarship on the Muslim superheroes found in comic
books and animated television shows. A. David Lewis and Martin Lund
state that the Islamic prefix inscribes these characters ‘with one or several
markers meant to signify a “Muslim” identity, based in one conception
of Islam or another’ (3). Within this context, the perceived authenticity
of the various heroes or models of Islam is not the main concern. The
very use of the term acknowledges that the creative talents involved,
Muslim and non-­Muslim, and also their critics, have these characters
‘produce, reproduce, represent, and embody one or more of a host of
discursively constructed conceptions of Islam and Muslimness’ (3). I will
return to this argument in relation to filmic representation in the chap-
ters that follow.
Hussein Rashid acknowledges a long and diverse history of what the
idea of the hero means to Muslims, resulting in a plurality of heroic mod-
els (231). In general terms he argues that Islamic conceptions of a hero
will include correct behaviour and an ethical worldview, alongside com-
bative actions; in being responsible to these divinely inspired ideals, the
true Muslim draws themselves closer to God (211).75 Individual achieve-
ment must be integrated with a moral impetus, as the connection between
action and intent is central to Muslim thought (214). Rashid cites John
Renard’s description of a Muslim hero as a behavioural exemplar or role
model as realized in a context of adversity (214). Furthermore, rather than
being self-achieved or self-made, a hero ‘is called by God, and has God-­
given abilities’, which will be used by the former through free will and in
unique ways (214–5). Neither invincible nor immortal, the Muslim hero,
though subject to human frailty, embodies an optimal, extraordinary real-
ization of human abilities (215). Perhaps inevitably, there is both variance
from and similarity to the concepts discussed by Simon Williams. In terms
of the criteria for selecting my case studies, I have focused on films where

From Muslim perspectives, faith and justice may have an interdependent relationship
75

where justice is a manifestation of faith, and faith is cultivated in justice (cf. Rashid 215).
 1 INTRODUCTION 31

the heroic protagonist derives, however distantly, from Islamic history or

folklore, is located in or associated with an Islamic region, and is signified,
explicitly or otherwise, as a Muslim. Put another way, notions of an Islamic
milieu and a Muslim identity are integral to the depiction and appreciation
of these characters and their actions.

Bibliography
Dyer, Richard. Only Entertainment. Second Edition (London and New York:
Routledge, 2002).
Haydock, Nickolas. Movie Medievalism. The Imaginary Middle Ages (Jefferson,
North Carolina and London: McFarland, 2008).
Said, Edward W. Covering Islam. How the Media and the Experts Determine How
We See the Rest of the World (London: Vintage, 1997).
Said, Edward W. Orientalism, 1978 (London: Penguin, 2019).
Varisco, Daniel Martin. Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological
Representation (New York and Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005).
Varisco, Daniel Martin. Reading Orientalism. Said and the Unsaid (Seattle and
London: University of Washington Press, 2007).
 CHAPTER 2

Thieves of Bagdad: The Cinematic

Metamorphosis of an Islamicized Hero

This chapter discusses four Euro-American screen versions of The Thief of

Bagdad. The films were produced over a span of six decades and all of
them draw, to varying degrees, on elements from Alf Layla wa Layla/The
1001 Nights, aka The Arabian Nights. Refracting an Islamic context and
influence, this collection of folk tales has been credited with an instructive
function, based around concepts of love, honour, and social propriety (cf.
Heath 13, 15).1 The 1001 Nights also achieved a pervasive influence in
Western popular culture, not least for its images of Muslims, however fan-
tastical. Much scholarship on the Euro-American production and recep-
tion of Arabian Nights tales deals with the Orientalist framing and
interpretation of these narratives. This framing is primarily in a romantic
or fantastic mode, and so may be understood in more ‘positive’ ways than
contemporary violent representations of Muslims that are rooted in hos-
tile medieval conceptions and agendas. As noted in the introduction, the
social contexts and audience perceptions of Muslims and Islam change
over time and will determine how films are produced and read. Thus, the
motivations behind the 1924, 1940, 1961, and 1978 Thief of Bagdad
films will be different, shaped by contemporaneous views of Muslims or
Islam, and received variously by viewers.

1
Conversely, it has been argued that Arabic versions of the stories (d)evolved over time
into popular entertainment, with no higher literary, moral, or educational purpose, losing
their high caste status and becoming anonymous tracts (cf. MacDonald 370–1).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

Switzerland AG 2021
D. O’Brien, Muslim Heroes on Screen,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74142-6_2
34 D. O’BRIEN

The 1001 Nights

Husain Haddawy identifies four main categories of folktale in The 1001
Nights: fables, fairy tales, romances, and comic/historical anecdotes, with
the overriding theme being ‘the web and weft of Divine Providence’
(1992: x–xi). He identifies eleven basic stories, each broken up over sev-
eral nights (1992: xvi), classifying the rest as later additions of sometimes
questionable provenance. Whatever the diverse ethnic origins of these sto-
ries (see below), Haddawy finds in the Arabic versions of the tales ‘a basic
homogeneity resulting from the process of dissemination and assimilation
under Islamic hegemony’ (1992: xi). This synthesis, ‘that marks the cul-
tural and artistic history of Islam’ (1992: xi), is not necessarily as readily
discernible in the Euro-American renditions. The 1001 Nights first achieved
wide European circulation in a multivolume French-language translation
by Antoine Galland, published between 1704 and 1717, initiating a pro-
cess that has been characterized as appropriation by Western print capital-
ism (cf. M.A. Peterson 97).2 For all the limitations of the Galland work
and its successors, they enabled the stories to exert a major influence on
Western art forms over the ensuing centuries (cf. Ouyang 402).3
Mark Allen Peterson describes The 1001 Nights as ‘an intertextual opus’
derived from—among other, often untraceable sources—Arab and Asian
folktales, Near Eastern mythology, Indian folktales, Ottoman literature,
and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad (97). D.B. MacDonald pin-
points a collection of Persian narratives, Haza ̄r Afsāna/A Thousand
Tales/A Thousand Legends, which is a smaller scale work with different
stories (376–7, 377; cf. Larzul 199; Haddawy 1992: xi). Sylvette Larzul
states that this was likely translated into Arabic in the late eighth century,
then evolved rapidly and radically over subsequent centuries, becoming ‘a
work of mid-level entertainment literature deeply rooted in Arab rather
than Persian culture’ (199). Robert Irwin maintains that the Muslim faith
pervades and, in some cases, dominates the tales; storytellers and audi-
ences alike took it for granted that the majority of the characters were
believing Muslims, albeit subject to human lapses (2009: ix).

2
Galland is said to have drawn on the oldest extant Arabic text, a fourteenth-century
Syrian manuscript, as the basis for his translation (cf. Makdisi and Nussbaum 1–2).
3
Sylvette Larzul asserts that the Galland version and subsequent editions likely gave The
1001 Nights a prominence it had not previously achieved in the Arab world, where few
regarded the text, in whatever iteration, as scholarly literature (200).
 2 THIEVES OF BAGDAD: THE CINEMATIC METAMORPHOSIS OF AN ISLAMICIZED… 35

If the Euro-American image or popular imaginary of Muslims became

almost synonymous with these tales, Shahin Kuli Khan Khattak regards
this process as analogous to basing a knowledge of Christianity solely on
Arthurian legend (56). While both propositions should be treated with
caution, it seems undeniable that, from Galland onwards, Western inter-
pretations of The 1001 Nights were often far removed from accurate depic-
tions of Muslims and Muslim cultures found in Arabic source texts.
According to Irwin, the tales were received in Europe and America ini-
tially as entertainment, and as a source for pastiche or parody (2009: 42).
If so, this perception and accommodation set a precedent that arguably
continues to this day, not least in terms of cinematic renditions. While
Edward Said cites Galland as ‘an Arabist of note’ (2019: 64), other observ-
ers state that large chunks of his text, far from being a faithful translation,
were reconstructed or invented by Galland himself, resulting in content
alien to the Arab world (cf. Khattak 61; M.A. Peterson 98). Mohja Kahf
contends that Galland recrafted the stories in line with contemporary
European tastes, and expunged explicit sexual details, especially those
relating to active female sexuality (112). Khattak argues that Galland did
not always grasp the meaning of the text, resulting in numerous digres-
sions from his sources (61). In the interests of balance, Irwin asserts that
Arab storytellers would likely have known little of the royalty and wealthy
merchant classes described in the tales, offering instead a fantasy version of
a milieu ‘which was no more familiar to them than it was to their audience’
(2009: 120). In the United States, The 1001 Nights proved popular read-
ing from the late eighteenth century, after the War of Independence, and
remained a steady seller in all areas of the country (urban, rural, frontier)
throughout the nineteenth century (cf. Nance 19).4
While The 1001 Nights was enthusiastically received in many quarters,
there were notable dissenters over the decades, not least in the Euro-­
American Christian community. In 1907, The Right Reverend Cameron
Mann, Bishop of North Dakota, published an article comparing it with
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur (1485). Believing The 1001 Nights to
offer ‘a late Mahometan portraiture of life, not the mere rules of the
Koran’ (151), Mann identified an ‘underlying squalor and baseness’
beneath the tales’ attractive, enticing surfaces (151–2), stating that the

4
Susan Nance argues that Middle Eastern Muslim cultures, and The 1001 Nights in par-
ticular, offered nascent America ‘prototypes of luxurious consumption and transformation
that served as metaphors for democratic capitalism’ (20).
36 D. O’BRIEN

book refracted the civilization that produced and approved it (152–3).

Leaving aside the assumption of homogenous contribution and reception,
Mann saw Muslims exposed in The 1001 Nights as avaricious, self-centred,
hedonistic, lustful, materialistic, and brutal, with their religious devotion
merely lip service and gesture to Islamic law (153). This ‘panorama of
hateful and contemptible human beings’ was an antithesis to Le Morte
d’Arthur, which highlights chivalry, devoutness, loyalty, and love, invested
with a clear moral perspective (154–5).5 Whatever the worth or accuracy
of Mann’s summation of the Malory work, his excoriation of The 1001
Nights stood firmly in the European tradition of slandering Muslims in a
manner unfettered by discernible grounded knowledge, astute insight, or
informed analysis.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Irwin asserts that, from the late nineteenth century onwards, the Western
popularity of The 1001 Nights declined, and it ‘ceased to be part of the
common literary culture of adults’ (2009: 2, 274). Only garbled versions
of a few stories, including Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba, lingered in the
Euro-American consciousness (2009: 2, 274). Publishers usually opted
for children’s editions, with the tales carefully selected and bowdlerized
(2009: 2, 274). Nevertheless, early cinema exhibited occasional interest in
‘Arabian Nights’ elements, if only as a basis for otherwise unrelated stories
(see Chap. 3). The 1924 Thief of Bagdad is likely the first major film
inspired by The 1001 Nights (cf. Ouyang 404); in terms of budget, scale,
production values, and media coverage, it is difficult to identify any com-
parable predecessors. The film was produced, co-written and, it appears,
co-directed6 by its star, Douglas Fairbanks, an established Hollywood
celebrity whose name alone ensured weighty publicity for the project
before shooting even started. Casting a white actor7 in an Arab or Middle
Eastern role was unremarkable and relatively common in the mid-1920s.

5
Mann would likely have been appalled by a mid-1930s advert in Photoplay magazine,
which promoted an adult edition of The Arabian Nights, translated by Edward William Lane,
as ‘wonderfully, gloriously different from the simple children’s volume […] rich in the lure
and thrill, fire and passion of the mysterious East’ (February 1935, p.18).
6
Alongside credited director Raoul Walsh.
7
While Fairbanks had a relatively dark complexion (cf. Kapse 217), his public persona was
firmly entrenched as white American. He employed make-up for The Thief of Bagdad to
achieve a bronzed Middle Eastern appearance. According to a later promotion by the Max
 2 THIEVES OF BAGDAD: THE CINEMATIC METAMORPHOSIS OF AN ISLAMICIZED… 37

As discussed in Chap. 4, this practice continued into the 1960s and

beyond, and is hardly unknown in the twenty-first century.8 While
Fairbanks’ previous films were by no means devoid of variety or innova-
tion, The Thief of Bagdad marked a significant departure; his protagonist
both invokes and diverges from his All-American screen persona, associ-
ated with physical health and character-building (cf. Vance 153). My main
focus is the ways in which the depiction of Islam intersects and interacts
with the Thief’s moral transformation and the concept of earned happi-
ness, often linked with the American Protestant work ethic. I discuss the
extent to which the film seeks to establish an audience awareness of Islamic
moral values as manifested in and around Fairbanks’ hero.
A recurring locale in The 1001 Nights, Bagdad was built in Mesopotamia
on the banks of the Tigris river, in what is now Iraq (cf. Gregorian 27).
Syria-based Umayyad Muslims had established a capital at Damascus in
661. An inter-dynastic struggle with the Iraq-based Abbasids,9 who pre-
vailed over the Umayyads, moved the capital to Bagdad in 762, as the
political centre of the Abbasid empire, though as time went on, actual
power was increasingly wielded by provincial dynasties such as the Buyids
and the Seljuks (cf. McCants 114; Berkey 113; Khan 14; Rogerson 354;
Kennedy 2007: 97, 137; Masood 82, 86).10 Regarded as the centre of the
Sunni Muslim world, Bagdad acquired a significance comparable to that of
the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and became associated with a golden
age of prosperity, education, (multi)culture, scholarship, science, and
peace11—a period lasting from the eleventh to the mid-thirteenth

Factor cosmetics company, this was also the ‘first perspiration-proof liquid body make-up’,
especially created for the star (cf. Hollywood Reporter, May 3, 1934, p.10).
8
Richard Dyer contends that, in most Euro-American cultures, people classed as white are
not regarded as a distinct race but represent rather the entire human race, veiling the notion
of ‘whiteness’ as a dominant social, political, and economic construct that reinforces as nor-
mal and natural white ideologies and associated privileges (1997: 3, 9). In this context, white
performers may represent, or replace, non-white people, not despite but because of their
whiteness.
9
The Abbasids claimed descent from al-Abbas, the Prophet Muhammad’s paternal uncle
(cf. Veccia Vaglieri 101).
10
The site of Bagdad was in close proximity to Ctesiphon, capital of the Sasanian, or Neo-
Persian, Empire (224–651), a geographical link that served to establish the Abbasid dynasty
as a legitimate successor to the ancient Persian empires (cf. Gutas 52; Black 21). It also
offered key land and water connections and communications (cf. Kennedy 1986: 135).
11
Hugh Kennedy states that the city saw its share of sieges and unrest over the centuries,
resulting in damage, rebuilding, and partial relocation (1986: 182–3).
38 D. O’BRIEN

centuries (cf. Berkey 114; Gregorian 30–1; Khan 15; Tolan 2013: 7, 21,
86; Gutas 19; Rogerson 354).12 After nearly 500 years as the seat of the
Muslim caliphate, Bagdad was overrun and ransacked by Mongol hordes
in 1258, led by Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan (cf. Gregorian
33–4; Nigosian 33; Lewis xxvi, 137), an event alluded to in the Fairbanks
film. Barnaby Rogerson describes this attack as ‘a holocaust of ancient
skills and learning’, comparable in emotional intensity to European reac-
tion to the fall of Rome (354). Following earlier Mongol raids in the vicin-
ity, the Abbasid caliph Al-Musta’sim was executed13 and most of the city’s
100,000 inhabitants killed (cf. Khan 15, 20; Li Guo 10, 11). Even after
this near-destruction, Bagdad still impressed non-Muslim visitors. In the
late thirteenth century, Florentine Dominican friar, Riccoldo da Monte di
Croce, visited the city, to learn Arabic and convert Muslims. He professed
an amazement, or at least a grudging admiration, at Bagdad’s sumptuous-
ness and beauty, alongside the devotion, generosity, and learning of its
residents (cf. Tolan 2013: 99–100; Bennett 87).
Bagdad entered the twentieth century as part of the declining Ottoman
Empire. During World War I, Bagdad was under Ottoman-German occu-
pation until taken by British forces in March 1917 (cf. Findley 213). A
planned counterstrike came to nothing and the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot
Agreement of May 1916, which divided the Middle East between these
two powers, had already designated Bagdad as a zone of British control
(cf. Findley 213–4, 217–8; Aydin 127, 238n.1).14 In 1920, Photoplay
12
D. Sourdel argues that the Abbasid dynasty is characterized by two tendencies which
became more pronounced over time: the development of religious feeling and the increasing
pomp and luxury of the caliphate, with elements of tension and contradiction between these
aspects (104).
13
Under what historian Charles Mills terms ‘circumstances of peculiar barbarity’ (161).
Rogerson states that Al-Musta’sim was supposedly placed in a velvet bag and trampled to
death by Mongol cavalry, or rolled up in a carpet and beaten to death with clubs, so that
none of his blood would be spilt on the ground (354–5). Rogerson does not elaborate on
why the latter factor was a consideration for the Mongols.
14
Leslie Felperin Sharman discusses both the 1924 and 1940 versions of The Thief of
Bagdad in terms of veiled Western political agendas and imperialist subjugation (15). She
reads the Fairbanks film in the context of British colonial militarism in Iraq (15), though I
would argue that the presence of the archetypally American star both complicates and miti-
gates against this interpretation. Ida Donges Staudt, a long-time resident of Bagdad, noted
that America had not declared war on the Ottoman Empire, allied to Germany, due to the
many American citizens living and working in the region, as teachers, professors, missionar-
ies, doctors, and nurses (xx). Felperin Sharman also cites the expulsion of Mongol invaders
by the Thief as legitimizing Western military supremacy, yet the latter prevails through the
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 MINCE PIES ROYAL. (ENTREMETS.)

Add to half a pound of good mincemeat an ounce and a half of

pounded sugar, the grated rind and the strained juice of a large
lemon, one ounce of clarified butter, and the yolks of four eggs; beat
these well together, and half fill, or rather more, with the mixture,
some pattypans lined with fine paste; put them into a moderate oven,
and when the insides are just set, ice them thickly with the whites of
the eggs beaten to snow, and mixed quickly at the moment with four
heaped tablespoonsful of pounded sugar; set them immediately into
the oven again, and bake them slowly of a fine light brown.
Mincemeat, 1/2 lb.; sugar, 1-1/2 oz.; rind and juice, 1 large lemon;
butter, 1 oz.; yolks, 4 eggs. Icing: whites, 4 eggs; sugar, 4
tablespoonsful.
 THE MONITOR’S TART, OR TOURTE À LA JUDD.

Put into an enamelled stewpan, or into a delicately clean

saucepan, three quarters of a pound of well-flavoured apples,
weighed after they are pared and cored; add to them from three to
four ounces of pounded sugar, an ounce and a half of fresh butter
cut small, and half a teaspoonful of pounded cinnamon, or the lightly
grated rind of a small lemon. Let them stand over, or by the side of a
gentle fire until they begin to soften, and toss them now and then to
mingle the whole well, but do not stir them with a spoon; they should
all remain unbroken and rather firm. Turn them into a dish, and let
them become cold. Divide three-quarters of a pound of good light
paste into two equal portions; roll out one quite thin and round, flour
an oven-leaf and lay it on, as the tart cannot so well be moved after it
is made; place the apples upon it in the form of a dome, but leave a
clear space of an inch or more round the edge; moisten this with
white of egg, and press the remaining half of the paste (which should
be rolled out to the same size, and laid carefully over the apples)
closely upon it: they should be well secured, that the syrup from the
fruit may not burst through. Whisk the white of an egg to a froth,
brush it over the tart with a paste brush or a small bunch of feathers,
sift sugar thickly over, and then strew upon it some almonds
blanched and roughly chopped; bake the tart in a moderate oven
from thirty-five to forty-five minutes. It may be filled with peaches, or
apricots, half stewed like the apples, or with cherries merely rolled in
fine sugar; or with the pastry cream of page 173.
Light paste, 1/2 to 3/4 lb.; apples, 12 oz.; butter, 1-1/2 oz.; sugar, 4
oz.; glazing of egg and sugar; some almonds: 35 to 45 minutes.
 PUDDING PIES. (ENTREMETS.)

This form of pastry (or its name at least) is, we believe, peculiar to
the county of Kent, where it is made in abundance, and eaten by all
classes of people during Lent. Boil for fifteen minutes three ounces
of ground rice[126] in a pint and a half of new milk, and when taken
from the fire stir into it three ounces of butter and four of sugar; add
to these six well-beaten eggs, a grain or two of salt, and a flavouring
of nutmeg or lemon-rind at pleasure. When the mixture is nearly
cold, line some large pattypans or some saucers with thin puff paste,
fill them with it three parts full, strew the tops thickly with currants
which have been cleaned and dried, and bake the pudding-pies from
fifteen to twenty minutes in a gentle oven.
126. Or rice-flour.
Milk, 1-1/2 pint; ground rice, 3 oz.: 15 minutes. Butter, 3 oz.; sugar,
1/4 lb.; nutmeg or lemon-rind; eggs, 6; currants, 4 to 6 oz.: 15 to 30
minutes.
 PUDDING PIES.

(A commoner kind.)
One quart of new milk, five ounces of ground rice, butter, one
ounce and a half (or more), four ounces of sugar, half a small
nutmeg grated, a pinch of salt, four large eggs, and three ounces of
currants.
 COCOA-NUT CHEESE-CAKES. (ENTREMETS.)

(Jamaica Receipt.)
Break carefully the shell of the nut, that the liquid it contains may
not escape.[127] Take out the kernel, pare thinly off the dark skin,
and grate the nut on a delicately clean grater; put it, with its weight of
pounded sugar, and its own milk, or a couple of spoonsful or rather
more of water, into a silver or block-tin saucepan, or a very small
copper stewpan perfectly tinned, and keep it gently stirred over a
quite clear fire until it is tender: it will sometimes require an hour’s
stewing to make it so. When a little cooled, add to the nut, and beat
well with it, some eggs properly whisked and strained, and the
grated rind of half a lemon. Line some pattypans with fine paste, put
in the mixture, and bake the cheese-cakes from thirteen to fifteen
minutes.
127. This, as we have elsewhere stated, is best secured by boring the shell before
it is broken. The milk of the nut should never be used unless it be very fresh.

Grated cocoa-nut, 6 oz.; sugar, 6 oz.; the milk of the nut, or of

water, 2 large tablespoonsful: 1/2 to 1 hour. Eggs, 5; lemon-rind, 1/2
of 1: 13 to 15 minutes.
Obs.—We have found the cheese-cakes made with these
proportions very excellent indeed, but should the mixture be
considered too sweet, another egg or two can be added, and a little
brandy also. With a spoonful or two more of liquid too, the nut would
become tender in a shorter time.
 COMMON LEMON TARTLETS.

Beat four eggs until they are exceedingly light, add to them
gradually four ounces of pounded sugar, and whisk these together
for five minutes; strew lightly in, if it be at hand, a dessertspoonful of
potato flour, if not, of common flour well dried and sifted,[128] then
throw into the mixture by slow degrees, three ounces of good butter,
which should be dissolved, but only just lukewarm: beat the whole
well, then stir briskly in, the strained juice and the grated rind of one
lemon and a half. Line some pattypans with fine puff-paste rolled
very thin, fill them two-thirds full, and bake the tartlets about twenty
minutes, in a moderate oven.
128. A few ratifias, or three or four macaroons rolled to powder, or a stale sponge
or Naples biscuit or two, reduced to the finest crumbs, may be substituted for
either of these: more lemon, too, can be added to the taste.

Eggs, 4; sugar, 4 oz.; potato-flour, or common flour, 1

dessertspoonful; butter, 3 oz.; juice and rind of 1-1/2 full-sized lemon:
baked 15 to 20 minutes.
 MADAME WERNER’S ROSENVIK CHEESE-CAKES.

Blanch and pound to the finest possible paste, four ounces of fine
fresh Jordan almonds, with a few drops of lemon-juice or water, then
mix with them, very gradually indeed, six fresh, and thoroughly well-
whisked eggs; throw in by degrees twelve ounces of pounded sugar,
and beat the mixture without intermission all the time: add then the
finely grated rinds of four small, or of three large lemons, and
afterwards, by very slow degrees, the strained juice of all. When
these ingredients are perfectly blended, pour to them in small
portions, four ounces of just liquefied butter (six of clarified if
exceedingly rich cheese-cakes are wished for), and again whisk the
mixture lightly for several minutes; thicken it over the fire like boiled
custard, and either put it into small pans or jars for storing,[129] or fill
with it, one-third full, some pattypans lined with the finest paste;
place lightly on it a layer of apricot, orange, or lemon-marmalade,
and on this pour as much more of the mixture. Bake the cheese-
cakes from fifteen to twenty minutes in a moderate oven. They are
very good without the layer of preserve.
129. This preparation will make excellent fanchonettes, or pastry-sandwiches. It
will not curdle if gently boiled for two or three minutes (and stirred without
ceasing), and it may be long kept afterwards.

Jordan almonds, 4 oz.; eggs, 6; sugar, 12 oz.; rinds and strained

juice of 4 small, or of 3 quite large lemons; butter, 4 oz. (6 for rich
cheese-cakes); layers of preserve. Baked 15 to 20 minutes,
moderate oven.
 APFEL KRAPFEN.

(German Receipt.)
Boil down three-quarters of a pound of good apples with four
ounces of pounded sugar, and a small glass of white wine, or the
strained juice of a lemon; when they are stewed quite to a pulp, keep
them stirred until they are thick and dry; then mix them gradually with
four ounces of almonds, beaten to a paste, or very finely chopped,
two ounces of candied orange or lemon-rind shred extremely small,
and six ounces of jar raisins stoned and quartered: to these the
Germans add a rather high flavouring of cinnamon, which is a very
favourite spice with them, but a grating of nutmeg, and some fresh
lemon-peel, are, we think, preferable for this composition. Mix all the
ingredients well together; roll out some butter-crust a full back-of-
knife thickness, cut it into four-inch squares, brush the edges to the
depth of an inch round with beaten egg, fill them with the mixture, lay
another square of paste on each, press them very securely together,
make, with the point of a knife, a small incision in the top of each,
glaze them or not at pleasure, and bake them rather slowly, that the
raisins may have time to become tender. They are very good. The
proportion of sugar must be regulated by the nature of the fruit; and
that of the almonds can be diminished when it is thought too much. A
delicious tart of the kind is made by substituting for the raisins and
candied orange-rind, two heaped tablespoonsful of very fine apricot
jam.
 CRÊME PATISSIÈRE, OR PASTRY CREAM.

To one ounce of fine flour add, very gradually, the beaten yolks of
three fresh eggs; stir to them briskly, and in small portions at first,
three-quarters of a pint of boiling cream, or of cream and new milk
mixed; then turn the whole into a clean stewpan, and stir it over a
very gentle fire until it is quite thick, take it off, and stir it well up and
round; replace it over the fire, and let it just simmer from six to eight
minutes; pour it into a basin, and add to it immediately a couple of
ounces of pounded sugar, one and a half of fresh butter, cut small, or
clarified, and a spoonful of the store mixture of page 153, or a little
sugar which has been rubbed on the rind of a lemon. The cream is
rich enough for common use without further addition; but an ounce
and a half of ratifias, crushed almost to powder with a paste-roller
improves it much, and they should be mixed with it for the receipt
which follows.
Flour, 1 oz.; yolks of eggs, 3; boiling cream, or milk and cream
mixed, 3/4 pint: just simmered, 6 to 8 minutes. Butter, 1-1/2 oz.;
sugar, 2 oz.; little store-flavouring, or rasped lemon-rind; ratifias, 1-
1/2 oz.
Obs.—This is an excellent preparation, which may be used for
tartlets, cannelons, and other forms of pastry, with extremely good
effect.
 SMALL VOLS-AU-VENTS, À LA PARISIENNE. (ENTREMETS.)

Make some small vols-au-vents by the directions of page 361,

either in the usual way, or with the rings of paste placed upon the
rounds. Ice the edges as soon as they are taken from the oven, by
sifting fine sugar thickly on them, and then holding a salamander or
heated shovel over them, until it melts and forms a sort of pale
barley-sugar glaze. Have ready, and quite hot, some crême
patissière, made as above; fill the vols-au-vents with it, and send
them to table instantly. These will be found very good without the
icing.
 PASTRY SANDWICHES.

Divide equally in two, and roll off square and as thin as possible,
some rich puff paste;[130] lay one half on a buttered tin, or copper
oven-leaf, and spread it lightly with fine currant, strawberry or
raspberry jelly; lay the remaining half closely over, pressing it a little
with the rolling pin after the edges are well cemented together; then
mark it into divisions, and bake it from fifteen to twenty minutes in a
moderate oven.
130. Almond-paste is sometimes substituted for this.
 LEMON SANDWICHES.

Substitute for preserve, in the preceding receipt, the lemon

cheesecake mixture of page 372, with or without the almonds in it.
 FANCHONNETTES. (ENTREMETS).

Roll out very thin and square some fine puff paste, lay it on a tin or
copper oven-leaf, and cover it equally to within something less than
an inch of the edge with peach or apricot jam; roll a second bit of
paste to the same size, and lay it carefully over the other, having first
moistened the edges with beaten egg, or water; press them together
securely, that the preserve may not escape; pass a paste-brush or
small bunch of feathers dipped in water over the top, sift sugar
thickly on it, then with the back of a knife, mark the paste into
divisions of uniform size, bake it in a well-heated but not fierce oven
for twenty minutes, or rather more, and cut it while it is still hot,
where it is marked. The fanchonnettes should be about three inches
in length and two in width. In order to lay the second crust over the
preserve without disturbing it, wind it lightly round the paste-roller,
and in untwisting it, let it fall gently over the other part.
This is not the form of pastry called by the French fanchonnettes.
Fine puff paste, 1 lb.; apricot or peach jam, 4 to 6 oz.: baked 20 to 25
minutes.
 JELLY TARTLETS, OR CUSTARDS.

Put four tablespoonsful of fine fruit-jelly into a basin, and stir to it

gradually twelve spoonsful of beaten egg; if the preserve be rich and
sweet, no sugar will be required. Line some pans with paste rolled
very thin, fill them with the custard, and bake them about ten
minutes.[131]
131. Strawberry or raspberry jelly will answer admirably for these.
 STRAWBERRY TARTLETS. (GOOD.)

Take a full half-pint of freshly-gathered strawberries, without the

stalks; first crush, and then mix them with two ounces and a half of
powdered sugar; stir to them by degrees four well-whisked eggs,
beat the mixture a little, and put it into pattypans lined with fine
paste: they should be only three parts filled. Bake the tartlets from
ten to twelve minutes.
 RASPBERRY PUFFS.

Roll out thin some fine puff-paste, cut it in rounds or squares of

equal size, lay some raspberry jam into each, moisten the edges of
the paste, fold and press them together, and bake the puffs from
fifteen to eighteen minutes. Strawberry, or any other jam will serve
for them equally well.
 CREAMED TARTLETS.

Line some pattypans with very fine paste, and put into each a
layer of apricot jam; on this pour some thick boiled custard, or the
pastry cream of page 373. Whisk the whites of a couple of eggs to a
solid froth, mix a couple of tablespoonsful of sifted sugar with them,
lay this icing lightly over the tartlets, and bake them in a gentle oven
from twenty to thirty minutes, unless they should be very small, when
less time must be allowed for them.
 RAMEKINS À L’UDE, OR SEFTON FANCIES.

Roll out, rather thin, from six to eight ounces of fine cream-crust,
or feuilletage (see page 345); take nearly or quite half its weight of
grated Parmesan, or something less of dry white English cheese;
sprinkle it equally over the paste, fold it together, roll it out very lightly
twice, and continue thus until the cheese and crust are well mixed.
Cut the ramekins with a small paste-cutter; wash them with yolk of
egg mixed with a little milk, and bake them about fifteen minutes.
Serve them very hot.
Cream-crust, or feuilletage, 6 oz.; Parmesan, 3 oz.; or English
cheese, 2-1/2 oz.: baked 12 to 15 minutes.

Mould for large Vols-au-vents or Tourtes.

Paste Pincers.
 CHAPTER XIX.

Soufflés, Omlets, &c.