The Ugly American In The Arab Mind

The roots of America's image problem in the Middle East

A systematic study exploring American attitudes toward Arabs through American press coverage of Middle East news. Covers the period from 1956-1985.

Selected for Arab America's Best Arab American Books of 2020 list. It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed in the works of Arab American filmmakers themselves? In this innovative volume, Mahdi offers a comparative analysis of three cinemas, yielding rich insights on the layers of representation and the ways in which those representations are challenged and disrupted. Hollywood films have fostered reductive imagery of Arab Americans since the 1970s as either a national security threat or a foreign policy concern, while Egyptian filmmakers have used polarizing images of Arab Americans since the 1990s to convey their nationalist critiques of the United States. Both portrayals are rooted in anxieties around globalization, migration, and US-Arab geopolitics. In contrast, Arab American cinema provides a more complex, realistic, and fluid representation of Arab American citizenship and the nuances of a transnational identity. Exploring a wide variety of films from each cinematic site, Mahdi traces the competing narratives of Arab American belonging—how and why they vary, and what’s at stake in their circulation.

Untangling the world's love-hate relationship with America

This book offers a chronicle of, and a revealing look at, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath. The author, an Egyptian-American journalist living in Egypt, detailed the news coverage and man-in-the-street impressions of Mubarak's fall and Mohamed Morsi's struggle to stay in power. At home in the U.S. as well as in Egypt, he uses his experience as a journalist to explain for Americans the confrontation between Islamists and seculars.

The impact of 9/11 on American politics, the press, and the public mind-set.

Until the attacks of September 11, 2001, few Americans knew anything about Islam, let alone about the distinctions between Sunni and Shi a, the Sufi and Wahhabi, the origins of the Holy Quraan and Shari a law, and the respect that all Muslims, even secular ones, harbor for the prophet Muhammad, his family, and Islamic traditions. In The Sunni-Shi a Divide Robert Betts traces the tortuous history of Islamas sectarian divisions, emphasizing the most important one, the Shi a departure from Sunni orthodoxy.A. Although the majority of Muslims remain faithful to the Sunni sect of Islam, approximately 15 percent subscribe to the Shi a creed. As Americaas involvement in the Middle East drags on, Betts reiterates that policymakers, scholars, and laymen alike must understand the many faces of Islam, the internal forces in the United States that have brought us into these conflicts, and the role of Israel in the regionas escalating tensions. How the increasing hostility between the two main Islamic factions plays out on the world stageas Sunni Turkey, Shi a Iran, and their allies vie for dominanceis of major consequence for everyone, especially financially strapped Europe and the United States.