Actor Riz Ahmed is leading the offer to change Muslims seen in cinema by Art and Culture News

Actors Mahershala Ali and Ramy Youssef will decide on a scholarship for young Muslim artists.

British actor Riz Ahmed has made an effort to improve the way Muslims are portrayed in films when a study has shown that they are hardly seen and are shown in a negative light.

Ahmed, the first Muslim to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Metal Star and Best Actor, said on Thursday that the Muslim Inclusion Plan would include funding and mentoring for his Muslim storytellers.

“Representations of Muslims feed the policies that are enforced on the screen, the people that kill them, the countries that invade them,” Ahmed said in a note.

“The data does not lie. This research shows us the extent of the problem of popular cinema, and its cost is measured in lost potential and lost life, ”he added.

Under the title Miss and Maligned, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative features a Muslim character who speaks less than 10% of the best films from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand in 2017-2019.

When they did this, research showed that they were either outsiders or threatening or dependent. About a third of the Muslim characters were perpetrators of violence and more than half were targets of violence.

“Muslims live all over the world, but moviegoers only see a close-up portrait of that community, rather than the way Muslims are seen: business owners, friends and neighbors who are part of modern life,” Al-Baab Khan said. of the authors of the report.

Ahmed, 38, a London-born Pakistani parent, said providing funding would be a game changer to get more Muslim actors, writers and producers into the film and television business.

“If I hadn’t received a scholarship and private donation, I wouldn’t have been able to attend theater school,” he said.

The $ 25,000 scholarship for young Muslim artists will be decided by an advisory committee that includes actors Mahershala Ali and Ramy Youssef and comedian Hasan Minhaj.