Why an Oscar-winning Iranian movie needs to be positioned shrewdly by the US to gain back the ground they lost after the recent act of burning of the Quran
America witnessed a surge in hate crimes against Muslims post 9/11. A report by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology explored that the number of anti-Muslim attacks in America in 2001 increased exponentially from 354 to 1,501 following 9/11. At the same time, US simultaneously invaded two Islamic nations – Afghanistan and Iraq – to fulfil their interests. Consequently, Muslim nations largely consider US as an anti-Muslim country.
In the last few years, the US government and elite intellectual class has attempted to change their cultural moorings and accept Muslims as part of their country. But the Quran burning incident in Afghanistan involving five American servicemen, and the more recent killing of 16 Afghan civilians by an American army man have not helped matters at all.
But where politics and military have failed, the arts might have a solution. In the 84th Academy Awards, an Iranian movie titled ‘A Separation’, directed by Asghar Farhadi, bagged an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. No Iranian movie had ever won an Oscar previously. In addition, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became the first Pakistani ever to win an Oscar Award for her documentary ‘Saving Face’. But really, it’s not that these two did not deserve the Oscar – the outstanding and brilliant quality of these two Oscar winning packages puts that suspicion away – the more important point is that the Academy could have so easily outmaneuvered its members’ votes to deny the Oscars to both – what with the abysmally low level of relations that US has managed to engineer with Iran, Pakistan and the Muslim world in general.
The fact that the Academy awarded these two productions is a largesse, especially considering that not just does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have members of Jewish decent but also that its President, Tom Sherak, is a Jew.
The news of two “Iranian and Pakistani Muslims” winning an “American” award from an academy with “Jewish” members should have been carpet bombed by the US administration through paid media to promote the rigmarole goodwill message to the Muslim world. Such a PR move over two months would have allowed America to gain back much of the ground it lost post the past few anti-Muslim incidents. While Obama was busy churning out apology notes for the Quran burning, there was no note of congratulations from the state department to either the award winners or to Iran and Pakistan as a whole.
America witnessed a surge in hate crimes against Muslims post 9/11. A report by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology explored that the number of anti-Muslim attacks in America in 2001 increased exponentially from 354 to 1,501 following 9/11. At the same time, US simultaneously invaded two Islamic nations – Afghanistan and Iraq – to fulfil their interests. Consequently, Muslim nations largely consider US as an anti-Muslim country.
In the last few years, the US government and elite intellectual class has attempted to change their cultural moorings and accept Muslims as part of their country. But the Quran burning incident in Afghanistan involving five American servicemen, and the more recent killing of 16 Afghan civilians by an American army man have not helped matters at all.
But where politics and military have failed, the arts might have a solution. In the 84th Academy Awards, an Iranian movie titled ‘A Separation’, directed by Asghar Farhadi, bagged an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. No Iranian movie had ever won an Oscar previously. In addition, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became the first Pakistani ever to win an Oscar Award for her documentary ‘Saving Face’. But really, it’s not that these two did not deserve the Oscar – the outstanding and brilliant quality of these two Oscar winning packages puts that suspicion away – the more important point is that the Academy could have so easily outmaneuvered its members’ votes to deny the Oscars to both – what with the abysmally low level of relations that US has managed to engineer with Iran, Pakistan and the Muslim world in general.
The fact that the Academy awarded these two productions is a largesse, especially considering that not just does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have members of Jewish decent but also that its President, Tom Sherak, is a Jew.
The news of two “Iranian and Pakistani Muslims” winning an “American” award from an academy with “Jewish” members should have been carpet bombed by the US administration through paid media to promote the rigmarole goodwill message to the Muslim world. Such a PR move over two months would have allowed America to gain back much of the ground it lost post the past few anti-Muslim incidents. While Obama was busy churning out apology notes for the Quran burning, there was no note of congratulations from the state department to either the award winners or to Iran and Pakistan as a whole.
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