British actor, Riz Ahmed has always spoken out against stereotyping of Muslims in films, he has once again expressed his anger over depiction of Muslims in Hollywood as terrorists or gangsters.
Durin an interview with news outlet Muslim, the 38-year-old actor said, “The game right now is messed up. The game right now is rigged. Muslims are either not on screen or they are [and] they're the bad guys. They're perpetrators or victims of violence. We're either invisible or we’re villainised, cause the stories we tell about our community affect the laws that get passed, the people that get attacked, the people that get invaded."
The Sound of Metal actor was sharing his thoughts about a short video clip from 2014 film American Sniper in which Hollywood star Bradley Cooper shoots a Muslim kid during Iraq War.
Ahmed added, "This is so [expletive] up. It's actually hard to watch this and not get angry. It's crazy to think that, like, how many people had to say this was okay for this to be made. I don't think we even have the time to fully explain how [expletive] up that clip is on so many levels. It's just super racist."
The Emmy-winning artist asserted, "[We're] gonna look back on that and look at it with the same cringe as we look at, you know, films that had blackface in them. Or films with, like, you know, cowboys and Indians, [where] the only good Indian are a dead Indian. Really, that's what you're saying, the only good Muslim is a dead one. This stuff’s so dangerous because it enables the invasion of countries. It enables hate crimes. It enables discriminatory and racist laws being passed."
Moreover, the actor described such films as “whack, outdated, racist” and said these kind of movies “costs lives.”