“Oh, I come from a land, from a far away place where caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ears if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric! But hey, it’s home.”

– original lyrics, “Arabian Nights,” from Disney’s “Aladdin”

This is a tense time in America for a lot of people of Middle Eastern descent. The authorities are out in full force, going from Arab to Arab simply because they’re from the Middle East. And the public is in full support of such racial profiling endeavors. But why?

Americans are constantly bombarded with Hollywood stereotypes that portray Middle Eastern men as terrorists, villains or inhumane crooks. And that would be fine – considering all ethnicities are portrayed similarly – except for the fact that this extreme isn’t balanced out with a flock of good-guy Arabs on the other side.

You can count the number of Muslim or Arab heroes or good guys on one hand. Yet, when it comes to the religious fanatic with a bomb or the violent savage madman who cuts off the hands of thieves, the numbers are on the opposite side of the spectrum.

“The Siege,” a 1998 action movie blockbuster, featured the typical terrorist-in-the-name-of-Islam Hollywood has grown accustomed to. The villains quote the Koran, visit mosques and blow up buses all in the same sequence.

Then there’s “Rules of Engagement,” “True Lies,” “Iron Eagle” and “Executive Decision.” Hollywood has typecast the Arab or Middle Eastern actor as the dirty, no-good bad guy, and its national – make that international – security on the line if the boys in white don’t stop them.

It’s not like there aren’t Arab or Muslim terrorists out there; there obviously are. Just like there are Northern Irish terrorists out there, and the movies portray that as well. But there isn’t a vast shortage of white Protestants with normal families and jobs out there looking to live a law-abiding life. For Arabs, there is that shortage. How many nonaction movies feature an Arab or Middle Easterner as a regular character?

Perpetuating stereotypes is detrimental to eliminating the every-Arab-could-be-a-terrorist belief that is running through our fearful nation. By continuing to stereotype Arabs and people of Middle Eastern descent as religiously-motivated villains and barbarians, American cinema is creating a false identity in the eyes of non-Middle Eastern Americans.

Since the attacks, as evidenced by the polls showing the support of state-sponsored racial profiling, the ignorant in America continue to see people of Middle Eastern descent as potential terrorists, twisting Islam to satisfy their bloodthirsty urges to kill all who oppose their barbaric way of life. And that is wrong. There needs to be a reexamination of the way people are portrayed. If there are characters in films worthy of being terrorists, then there are also those Arabs and Middle Easterners worthy of being regular ol’ good guys.

editorialboard: Andrea Hauser, Tim Paluch, Michelle Kann, Zach Calef, Omar Tesdell