This website aims to analyze the portrayal of Muslims in three popular animated television shows: Family Guy, The Simpsons and American Dad. These shows are widely viewed in the United States and are known in popular culture for their crude humor and negative portrayal of different minority stereotypes.
Muslims are one of many minority groups to be negatively portrayed based of different racist stereotypes which strengthen the view that all Muslims are terrorists and violent people. By using Muslim stereotypes as jokes on the TV shows, they solidify the negative Muslim view and may potentially increase Islamophobia in all of its viewers.
Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred towards, or irrational fear of Muslims.
Muslims are one of many minority groups to be negatively portrayed based of different racist stereotypes which strengthen the view that all Muslims are terrorists and violent people. By using Muslim stereotypes as jokes on the TV shows, they solidify the negative Muslim view and may potentially increase Islamophobia in all of its viewers.
Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred towards, or irrational fear of Muslims.
The fox network
The Fox Network is known to have shows that use minority stereotypes as part of their humor. "American Dad!", along with "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons", all are aired on the FOX channel. Although American Dad is viewed by all ages and especially teenagers, its content is beyond the maturity level of a 14 or 15 year old. While the show uses racial stereotypes of all minorities, Muslims are one of many groups who are portrayed negatively. With the increase of Islamophobia in the U.S., the American media exacerbates the fear of all muslims as being irrational terrorists. The FOX news is notoriously known to include islamophobic portrayals of Muslims on their news. According to Nathan Lean, "Fox News, the American television station that brands itself as 'fair and balanced,' is the epitome of this relationship. It has been, for the better part of the last decade, at the heart of the public scare-mongering about Islam, and has become the home for a slew of right-wing activists who regularly inhabit its airwaves to distort the truth to push stereotypes about Muslims".
In his article he also states that "In February 2011, the Think Progress website released a study that detailed the specific ways that Fox News manipulates language to insinuate, or in many cases, state explicitly, that Muslims and Islam should be feared. Using three months’ worth of material gathered from various television programs from November 2010 to January 2011, a graph was compiled to show that the network disproportionately deployed terms that reflected a negative view of Muslims, more so than Fox News’ competitors. For example, Fox used the term “Shariah” 58 times over a three-month period, whereas CNN used the term 21 times, and MSNBC 19 times. Similarly, Fox hosts brought up the phrases “radical Islam” or “extremist Islam” 107 times in three months, while CNN used the term 78 times and MSNBC only 24 times. Still, Fox used the word “jihad” 65 times, while CNN used it 57 and MSNBC used it 13 times".
In his article he also states that "In February 2011, the Think Progress website released a study that detailed the specific ways that Fox News manipulates language to insinuate, or in many cases, state explicitly, that Muslims and Islam should be feared. Using three months’ worth of material gathered from various television programs from November 2010 to January 2011, a graph was compiled to show that the network disproportionately deployed terms that reflected a negative view of Muslims, more so than Fox News’ competitors. For example, Fox used the term “Shariah” 58 times over a three-month period, whereas CNN used the term 21 times, and MSNBC 19 times. Similarly, Fox hosts brought up the phrases “radical Islam” or “extremist Islam” 107 times in three months, while CNN used the term 78 times and MSNBC only 24 times. Still, Fox used the word “jihad” 65 times, while CNN used it 57 and MSNBC used it 13 times".