Dr jack shaheen biography

It was June 2000 in Washington, DC – roughly one year before the 9/11 attacks, and the beginning of a decade of Arabs and Muslims being public enemy number one. Jack Shaheen was front and centre, analysing a montage of vile Hollywood depictions of Arabs and Muslims in front of an audience of hundreds at the annual American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee conference.

Beginning with films showcasing old caricatures of lecherous sheikhs and exoticised women in hijabs, and moving on to more recent cinematic representations of the aircraft hijacker and Muslim terrorist, Shaheen carefully dismantled every damaging trope, old and new, for a crowd on the cusp of facing an unprecedented onslaught of structural and societal Islamophobia.

I sat in the crowd, hanging on to Shaheen’s every word, not yet knowing how immensely important this man’s work would be in the days and years to come. He, the son of Lebanese immigrants, would go on to pioneer