Finally, A Shitty Movie Where Muslims Are The Bad Guys

I can’t think of a time in my life when the idea of a Muslim terrorist was not the most acceptable societal enemy. As someone who came of age in the wake of 9/11 and the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have come to accept hating Muslims as the status quo. On a personal level, it functions sort of like advertising: so ubiquitous that I rarely pay much attention. There just aren’t many situations in my daily life where I’m thinking about how a stranger might perceive my boring existence as threatening. I’m normal. But sometimes I am snapped out of the monotony of Islamophobia and remember the limitless imagination of those who can watch one of the many recent videos of someone in Gaza, carrying around the body parts of a loved one in a plastic bag, and think They deserve this.

One of those moments was earlier this summer, when I encountered the trailer for the Daily Wire’s latest foray into filmmaking, Run Hide Fight: Infidels. In this campus action movie, ISIS (‘memba them?) invades a liberal arts campus because administrators are far too distracted by leftist they/thems and gay kids forming anti-Israel encampments to realize that in mere hours, a caliphate will be established on campus by a Syrian janitor. The film stars Jonathan Majors, who just a few years ago was destined to be the next big thing before he was found guilty of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. 

Majors plays a former Delta Force operative on a book tour who says things like, “There are three ways Islam will conquer the West: through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by using our nation’s freedoms against us.” The messaging was so vintage and early 2000s—was it meant to be a throwback, or was there new stuff being introduced to the oeuvre? I thought the feeling across the board was that ISIS lowkey fell off. I had no idea anyone was still thinking about them as a real threat, especially when everyone—from Twitch streamers to beloved children’s entertainers—is Hamas these days. I was excited to learn what was going on with the state of modern Islamophobia.