 Hollywood has been repeating, in film after film, insidious images of the Muslim world. The trend has now been adopted by the Indian film industry. There is a proverb that says that by repetition even a donkey learns. Something similar by way of repetition is being perpetrated in the context of images in western and Indian media concerning portrayal of Muslims. In fact, the world's knowledge and understanding of the Muslims has been messed up so badly that the images shown are taken as reality.
The mass media, a strong tool of social change is being utilized quite effectively to produce caricatured images of Muslims. In Indian films though, stereotyping is not limited just to Muslims, but they are certainly its worst victims. The oversimplification and caricature of Muslims has invaded even the most popular mode of communication - television. They never depict a Muslim family in any of the popular Indian soap operas. It is as if the entire Muslim population of India, comprising over 150 million people, or 15% of the country's total population, exists on the fringes of civilization, relegated to only such identities as pickpockets and bicycle thieves.
Indian films always portray Muslims as underworld dons or as characters sacrificing their lives to save the Hindu hero. Seldom are they depicted as educated professionals who live in better areas than just the slums. According to media analysts, there is also a bias in media reporting of incidents concerning Muslims. While the Muslim accused and victims are addressed with a certain derogatory connotation, the identity of the Hindu accused and victims is always concealed. They also point out that the Indian print media, television and cinema portray the glamorized image of Jihad.
Muslims in Indian media have never been characterized as people you would like to have as your next door neighbor. They are always portrayed as intimidating and carriers of primitivism; they are people out to upset the pleasant modern world with their strange habits and desires. This repetition of images portraying Muslims as possessors of pessimistic values has essentially led people to believe that it is always the Muslims who have a problem with the others - Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc..
American Prof. Dr. Jack G. Shaheen, in his book "Reel Bad Arabs" documents and discusses virtually every feature film that Hollywood has ever made - more than 900 films - the vast majority of which portray Arabs by distorting at every turn what most Arab men, women, and children are really like.
Shaheen says that for more than a century, Hollywood has used repetition as a teaching tool, tutoring movie audiences by repeating over and over, in film after film, insidious images of the Muslim world. The trend has now been adopted by the Indian film industry. Its engagement with the Muslims as a subject has shifted over time. From lethargic and high living nawabs, badshahs and nobles, Muslims have been reduced to people with nothing but blind faith in Jihad.
Bollywood's obsession with Muslim can be broadly classified in four different stages: movies produced from the fifties to the seventies - Mughal-e-Azam, Shah Jahan, Nikah, Bazaar, etc, wherein Muslims WERE shown as a community which can be assimilated into the mainstream of Hindu society but always with suspicion. The second phase began in the eighties with focus on Mumbai's underworld mafia. Muslims were depicted as central characters dominating the underworld. Smugglers wearing Arab robes, puffing cigars and carrying briefcases stashed with illegal were a common element in these films.
 The third phase started with Mani Ratnam's flamboyant narrative of guns and roses - Roja. Muslims were portrayed as ‘other' in the backdrop of Pakistan. Kashmir in a series of movies was a part of this background. These films largely helped to divert the attention of the masses by concealing the prevalent socio-political inequalities of Indian society behind images of nation and nationality.
Bollywood's fourth era concerning Muslims is the post 9/11 period. Here the Indian Self has been replaced by its Western counterpart while the enemy has remained the same. New York and Kurbaan produced in Bollywood bear this out.
Muslims portrayed in movies made in the fifties were shown as being madly in pursuit of pleasure and hungry for wealth. In films like Umrao Jaan, Mere Huzoor and Pakeezah, Muslims were presented as an aristocratic class, who enjoyed watching "mujrahs" (prostitutes dancing} and splurging money on loose women.
In this genre, Muslim men were shown wearing Aligarh-cut sherwanis, chewing paan (betel nut) and reciting classical Urdu poetry. The moment such characters appeared on the screen, the audience knew that it was time for a qawwali, or a ghazal. In fact, the words qawwali and mujra became synonymous with Muslim culture. However, films like Mughal-e-Azam climbed the charts, confirming that Muslims could be assimilated as a part of the Indian society.
Later Bollywood films like Elan and Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro portrayed lower middle class youth with no aim in sight. Bazaar and Nikah, with a high dose of melodrama, again served to grossly misrepresent Muslim society. Nikah presented divorce as a means of suppression of Muslim women, while Bazaar depicted the cruelty of poverty stricken Muslim families in marrying their under-age daughters to elderly Arab men for money.
The late seventies and eighties Indian movies portray Muslims as criminals and dons of Mumbai's underworld, as shown in Ghulam-e-Mustafa and Angar. Through such films, people at large were made to perceive the Muslim community as a threat to the state apparatus.
Bollywood's obsession with Islam has always created a clichéd image of Muslims without the film-makers having done much research on the subject. People have succumbed to the ima ges produced by Bollywood thereby losing a healthy understanding of Muslim society, according to film critics.
Ask a director or storywriter whether it is right to perpetuate ethnic and racial stereotypes and, in a majority of cases, you will hear a big "NO". Then why is it that the same individuals fall in the trap of stereotyping Muslims?
The major reason is that what these filmmakers and writers read, hear and see originates from print, radio and television. The modern-day media fundamentally is about one-sided flow of information - from West to the rest.
In Hollywood films the West is portrayed as civilized, sophisticated and modern. It is fighting a ‘Just War' against primitive, uncivilized Muslim aggression. Bollywood surrenders to this approach for understandable reasons - a long time dream to turn India into a Hindutva state.
Terrorism is a transnational phenomenon and is not confined to Muslims alone. Terrorists exist in every continent and in every religion. What then makes the prosecutors of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Gharib Prison or the slaughterers of Indian Gujarat different? How many films have been made by Bollywood on America's War in Iraq and Afghanistan and how many films have touched upon the atrocities in Guantanamo Bay or Abu Gharib? 
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