'Reluctant Fundamentalist' Director: 'We Are Riddled with Islamophobia'

You’d think the cast of The Reluctant Fundamentalist would be concerned that their film is coming on the heels of yet another terrorist attack carried out by extremist Muslims.

Instead, director Mira Nair used the film’s promotional push to blast modern culture, not a mindset that leads people to slaughter innocents.

We are riddled with Islamophobia, we are riddled with xenophobia in many, many ways” she said, adding that she wanted to create “a bridge between two worlds that I know and I love and desperately need to understand each other.

The film, based on the 2007 Mohsin Hamid novel of the same name, follows a Pakistani immigrant to the U.S. who questions his admiration for the country when he sees anti-Islamic attitudes appear in the wake of 9/11. 

Fundamentalist co-star Kiefer Sutherland, best known for playing the terrorist-fighting Jack Bauer on 24, said the fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought out “the things I hate the most: racism, prejudice, ignorance, fear.”

Call me silly, but the thing I hate the most is watching my fellow Americans get snuffed out by people filled with hate.

No one should be surprised by these sentiments given the film itself apparently teems with anti-American sentiments according to early reviews. The Reluctant Fundamentalist also equates capitalism with violent religious extremists during one sequence according to a review at Slant Magazine (hardly a bastion of conservative thought):

By the time Nair arrives at her thesis statement equating American capitalism to violent religious extremist groups in a cringe-worthy sequence cutting between Cross lecturing interns about “the importance of fundamentals” and a militant cleric instructing his students about the same, myriad opportunities have been lost.