Had the film Aamir been a thriller about an innocent trapped by the mafia into crime, it would have been as gripping. But then it would not have been set in Mumbai’s oldest Muslim ghetto, where, according to the film, every bylane harbours people ostensibly doing innocuous jobs, but actually working for a shadowy Boss. In an earlier, innocent era, the Boss would have been a slightly comic smuggler. Today he is the deadly serious Muslim terrorist out to avenge the injustices caused to his community.

Only the beard, namaz and azaan are missing from this stereotype of the Muslim terrorist. Otherwise it’s all there: the prayer mat, the cap, the lavish meal with every conceivable meat, the paan, the spittoon. As are all the other trappings: the minarets, the narrow lanes, the chunks of hanging meat, butchers with namaz caps chopping away. Not a pretty world at all, and one wonders what those living in it would think, watching it portrayed on screen as a den of filth, violence, crime and unquestioned obedience to jehadi bosses in Pakistan and all over the Islamic world.

This squalor is part of the wrongs done to our community, the terrorist tells the squeaky clean, handsome, and completely secular yet devout Muslim hero. (Of course someone like him must love a Hindu.) Should we be grateful that our filmmakers have moved from biryani-sherwani- qurbani socials to the injustices meted out to Muslims?

If the first depicted an enchanting but completely unreal world, the latter world is only too real in its physical depiction. That’s why the recent trend of films on Muslim terrorism are so dangerous. They project the popular image of the youngMuslim-turning-terrorist so technically well, that those who know hardly anyone living in these ghettos will be even more apprehensive of them.

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