The release of the film American Sniper has led to an increase in threats against Muslims in the US, according to an Arab-American civil rights group.<\/p>\n
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has written to director Clint Eastwood and star Bradley Cooper.<\/p>\n
Their film is based on US soldier Chris Kyle’s service in Iraq from 2003-09.<\/p>\n
The ADC said a “majority of the violent threats we have seen over the past few days are result of how Arab and Muslims are depicted in American Sniper”.<\/p>\n
The organisation, which describes itself as the largest Arab civil rights organisation in the US, said it had collected “hundreds of violent messages targeting Arab and Muslim Americans from movie-goers”, mainly from Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n
The letter asked Eastwood and Cooper to speak out against such messages “in an effort to reduce the hateful rhetoric”.<\/p>\n
“Your visibility, influence, and connection to the film would be a tremendous force in drawing attention to and lessening the serious dangers facing the respective communities,” ADC president Samer Khalaf wrote.<\/p>\n
Jack Horner, a spokesman for the Warner Bros film studio, which released the film, told the Reuters news agency that the company “denounces any violent, anti-Muslim rhetoric, including that which has been attributed to viewers” of the film.<\/p>\n
He added: “Hate and bigotry have no place in the important dialogue that this picture has generated about the veteran experience.”<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Eastwood and Cooper had no immediate response to requests for comment, Reuters news agency reported.<\/p>\n
American Sniper has been a major hit in North America, exceeding box office predictions by taking $90m (\u00a359m) in its opening weekend – a record for a January release. It also has six Oscar nominations.<\/p>\n
Film controversy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n But it has caused controversy. Some have hailed its portrayal of Kyle as a war hero, but others have criticised it for glorifying violence and for Kyle’s attitude towards his victims.<\/p>\n Kyle, a Navy Seal, served four tours of duty in Iraq and killed more than 160 people, making him the most deadly sniper in American history.<\/p>\n The film is based on his book, also titled American Sniper, in which he claimed to have no regrets and referred to those he killed as “savages”.<\/p>\n Kyle was killed in February 2013 on a firing range in his home state of Texas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The release of the film American Sniper has led to an increase in threats against Muslims in the US, according to an Arab-American civil rights group. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has written to director Clint Eastwood and star Bradley Cooper. Their film is based on US soldier Chris Kyle’s service in Iraq from 2003-09. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[34,38,6],"class_list":["post-85547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ghana-standards-authority","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-togbe-afede"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}