Salman Abedin

This was an abstract submitted to a conference on Muslim Culture and Media: Using the examples of the Muselmanner (the Muslims in Auschwitz) as a story to be told, this paper will explore the dimensions of what it meant/means to be a Muslim in the grand narrative of the twentieth century. The authors will look at some of the reasons for the lack of substantial presence of Muslim characters in popular narratives particularly in filmic representations.
Several internal and external reasons can be identified for this lopsided representation in popular Western culture. In Muslim majority countries, because of ideological deadweight holding back Muslims, they generally shied away from “indecent” films, except for Iranian cinema, in contemporary times. Post-9/11, Muslims became the bad guys or basket cases, in post 9/11 narratives, with most depictions being extremist and narrow minded.
The authors hypothesize that it is possible to create films that are balanced and show a human aspect of Islam and Muslims, both pre and post 9-11.
This paper suggests that the story be told of Muselmanner – the Muslims prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. Not only will this bring the human tragedy to Film, it will also raise the fundamental question as to why the well-told story of the Holocaust was missing this component for so long, along the lines of the lack of representation of Muslim soldiers in WW2 films.
Fact-based fiction genre will gravitate the story of the Film to human misery and ideological crosscurrents faced by Muslims of Auschwitz. Through the Nazi treatment of Muslim and Jewish prisoners viewers will relate that misery, and even death, fail to serve as the great levelers of humanity – some biases survive even through them. Such was the bias against the Muslims of Auschwitz.
Characters of this Film (to be elaborated in the paper to follow) – Muslim and Jewish – come from all walks of life, bundled together to suffer for the crimes of faulty lineage. Elders recall stories of harmony, youngsters plan, women are scared, men feel ashamed – all in their own ways trying to reconcile their versions of truth with the reality beholding them.