Muslim characters are missing from movies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand — and when they do appear, they are depicted in stereotyped ways that can create psychological and physical harm, a report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative finds. Funded by the Ford Foundation, Pillars Fund, and actor Riz Ahmed, the report, Missing & Maligned: The Reality of Muslims in Popular Global Movies (37 pages, PDF), found that in an evaluation of two hundred movies released between 2017 and 2019, only 1.1 percent of speaking characters in U.S. and UK films, 5.6 percent of those in Australian films, and no characters in New Zealander films were Muslim. Two-thirds of Muslim characters in all two hundred films were Middle Eastern/North African, 20.8 percent were Asian, and 5.6 percent were Black; 53.7 percent were portrayed as victims of violence and 39 percent as perpetrators of violence; and 58.5 percent were immigrants, migrants, or refugees, and 87.8 percent spoke no English or spoke it with an accent. The study also found very low representation of women, children, LGBTQ, and other diverse characters. According to the report's authors, the films in the study emphasized Muslims' outsider status while presenting two competing and harmful visions of Muslims: as violent and aggressive, and as subservient to the needs of white characters.