Yasmin (2004)

Does it offer a positive or negative representation of British Muslims ? 

'Yasmin' gives us a different stereotype to our usual one concerning Muslims, when we hear about Muslims or see a movie about Muslims, we are usually infiltrated with a stereotype that shows a Muslim or Asian character as a terrorist or violent, which is far from what we see in the opening scenes of Yasmin. In Yasmin, we see four Muslim characters, one being Yasmin herself. The opening scenes give us an awkward but positive regarding British Muslims. The four characters we see are in no way shown as violent to us. We see abuse written on the shutters of the mosque and the character is cleaning it instead of acting violently against it. The women we see who is Yasmin is just shown as a normal British citizen who goes work and we actually see her as peaceful, her job is helping disabled children and even when she is stopped by police officers she is still very calm and collective. Their is no abuse from her and she peacefully hands her documents over and answers all the questions asked by the police officers so the overall representation of British Muslims is seen as positive, even though it may be too early in the narrative to give an answer about how they actually are, from what we have seen I can say that the British Muslims are shown as positive, they are normal working citizens who do not get into a lot of trouble, nevertheless, Yasmin herself is shown to have two different lives, her work colleague who she could potentially be in a relationship with does not know she is married as we see her getting changed in a graveyard which could portray her desire to actually be a White British citizen rather than a British Muslim.