Letter: Animated argument

Sir: The Walt Disney film Aladdin, and its depiction of the Arabs as barbaric savages, is only the latest in a long line of recent Hollywood films that have been participating in what Edward Said would call 'the last acceptable form of racism'.

I find it difficult to see a mainstream Hollywood picture that doesn't include an incompetent Arab terrorist, a megalomaniacal Arab tyrant, or a fat and wealthy sheikh as a jingoistic focal point of hatred for the audience. Anti-Arab and Islamic racism has crept silently but surely into Western popular culture, infinitely aided by the media's reaction to the Gulf war of 1991.

Yours faithfully,

KHALID NAQIB

Oxford

23 November