Friday, February 05, 2021

In Law & Order: SVU S06E20 "Night," the Violent Muslim Male Relative of the Rape Victim Satisfies His Honor By Assaulting the Assistant District Attorney

Dick Wolf's Law and Order franchise is a serial promoter of Islamophobia and other forms of stereotyping, as I've documented on this blog. One early episode of the original series achieved quantum anti-black racism in a 30 second clip

Season 6, Episode 20, entitled "Night," aired in May, 2005. Here's some excerpts from the script. Mildred Contana is the immigrant rights advocate who has been trying to get the police to investigate a series of rapes against undocumented women who are too afraid of deportation to report the crimes.

Nina Zergin (undocumented Bosnian Muslim female rape victim)- Please go.

Detective Olivia Benson- Miss Zergin, it's important. Mildred Contana sent me.

Nina: She told you?

Olivia: Yes, because she knows I can help you.

Nina: Come in. I wasn't going to tell anyone, but it hurts so much to keep it inside.

Olivia: It will get better if you go to counseling.

Nina: I can't. If anyone finds out, I'll be an outcast. In my religion, a woman must be a virgin when she marries.

Olivia: You are Muslim.

Nina: From Bosnia.

Olivia: You have any family here?

Nina: My brother Milan. Oh, you have to go before he comes home. He's become very traditional.

Later in the episode, Milan brutally attacks Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak in her office. He would have gotten away with it, but he couldn't help dropping his disguise to glare with malice at a security camera. After his arrest, Detective Stabler interrogates him:
Stabler: Takes a real man to beat a women half to death.

Milan: She got what she deserved.

Stabler: What, by trying to help your sister?

Milan: She made my sister untouchable. She took away her future.

Stabler: How did she do that? Tell me how she did that.

Milan: That lawyer forced her to relive her humiliation in public. Now the world know
she is no longer a virgin.

Stabler: Your sister was raped. She's gotta deal with it, so do you.

Milan: A man will never have her. She shamed herself, and our family.

Stabler: So, this is about you.

Milan: I got her honor back.

Stabler: You got nothing back. You have no idea what an honor is. You are no better
then the man who raped Nina. Hitting that lawyer wasn't enough.

Milan: I should have killed that bitch. My sister Nina will never testify.
In the minds of the writers of Law and Order, Muslim family members, particularly males, are either the perpetrators of crimes against female family members or can never support the female members of their families who are victims of crime. In all cases, they are irrationally violent or greedy enough to sell out the victims.

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