Leonardo DiCaprio might have experienced greater hardship making The Revenant but he’s now under fire for potentially being cast as 13th-century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi in a new biopic.
13,500 SJWs have signed a petition urging DiCaprio not be cast as the medieval Middle Eastern icon—the best-selling poet in America in 2014—on the grounds of his ethnicity.
“Hollywood whitewashing strikes again,” the petition reads, describing DiCaprio’s involvement in the biopic, as “a casting choice that is both ludicrous and offensive. Muslim actors are readily typecasted as terrorists, but when a movie portrays a Muslim in a positive light, they are shunted off to the side to make room for another white actor.
“Casting Leonardo DiCaprio as Rumi rewrites history, takes possession of Muslim accomplishments, and gives the credit to a white man. Now, when people think of Rumi, they’ll picture him with pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Sign this petition to stop whitewashing history!”
The petition arose because the Rumi biopic screenwriters David Franzoni and Stephen Joel Brown spoke about the project to The Guardian. The article stated that the screenwriters “would like Leonardo DiCaprio to play Rumi, and Robert Downey Jr to star as Shams of Tabriz [the Persian scholar who was Rumi’s spiritual teacher and advisor in modern-day Afghanistan]—though they said it was too early to begin casting.”
Franzoni and Brown’s credits include Gladiator and Se7en, but their comments to The Guardian about their latest project amounted to a vague aspiration rather than a firm casting commitment. That hasn’t stopped SJWs from going crazy.
“This is an iconic poet who is from modern-day Afghanistan,” said Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of the Muslimgirl.net website. ” The name of the actor that was suggested as the role was Leonardo DiCaprio, a blond, blue-eyed white man!”
Obviously, booking a star of DiCaprio’s stature to play Rumi, as opposed to an unknown Middle Eastern actor, would make it much more likely that the movie would get off the ground. But DiCaprio isn’t even taking on the role.
A Hollywood source told Heat Street DiCaprio is producing and starring biopics about subjects including Rasputin, Woodrow Wilson and 11th century Viking King Harald and said “he will definitely not be starring as Rumi.”
SJW petitioners might instead like to study what Rumi wrote himself about judgment: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
For every second Leonardo DiCaprio spends onscreen as Rumi, I will personally cut down 10,000 acres of rainforest.
— (((Hell Brooks))) (@germyradin) June 28, 2016