In the aftermath of 9/11, longtime Islamic arts patron the Doris Duke Foundation launched its Building Bridges Program to combat Islamophobia and foster bonds between Muslims and non-Muslims through the arts. Seventeen years after its 2007 launch and approximately $48 million in disbursed funding later, Building Bridges remains the only program of its kind among private U.S. foundations.
Now the program is evolving at another fraught time, as anti-Muslim incidents surge across America in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and as fallout from the ongoing war in Gaza. “In this time more than ever before,” Building Bridges Program Director Zeyba Rahman told IP in a May conversation, “such a program is very much needed.”
That’s why Duke committed $6 million in January to cultivate mutual understanding by amplifying Muslim storytellers in the U.S. arts and entertainment industry. The funding, which will support convenings, a new Muslim documentary fund and a fellowship program for Muslim creatives, “underscores the power of creative stories and compelling storytellers in combating ongoing hate against U.S. Muslims, Asians, communities of color and Jewish people,” the foundation said in launching the effort.
“After years of seeding many excellent projects in the performing arts and media, we realized we needed to go deeper and wider,” Rahman said. “And so we’re focusing on the entertainment sector because its capacity to reach audiences is extraordinary.”
Duke is also ramping up support for what Rahman called “well-established organizations that can provide creatives not just with funding, but critical networking and training opportunities.” For example, a few days before our chat, the foundation announced a separate three-year, $1 million grant to establish the Building Bridges Fellowship and Completion Fund. Through the fellowship, Muslim creatives affiliated with the Berkeley, California-based Islamic Scholarship Fund will receive professional development support courtesy of the Sundance Institute. It’s the first program of its kind that matches up-and-coming Muslim filmmakers with an extensive suite of professional resources.
Duke is leaning into partnerships with the entertainment industry and on-the-ground service providers, but the work shares a common ingredient that’s been at the center of Building Bridge’s mission from the very beginning — the belief that stories told by Muslim creatives can change hearts and minds by illuminating our shared humanity. “When we learn about characters’ nuances in a very intimate way, it helps us to dislodge or reexamine popularly held views about others,” Rahman said. “So it’s important that we focus, like a laser beam, on supporting authentic narratives that U.S. Muslims can tell in ways that they connect with people.”
Shattering stereotypes
Born in 1912 in New York City, Doris Duke was an American billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist and socialite. In the 1930s, Duke traveled throughout the Muslim world on her honeymoon and began collecting objects from the countries she visited.
“It was a transformative journey,” Rahman said. “She fell in love with the cultures and the people.” Duke returned to these regions over the years, and her collection grew to several thousand items, now housed at her former residence outside of Honolulu, the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art. The museum is operated by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, a subsidiary of the parent foundation.
Duke passed away in 1993. Three years later, the Doris Duke Foundation was established through her will, which stipulated that the foundation preserve and promote Islamic art. Fast-forward to the mid-2000s. American Muslims were being persistently subjected to hate incidents in the wake of 9/11, and the foundation’s leaders felt compelled to act. “The board said, ‘We need to do more to support Doris’ thinking, so it established Building Bridges as a grantmaking program focused on the residents of the American Muslim community,” Rahman said.
Alongside Building Bridges, the foundation also supports the performing arts, medical research, the environment and child wellbeing, and grants made through its Building Bridges program can be tracked via Duke’s online grants database.
Building Bridges has always recognized that the entertainment industry has an inordinate influence in shaping Americans’ perceptions of Muslims, who constitute a mere 1.1% of the U.S. population. Unfortunately, our friends in Hollywood have a long way to go, as their portrayal of Muslims is usually either nonexistent or plays into harmful stereotypes, especially post 9/11.
In a recent op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter calling on the industry to step up its game, Doris Duke Foundation President and CEO Samsher Singh Gill noted that of the 10 films nominated for best picture at this year’s Oscars, only one featured a self-identified Muslim in “a meaningful, nonstereotypical role.” Compounding matters is the fact that “a few years ago, the Pew Research Center found that most surveyed respondents did not know a Muslim person,” Rahman said. Add it all up, she said, “and we can infer that a way Americans can learn about Muslims is through the media and entertainment industry.”
“We want to focus on where our storytellers can meet these audiences,” she added.
Grantees announced as part of Duke’s new $6 million commitment include the Center for Asian American Media ($4.5 million) to establish the U.S. Muslim Documentary Fund; the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Hollywood Bureau ($1.425 million over three years), to host events and convenings; and the Islamic Scholarship Fund ($100,000) to launch a fellowship program for entry-level Muslim American creatives in the entertainment industry.
Other funders acknowledge the entertainment industry’s power to shape popular perceptions, boost inclusivity and cultivate empathy. For example, my colleague Ade Adeniji profiled Pop Culture Collaborative, a New York-City based funder collaborative working to “transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims and Indigenous peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender and/or disabled.” The collaborative has received support from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
“Fundamental to our well-being”
Building Bridges’ growing interest in brokering partnerships to support U.S. Muslim filmmakers came into sharper focus after Rahman attended the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023.
Normally, Rahman explained, her Sundance experience is curated by the festival’s representatives. However, she arrived at last year’s festival “deliberately unannounced so I could see what it’d be like to attend without that kind of experience.” While she enjoyed stumbling upon interesting films, the uncurated experience also had its drawbacks. She realized that attendees who “don’t have a community to belong to” can feel adrift and disconnected, “and it made me think about: What can we do to nurture the experience of our creatives?” beyond the festival.
Duke’s support for Sundance dates back almost two decades. In 2005 — two years before it officially launched Building Bridges — the foundation gave the institute a three-year, $600,000 grant to establish the Sundance Islamic Film Initiative, create programs for Muslim filmmakers attending Sundance, and maintain collaborations between the Israel Film Fund in Jerusalem and the Royal Film Commission in Amman, Jordan.
In 2016, Duke awarded a two-year, $125,000 grant that enabled the Sundance Institute Theatre Program to support up to four U.S.-based residencies from the Middle East/North Africa region through Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art Theatre Fellowships. “Those were all great efforts,” Rahman told me, “but we felt we needed to take a slightly different approach by having Sundance partner with a community-based organization in a prominent way.”
It quickly became apparent that the organization in question would be the Islamic Scholarship Fund, which received support in Duke’s January tranche of funding. “This idea popped up in my head of creating a partnership where Sundance would co-program a set of immersive experiences for fellows that they choose together from the fund’s network,” Rahman said.
A three-year, $1 million grant from Duke this spring establishes the Bridges Fellowship and Completion Fund. Through the partnership, fellows selected through the Islamic Scholarship Fund’s extensive network of creators receive an unrestricted artist grant of $10,000 and access to a slate of Sundance’s creative and professional resources. “The fund has opened up its network and Sundance has embraced this idea very quickly,” Rahman said. “There’s been so much generosity on both sides, which is why the partnership is beginning to work so beautifully.”
Building Bridges is one of those rare grantmaking programs that become more relevant as time elapses. In a way, it’s a depressing takeaway, because it suggests that almost two decades after its launch, certain segments of society — we’re looking at you, Hollywood — still have a long way to go toward portraying U.S. Muslims in an accurate, compelling and relatable light. But it’s precisely this lack of progress that accentuates the importance of Building Bridges’ mission in a post-October 7 climate when people may feel the urge to find refuge in comfortable stereotypes that only serve to breed further division and misunderstanding.
And so Rahman and her team are digging deeper, calling on the entertainment industry to abandon inaccurate and harmful tropes and partnering with Sundance and the Islamic Scholarship Fund to advance authentic and accurate stories by U.S. Muslims. “One thing that never goes away is the people’s desire to connect,” Rahman said. “And to do that with intention, to invest in storytelling intentionally to bind us together in fraught times and in good times, is fundamental to our wellbeing.”
