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WEKU
WEKU
Entertainment
Anastasia Tsioulcas

There are barely any Muslims on popular TV series, a new study says

Archie Panjabi at the Emmy Awards in 2010. Panjabi, a non-Muslim actress, played a Muslim character in the 2018 British limited series Next of Kin, a show discussed in a new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Muslims make up 25% of the global population and Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world — but Muslims only comprise 1% of characters shown on popular televisions series in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

Those are just two of the findings in a new report issued Wednesday by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Researchers investigated 200 top-rated television shows from 2018 and 2019 that aired in these four countries, and surveyed 8,885 characters with speaking roles.

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