Al-Arabiya was equally cryptic about his identity: “Rami Malek, whose parents immigrated from Egypt to the United States, took home the best actor prize for his turn as Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Neither the New York Times, nor The Washington Post, nor NPR or  CNN or the BBC, mentioned that Rami Malek is a Coptic Christian. Most media outlets stuck to describing him as “Egyptian.” Some Arab outlets described Malek as an “Arab-American.” Arab News, for example, carried the headline: “Arab glory as Rami Malek wins an Oscar.’’ Many — possibly most — Copts, deny that they are Arabs; they see themselves as descending from the original Egyptians, present for millennia before the Muslim Arab invaders arrived.

As for Freddie Mercury being a Parsee, descended from the Zoroastrians in Iran who had escaped religious persecution by fleeing to Gujarat in India, that has not been mentioned in any of the stories about the Oscars among the the major media.

A well-prepared reporter, with a sense of history, might have used the awarding of the Oscar for Best Actor as a teaching moment. In the midst of all the Hollywood hoopla, it might have been noted that just as Freddie Mercury was Zoroastrian, and thus a descendant of those who were driven out of Iran by Muslim Arab invaders in the 7th century, so the actor who played him, Rami Malek, is a Coptic Christian whose people have endured persecution, and worse, since Muslim Arabs arrived in Egypt in the 7th century. Well-prepared, and intrepid.

The Copt, Rami Malek, and the Zoroastrian, Freddie Mercury, had much in common as the descendants of non-Muslims in islamized lands.