The Sleeper Cell Dialogues
I’ve been watching the show with some Persian friends (Jewish and Muslim), and we’ve had some small discussions, but unfortunately it’s late enough when each episode ends that we’re all too tired to spend much energy chatting. There is some concern that portraying identifiably Muslim terrorists on TV along with the message that they could be your “Friends. Neighbors. Husbands.” is already feeding American fears that don’t need additional feeding. But beyond that issue, the show is thematically more complex on this issue in particular than the average Hollywood production.
We all really liked episode 4, which is the least patronizing positive portrayal of Islam I’ve ever seen in the mainstream media. Many Hollywood movies and shows have thrown in a minor Muslim good guy to intone that “Islam is a religion of peace” (amusingly, Grant Heslov, who plays a terrorist in Sleeper Cell had that token role as an Arab-American computer geek in the James Cameron film True Lies). But in episode 4 of Sleeper Cell, entitled “Scholar”, the character of a Yemeni scholar bearing a peaceful message, and the difference between the extremists’ theology and that of more mainstream Islam, is not treated a token or minor message but is the episode’s central focus, and it is fascinating. A ton of Muslim scholars have condemned terrorism, and it is my impression that this is not something that seems to get nearly as much play on American TV as the opposite message, in part because it’s not a very entertaining message — the traditionally polarized good-and-evil shows and movies need their villains. A shout out to the episode’s writer Kamran Pasha is in order for making this all work so well in episode 4.
Sleeper Cell is definitely designed to entertain, hence the doses of violence and sex riddling each episode while the day-to-day operations of a real sleeper cell would probably be a bit more banal. But the show is also crafted with more political sophistication than shows like 24 (I mean this not as a put-down of 24– I really liked season one and look forward to catching up on the rest of it).
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Hey,
I agree with you about episode 4 of Sleeper Cell. I have, for the passed few months, been spending time learning more about Islam and there are definitely people out there like the scholar portrayed in the show. I wish more people knew that or believed that. I found that this show was really great at showing the different types of Muslims and how far they will go in Jihad - all forms - as it is described through the Scholar.
This really came to my attention during the episode with Kenneth. Being an ignorant Westerner at the time it never occured to me that there was a difference between a regular mujahid and jihad fighter/terrorists. It was a real shock to me that there were some that still see it as a holy war but they chose to fight it as a war (against military targets only). This blew my mind and I suppose it shouldn’t have but it did.
Anyway, great comments about the show - I was glad to see someone that felt the same about the show as I did. I tried to ask my Muslim friends about it, but most of them had not seen the show yet, so hopefully they will soon and I can talk to them about it more.
Peace!
Michaela