Sharing and CAIRing

“I am an Arab-American as well as a fan of 24.” Well, I have something to declare as well, and I suspect it will get me into just as much trouble: "I am an American and I have never watched 24." I'm not one of those radical clerics preaching some anti-TV jihad with a smug bumper sticker. I love TV. It just seems like one of those shows that won't make a lick of sense if one hasn't watched it from the first episode.

Here's something else that doesn't make a lick of sense: a venerable institution like the Wall Street Journal trotting out a token Muslim to defend a show that doesn't need defending in the first place. True, there may be someone out there with the common sense of a traffic cone who doesn't understand that "[m]ost of the terrorists represented in 24 through the years have been Arab Muslims" because "most terrorists today are, in fact, Arab Muslims." But a paper like the WSJ shouldn't be compelled to cater to the knee-jerk, freak-out element, which is likely to regard Emilio Karim Dabul, the author of this article, as at best a stooge and at worst a target.

Still, given that worst-case scenario, the author deserves praise for sticking his neck out, especially for condemning the caterwauling of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of those organizations that is always spotting catalysts for "backlashes" that never come. He also has this to say, which I think would have made a starting point for a better and more useful column:

I would certainly welcome more characters in movies, TV programs and novels who reflect the overall Arab-American experience. Truth is, most of us don't have bomb-making skills or a desire to become human missiles. And there are Muslim and Arab-American CTU heroes out there, as well as doctors, superdads, women scientists, etc. But just as it took Saul Bellow to give literary voice to the Jewish-American experience, we need our own storytellers to weave the pastiche of tales that make up Arab-American life.