7.09.2013

Big, Bad Muslims: Part Four—24: Season Six

"Yes, I have dark skin...Okay, of course I can play a Muslim."
Another Muslim character suffers a narrative fate similar to Ahmed Amar.
At 7am, we meet Walid Al-Rezani, head of the Washington D.C. Islamic-American Alliance (a thinly-veiled pastiche on the CAIR), and boyfriend of Sandra Palmer, the President’s sister. Harry Lennix, a Chicago-born American of Creole ancestry, plays Walid with sympathetic calm.
The FBI arrives at the IAA to background check its workers. Sandra tells them, “You’re in the wrong place. There’re no terrorists here.”
Walid wants to cooperate. “We can’t pretend we’re not under attack,” he tells her.
Sandra calls her brother, outraged. “I’m not some idealistic flag-burner and I understand you’re going through a very complicated situation, but once you start ethnic profiling it’s a slippery slope.”
            Later, the FBI returns to the IAA with a warrant and Sandra erases the IAA employee computer records. Instead of arresting her, the FBI detains Walid and takes him to one of Tom Lennox’s secret detainee camps.
While being registered, Walid prevents an American soldier from harassing a Muslim who refuses a cavity search. As a result, the soldier beats Walid. Later, as he walks the detainee common area, Walid meets the man he saved, Salhib.
“Have you talked?” Salhib asks.
Walid replies, “I have nothing to tell them.”
Salhib mutters, “I’ll tell you something, brother. Before this day is over they will all pay.”
With Salhib exposed as a potential threat, Walid turns informant.   
"Hey, guys. What's happening? So, hey, are any of you, like, terrorists?"
            Here, 24 misses a crucial opportunity to dissect the mandates once proposed by the Bush regime and expose them as civil rights abuse. Instead, the show justifies the Bush claim that the threat of terrorism exists everywhere. The detainee camp is not a springboard for even-handed political examination, but a paranoid playground populated by seemingly average Muslims like Salhib, who are in fact terrorists.
After joyfully beating Walid to “create his cover,” the FBI forces Walid to wear a wire. Then, Walid joins Salhib’s friends in the camp. When Salhib asks what the FBI wanted, Walid tells him they demanded information about Abu Fayed. Suddenly, Salhib’s group is a militant band of brothers, united and ready to strike the American enemy. When Walid spots one of the men talking suspiciously on his cell phone, it dawns on the FBI, “He must be talking to Fayed!” Walid pickpockets the phone and discovers the man had only been accessing Arabic websites reporting Fayed’s activities. “These men aren’t terrorists,” Sandra tells the FBI. Yet what the show leaves unsaid is that while these men are not physically involved, they ideologically support Fayed. This perpetrates the myth that violence against the West is a Muslim way of life.
Walid, here comes the pain.
Of course, Walid is caught slipping the phone back into the man’s pocket. Salhib hisses, “You’re spying on us? You’re worse than they are!” The group of exposed terrorist supporters pummels Walid until the FBI intervenes and rushes him to the hospital.
Thus ends Walid’s storyline and all hope that 24 would examine Lennox’s detainee camps with any critical insight. The CAIR was especially disturbed by this. Its Los Angeles representative, Sireen Sawaf, told the BBC News, “I do realize it’s a multi-dimensional show that portrays extreme situations…[but] the overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims…Watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn’t sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.”
24 tried to claim it made Walid sympathetic to Americans. Yet, in his last scene, after being beaten by Salhib and his cohorts, his loyalty to America is broken. “I’m ashamed for spying on those men,” he tells Sandra. This is the last the viewer sees of him. Sandra goes to the White House bunker and never mentions him again. Like Ahmed, Walid is forgotten.
In Part 5, I’ll discuss Hamri Al-Assad, 24’s most interesting Muslim character.
Walid: "I'm ashamed of spying on those men. And this band-aid is real itchy."

Bibliography
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Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.
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Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.


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