Never learned much more than fire, cease fire.

Sleeper Cell, like many of my favourite things, came out of nowhere for me.  I was perusing what The Movie Network was offering that week and saw they had a new episode of the show.  I vaguely remembered my brother mentioning it before, so I checked out the first episode.  When those first images of a man performing the proper form of Muslim prayer appeared on the screen I knew I was in for something special.

The smart man's 24 is how I describe the show to my friends.  Instead of one-dimensional stereotypes and charicatures, Sleeper Cell looks deeply at each of the individual members and treats them with respect.  These aren't just mindless killers, but disturbed individuals, each with their own reasons and motivations for taking part in the attacks they plan.  Obviously nobody can really say how accurate these depictions are to the real thing, but the characters are definitely the most believable representations that have been put on film.

There are definitely some comprimises made to believability for the sake of narrative though.  It's highly unlikely that any kind of terrorist cell would be made up of people from widely different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.  This diversity is needed for the show however, to try and capture the same kind of diversity of the Muslim population that exists in the real world, there are Bosnian Muslims, Arab, Indonesian, Caucasion converts, African-American, etc.

Some people have accused the show of being apologetic to the terrorists, but I disagree.  The show treats the subject with respect and intelligence, but never tries to excuse the acts that they are doing, and in fact goes out of the way to remind the viewer that what the actions they are planning are horrible.  Darwin says in the first episode Islam means "Surrender to the will of God, and peace" then goes on to add "these guys have nothing to do with my faith."  In another episode Christian (french guy that goes from skin-head to convert) is having a discussion on Jihad with an Imam.  Christian asks the Imam what is a holy warrior, with the Imam responding "The cousin of the Prophet Aly was fighting a man and gained the upper hand.  As Aly was about to strike the final blow the man spit in his face.  Aly then threw down his sword.  Aly knew that if he killed the man then, it would be out of anger instead of for defending the cause of God. That is a holy warrior."

Sleeper Cell manages to examine not only the US War On Terror from an Us-vs-Them perspective, but also, and more important for me, was the way the show examined the internal struggle within Islam with the peace-loving mainstream dealing with misguided people that use unjustifiable violence and blemish the religion.  For once we have a piece of mainstream media that serves to seek understanding instead of further dividing us, and we should all pay attention to this and check out the show.

Omar
April 12, 2006