I keep reading articles about Muslim groups getting offended and upset about the upcoming season three of Fox's 24. The opening episode is to feature a Muslim family plotting to set off a bomb to kill Americans. For the usual reasons - Allah, blah, blah, infidels, blah, blah, Great Satan, blah, blah - well, you get the point.

An American-Islamic group has blasted the makers of Kiefer Sutherland's hit TV drama 24 after learning the first episode of the new season portrays a Muslim family as terrorists.

Officials at the Council on American-Islamic Relations were made aware of the controversial episode after upset Muslims got hold of a promotional preview of the show, which airs next week.

The council's spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed says she's particularly disturbed by one scene, in which an American-Muslim teenager plots to kill Americans.

She adds: "It casts a cloud of suspicion over every American-Muslim family out there."

Bosses at TV network Fox, who air the show, have yet to counter the comments.

Nor should they. I was a child of the eighties, and I'm sure many of my readers are, too. If you are, you will remember that every blockbuster movie featured russian spies, plotting to destroy America, and even worse, every sitcom had at least one "Russian Defector" character. All of them played by Yakov Smirnoff. For all we know, Yakov was the only Russian to actually defect to America.


Did we ever hear the Russians complaining that they were being stereotyped, or that they were being branded as terrorists (or just bad comedians)? No.

And back during/after WWII? The Germans. Every one of them portrayed as a Nazi. Was it true? No. Was it just propaganda? Sometimes, but most of the time it was just entertainment. People are more likely to identify with a film or a show if it portrays their real fears. And like it or not, many of us are afraid of Muslims. But we're not allowed to talk about it.

Paramount Pictures, the studio producing The Sum of All Fears, would probably have been much more nervous over its release had the screenplay followed Tom Clancy's 1991 bestseller more closely.

In Clancy's original work the terrorists were Muslim.

But in the movie adaptation they have been changed to European neo-Nazi villains, who hope that detonating a nuclear device at the Superbowl will confuse the US and set off nuclear exchange between American and Russia that will assure their mutual destruction.

Pressure to change the identities of the terrorists came during early stages of production from the US based Council on American-Islamic Relations, who viewed Clancy's novel as a Muslim-bashing tome.

The organisation's spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, is relieved the film's producers decided not to make the terrorists Muslim, particularly in light of the 11 September attacks.

Why not? CNN had already brought Tom Clancy into interview on 9/11, so he could point out all the similarities between his book and the WTC. I once heard someone say that "When a significant number of attacks can be attributed to those of a particular race or faith, it ceases to be racial profiling, and becomes a description of the criminal."

So, the Islamic community needs to realize that the way to get us to not be afraid of them isn't to censor us, but for them to stop plotting to kill us. If they stop preaching for our demise, we'll stop portraying them as the enemy. Just like the fall of communism ended Yakov Smirnoff's television career.