Our own Rick Brookhiser coined the phrase “Numinous Negro” to descibe the saintly black person who is a staple of American movie and TV fiction–usually played by Morgan Freeman.

Are we, in the TV show 24, getting our first glimpse of a Numinous Muslim stereotype? A reader in Springfield, Va. thinks so. Responding to some comments. I made about 24, my reader offered the following. I reproduce it in full (if Kathryn doesn’t mind) because some of his other points are interesting, too:

Dear Derb: You are right that CAIR doesn’t like 24, but if they watched it more carefully they might like it more than they do.
1. If you are doing a movie about terrorism you can substitute neo-Nazis for Arabs, as Hollywood did in translating Clear and Present Danger to the screen, but if you want to sustain a TV series for several years, and want it to appear that your show takes place on planet Earth, you must occasionally acknowledge Islamic extremism. The system 24 has settled into is a two year rotation. Season 1 was a deposed Balkan dictator, Season 3 was a Mexican drug cartel, and Season 5 was Russian separatists. This is Season 6 so it is once again Islam’s turn. You can set your watch by it. Right there the producers have done CAIR a huge favor–by limiting Muslims to 50 percent of the show’s run they have considerably understated the jihad’s market share in the terror industry.
2. Even in the even numbered seasons, it may be exuberant Islamic youth who are setting off nukes and shooting down planes, but the real villains are evil Western corporations with private armies of mercenaries. The jihadis are merely tools being manipulated by Michael Moore’s vision of Haliburton.
3. The most unattractive characters are always the Islamophobes, whether they are sleazy presidential advisers who want to throw away the Bill of Rights or rioting rednecks.
4. By the same token, the most attractive characters are the Noble Muslims. Jack Bauer may torture bad guys, and President Palmer may sanction the death of innocents, but the Noble Muslims in each season are never so morally ambiguous. The first NM was Yussuf, the foreign agent who helped Jack fight the corporate mercenaries in Season 2 and was murdered by rioting rednecks. In Season 4 there were the two gunshop owners who helped Jack fight off the seige by a different group of corporate mercenaries. (At least it was a different corporation. Some of the stuntmen were probably the same.) This season’s NM has been established already. He is the official of the CAIR-like organization who, although falsely detained, is helping the feds gather intel on the terrorists. SPOILER: Other characters (including the inevitable mole(s) in CTU) will turn out to be evil, corrupt, or merely incompetent, but the detainee will remain Noble all the way to the end of the season, or until rioting rednecks kill him, whichever comes first.

[Derb] I note in passing, based on the one episode of 24 I have so far seen, that it seems to have a Numinous Negro of its own in the person of the POTUS. It’s not Morgan Freeman, though–I guess he was booked. I further note that if we’re going to stick with properly Brookhiserian alliteration, the qualifying adjective for “Muslim” should begin with an “M.” Mystic Muslim? Majestic Muslim? I throw this open as a competition for readers.