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 Touted as a window into the lives of Somalis in Minneapolis
adjusting to life in the U.S. Midwestern city, many community
members instead fear "Mogadishu, Minnesota" will stoke
Islamophobia if it airs. Filming on the pilot episode was
scheduled to end last week.
At a time when opposition to immigrants and anti-Muslim
sentiment have featured heavily in rhetoric by Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump, Minnesota's Somali
community members, especially men, are worried the possible TV
drama will brand them as potential terrorists.
"I'm completely against it," Mahmoud Mire, 20, a
first-generation Somali-American, said of the show. "As Muslims,
as blacks and as refugees, people have their misconceptions
about us already."
Those feelings have been echoed by others in protests against
the show. Somali residents in one Minneapolis housing complex
voted earlier this month to block crews from filming in their
building.
Even the involvement of Somalia's best-known celebrity,
Canadian-Somali rapper K'naan Warsame, as writer, director and
executive director has not quelled mistrust. He is working with
executive producer Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar as best
director in 2010 for "The Hurt Locker."
HBO officials declined to discuss the issues around the pilot
other than to confirm the cast and provide a short synopsis,
describing it as "a family drama that grapples with what it
means to be American – among the Somalis of Minneapolis."
The filming of a pilot does not ensure it will air or be made
into a full series.
Somalis began to arrive in Minnesota's Twin Cities in the late
1980s and early 1990s, fleeing a civil war in their Horn of
Africa nation. There are around 39,000 living in the state of
5.5 million people, according to U.S. census data from 2014.
That is up from around 32,000 in 2010.
Somali-Americans are particularly sensitive about how they are
perceived after a trial earlier this year at which three young
men from the community were convicted of trying to join Islamic
State. Six others pleaded guilty to supporting the militant
group in a case that some in the community denounced as an
example of government entrapment.
Then last month a 20-year-old Somali-American stabbed 10 people
at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, before being fatally
shot by an off-duty police officer. An Islamic State-linked
media outlet described the attacker as a "soldier" of the group.
"Anything that happens with Somalis, our community is thrown
under the bus," said Mubashir Jeilani, 21, a Somali-American
from Minneapolis. He is executive director at the West Bank
Community Coalition (WBCC) in the city's Cedar-Riverside
neighborhood, the hub for the area's Somali community.
'GREAT DISTRUST'
In the current environment, many Somali-Americans in Minnesota
are leery of Hollywood storytellers.
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"There is a great distrust between this community and the directors
and producers in Hollywood," said Jaylani Hussein, 34, who
immigrated to Minneapolis from Somalia in the early 1990s when he
was around 10 years old. He is now executive director of the
Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an
advocacy group.
Hussein decries movies such as "Captain Phillips" in 2013, which
dramatizes an attack by Somali pirates on a U.S.-flagged cargo ship,
and Ridley Scott's 2001 film "Black Hawk Down" about a failed U.S.
military mission in Mogadishu, for their portrayals of Somalis as
pirates or terrorists.
"There are real consequences in the stories we tell," he said.
EARLY CONCERNS
The backlash to "Mogadishu, Minnesota" started last year after early
reports on the show, which the Hollywood Reporter said in December
2015 was titled "the Recruiters."
The trade publication, quoting an unnamed source, described how the
drama would "draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see
the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment."
The filming of the pilot is expected to have employed some 350
people and to have generated roughly $4 million in spending for the
local economy, Minnesota officials said. But that failed to impress
many in the local community.
In September, protesters objecting to the show interrupted a K'naan
concert in Minneapolis and clashed with police.
K'naan has met several times with community members and local
organizations to address their concerns. The WBCC's Jeilani said
K'naan assured him the show would portray the community as more than
just a "hub for recruitment."
K'naan could not be reached for comment. Last month he told a Somali
journalist that the project was "pretty historic," and that he had
hired Somalis to work on the production in an effort to train a new
generation of filmmakers.
While a local Somali city councilman has publicly backed the TV
show, others say they remain skeptical due in part to Bigelow's
involvement, which brought considerable buzz in Hollywood.
"Kathryn Bigelow is notoriously known for being successful by
projecting a very negative view of Muslims," said CAIR's Hussein.
Bigelow's most successful films have centered on U.S. military
operations in Muslim countries. "Zero Dark Thirty" in 2012 was about
the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, while "The Hurt Locker" depicted a
bomb disposal team in Iraq.
Bigelow's agent could not be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Ben Klayman
and Matthew Lewis)
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