Despite accusations from critics and scholars, the show doesn't reinforce stereotypes about "good" Americans and "evil" Arabs and Muslims—it challenges them.

Showtime

This year's season premiere of Homeland, the award-winning Showtime drama about America's war on terror, features a telling exchange. At school, students discuss whether Israel was right to bomb Iran, an action it had recently taken in the show's fictional storyline. Several pupils line up to defend the strike:

STUDENT #1: I think sometimes military force is necessary. I mean, the Iranian president keeps saying he wants to wipe Israel off the map, so they have every right to defend themselves. STUDENT #2: Plus, the Arab religion doesn't value human life the way we do. I mean, we're the infidel, right? And these Arabs believe if they kill us, they get to go to heaven.

At this, Dana (Morgan Saylor), one of the show's main cast members, objects:

DANA: They're not Arabs. Iranians aren't Arabs, they're Persians. STUDENT #2: Persians, Arabs—what's the difference? They both want the same thing, which is to annihilate us. Why shouldn't we hit them first? Maybe with a nuke or two of our own. DANA: Douche. TEACHER: We don't tolerate name-calling. DANA: And what about mass murder? Do we tolerate that? I mean, because that's what he's really saying, isn't it? He's talking about turning Tehran into a parking lot.

By placing these sentiments in the mouth of one of its sympathetic leads, Homeland establishes from the outset that it has little patience for ignorant caricatures and stereotypes of Muslims, or for jingoistic rationales for the use of force against Muslim countries.

But you won't find this scene anywhere in Columbia University Middle Eastern Studies professor Joseph Massad's critique of the show. Massad's piece, published at Alternet under the title "Showtime's 'Homeland' Demonizes Arabs and Prepares Americans For Bombing Iran," is one of several recent attacks on Homeland that accuse the show of racism, Islamophobia, and knee-jerk militarism. In Salon, Al-Jazeera producer Laila Al-Arian dubbed it "TV's Most Islamophobic Show," while Peter Beaumont, the foreign affairs editor of The Guardian, claimed in a stinging column that "both Arabs and Islamists have been portrayed thus far as violent fanatics, some of whom are powerful and influential infiltrators."

Yet none of these critiques—all written long after the episode quoted above aired—make any attempt to grapple with the counter-evidence to their allegations of bigotry. In doing so, they miss what makes this show so valuable. That's because Homeland, which wrapped up its second season on Sunday, is no gung-ho salute to U.S. militarism and tactics in the war on terror, nor a black-and-white portrayal of "good" Americans versus "evil" Muslims. In fact, a closer look at the drama reveals just the opposite of what its critics claim: a show that challenges the prejudices of its viewers rather than affirming them.