Can television be fair to Muslims? “Even in this TV renaissance, most [Muslim] characters are on shows that rely on terrorism — or at least, terrorist-adjacent — storylines. Other kinds of Muslim characters are woefully absent across the dial,” Melena Ryzik writes for the New York Times. The piece is largely a transcript of a discussion between five showrunners about whether they believe this phenomenon can be changed in The Time of The Donald, or if it will prove to be “more difficult than ever.”

The partakers in the conversation include “Quantico” creator Joshua Safran, actor and creator of “Halal in the Family,” Aasif Mandvi, “Little Mosque on the Prairie” creator Zarqa Nawaz, the brains behind indie film “Amreeka Cherien Dabis,” and Howard Gordon, the executive producer of “24” and “Homeland.” For us, Homeland should forever be remembered as the show that, while pretending to understand the inner workings of Arab and Middle Eastern (read: terrorist) communities, didn’t even realize that “Arabian street artists” they hired for set design added graffiti calling out the series’ bigotry.

Ryzik pretends not to reach a conclusion on the headline question at the end of the piece, but the hurdles the showrunners mentioned in creating a series depicting Muslims fairly, from producers demanding the inclusion of terrorism in the plot to viewers discrediting the shows as propaganda, kind of tell us the answer is no.