Which do you put first, your faith or your job protecting others?
On this week’s FBI, a problematic murder case forced OA to realize he’s caught in two worlds as a Muslim and an FBI agent. Just like Maggie last time, OA had to make some tough choices.
That made the episode titled Pride and Prejudice a difficult one for both him and the team.
A harsh murder occurs on FBI
On a New York City street, a young man talked on his phone when he saw a car tailing him. He took off running to an apartment, answered by another man. Before the worried man, named Kosey, could do anything, a man with a knife came to the door to slit his throat.
His companion tried to run only to be attacked by other masked men on a stairway who stabbed him and dragged him to the room with Kosey.
In the meantime, OA was giving a talk to a recruiting group on joining the FBI, emphasizing how great it was. When someone asked about how it felt to be a minority in the FBI, the question was answered by veteran agent Rashid Bashar (Piter Marek), who talked of always overcoming the odds. OA was happy with that before he was called away.
At the office, Jubal let the team know about the victims, Kosey Kahn and his brother Amir (David Soltani), the latter still alive. Maggie and OA checked out the crime scene, noting the expensive electronics left behind. The cop told them a local Iman had said this was a hate crime.
The pair met Iman Mustafa (David Diaan), who OA greeted warmly as he preached at OA’s mosque. Mustafa claimed to see a man hassling the brothers. He was upset as he had called the FBI about these threats and Bashar had ignored the warnings.
OA noted the bad blood between Mustafa and Bashar and was clearly caught between which man to side with. Bashar said the issue was simply inconclusive, but they realized he was running some other investigation into the mosque. He was also blunt on simply not liking Mustafa.
They watched the video of the man hassling the brothers, tracking him to his workplace at a nearby college campus. He was James Tinker (Oliver Palmer), a janitor and “wannabe cop” who may have escalated his actions.
The team raided his house with James locked into his room, refusing to believe these were real agents. Scola was able to get the drop on Tinker to arrest him.
Is there a terrorist threat?
In holding, Tinker claimed that the Khans were a “sleeper cell” and ignored the implication he was crazy. He also said Kosey had taken some materials from the college and was punched when he found the guy using a 3-D printer for parts. However, he denied doing anything to the brothers and had an alibi.
OA was surprised to hear that Bashar targeted the mosque for possible terrorist activity in the past. He and Maggie returned to the crime scene to find Bashar there, claiming jurisdiction, and that they had caught a terrorist suspect at the mosque two years earlier. OA was jarred Bashar was going right to the “if there’s one, there’s more” logic, despite the long delay, and the brothers might be it.
OA found a laptop under the carpet with Bashar demanding it, but Maggie cooly replied, “we’re good.” It took a bit of doing, but they cracked the laptop to show Kosey had been talking to someone about some items but that they would only be used for “protection.”
The files showed Kosey had created two special undetectable plastic guns. They theorized that he tried to back out and was killed when he realized it was for a criminal act.
At the hospital, Amir identified the attackers as members of the mosque. He was upset when he realized his brother was dead, sending him crashing with the doctors racing to help.
Mustafa wasn’t happy to hear the attackers might be members of the mosque. He then revealed he had been the one to tell Bashar about a possible terrorist, only for the man to spend two years hassling and targeting the mosque, harassing everyone there, including Mustafa’s brother.
Mustafa refused to give up any information on the members, wanting to keep his people safe from the FBI.
The tension between OA’s allies grows
OA went to see Bashar, who bluntly said Mustafa was not their friend and would only protect his community over helping them. He stated that if one Muslim terrorist slipped through the cracks, it would erase all the progress people like him and OA had made.
Bashar did share a video of the mosque with Isobel pushing OA to talk to Mustafa, but Bashar insisted on going with him. He suggested a classic “good cop/bad cop,” but OA wasn’t comfortable with that.
At the mosque, things quickly went south with Bashar going too far on the “bad cop” routine, threatening to implicate Mustafa’s brother as a terrorist from a photograph. The pair were close to blows before Bashar walked off.
Mustafa admitted the two men had come to him to ask about possible forgiveness for an action. He prayed he was wrong but gave OA the information anyway. He also said he was filing a complaint against Bashar and either OA backed him up or he was banned from the mosque.
OA was ticked to realize Bashar had faked the photos of Mustafa’s brother, making him wonder what side he was on.
Stopping a threat amid some tense loyalties
The suspects were cousins Tapa and Rasul Petrov (Yosef Kasnetzkov and Zoltan Hodi), who had fled Chechnya in 2010. OA and Maggie tracked the pair to Coney Island for a chase along the boardwalk.
They managed to gun down Tapa, but Rasul escaped. Maggie recorded Tapa’s dying words as Isobel learned the cousins had escaped a suspected massacre by Russian forces that killed their family (although the Russians claimed it was propaganda).
The leader of the group had been Dmitry Borchin (Robert S. Gregory), who just happened to be in New York City for a conference and thus Rasul’s target. The team raced to the hotel, where they clashed with Borchin’s bodyguards.
Borchin was about to take the stage as the team split up to find Rasul. As he spoke, Rasul was loading up his gun, about to shoot Borchin, but the team stopped him.
Bashar stated how Amir would recover with OA, arguing they could have gotten answers without resorting to threats on Mustafa. He was upset Bashar seemed to target Muslims with Bashar snapping that as much as he hated it, “some of us are criminals and terrorists.”
Isobel called them into her office regarding Mustafa’s complaint. Bashar brushed it off with OA backing up his version and no need to pursue the complaint. As he walked out of the office, OA’s face showed he was already questioning where his true faith lay.
It was a difficult case for OA to wonder if he might turn into Bashar, a man seeing enemies everywhere, including in his own faith.
FBI Season 4 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.