Guess who said this:

Although not all Muslims are terrorists, unfortunately, in today’s world, most of the terrorists are Muslim.

It was Shohreh Aghdashloo, the lovely Iranian actress who plays a controversial role in FOX’s hit TV series, 24. The Council on American-Islamic Relations launched protests over a plot line involving a Muslim family of terrorist sleeper operatives; Aghdashloo plays the mother in the family. Unlike the Islamist sympathizers at CAIR, Aghdashloo is an outspoken critic of fundamentalist Muslim regimes and a proud, assimilated American. From the Boston Herald:

A refugee from the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she is a member of Los Angeles’ thriving Farsi-speaking minority, sometimes called “Tehrangeles.”
Her politics are clear: She doesn’t accept the legitimacy of the present religious regime in Iran.

“When President Bush included Iran in his Axis of Evil group, I don’t believe he was talking about Iran,” she said. “He was talking about the bunch of mercenaries into whose hands our country has fallen.” It has been 25 years since she escaped from Iran after the ayatollahs closed her theater, the Drama Workshop. “In Iran, as it is now, you cannot portray reality on stage, because women must always wear the scarf,” she said…

“My wishes when I came to America were to be a working actress, to act in English and to meet the people on the A-list who would want me for prominent projects.

“If I am typecast, I understand that it is society’s demand. If society demands Middle Easterners in films, I don’t mind being a part of that. At the same time, my identity is not solely Iranian.

“We worked hard from scratch to be a normal American family,” she said. “We have a 16-year-old daughter named Tara Jane, after `Gone With the Wind’ and Jane Austen. She is already a senior in high school.”

Aghdashloo is proud of her American citizenship.

“Henry Miller said that the problem with native people is that they don’t look at the monuments in their own towns. I do. As an immigrant, I appreciate every inch I have gained.

“When I first became a citizen, I was dying to vote, just like Tara. I got to the polling place at 6 a.m. to be certain I could exercise my right, because I was deprived of that right for so long.”

What a breath of fresh air. Wouldn’t you love to see her debate Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore, Al Franken, or any CAIR spokes-apologist?

Aghdashloo’s filmography and TV appearances are here.

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