Axis of evil comedy tour
...It is too bad CAIR does not have these guys' sense of humor. It would help immensely.
At its best, the material offers some inverted perspectives on themes that otherwise might remain one-dimensional. Kader, who grew up in Reston, tells a story about visiting a cousin in Amman and listening to his Jordanian relative rant and rail about America's world dominance. "United States, you think you are so big and strong and powerful!" says Kader, 33, mimicking his cousin's thick accent. "You are a paper tiger! You will fold!" Without missing a beat, his cousin asks brightly: "You hungry? We got Burger King, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Appleby's. . . . You look tired. You want coffee? We got Starbuckus! You like Starbuckus?"
...Jobrani, 36, immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area with his family when he was 6. Ahmed, 37, was born in Egypt and grew up in Southern California. Obeidallah and Kader are U.S.-born, but the result of only-in-America cross-pollination: Obeidallah's father is Palestinian and his mother is Italian Catholic (he was raised in northern New Jersey as a "pork-free American," celebrating Ramadan and Easter).
And Kader's father, also of Palestinian descent, married into a pioneering Utah family. Which makes Kader part Muslim and part Mormon (he jokes that "going on a mission" has wildly different meanings to Mormons and Arabs).
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On the other hand, Obeidallah still jokes about one of the silver linings of having an Arabic last name in an Anglo culture. In a world of identity theft, he asks, do you think a thief would steal a name like Abdul Nasser Aman Abdullah?
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