Maz and I hurry into the restaurant, apologizing for being late. We order a mezze plate for five. These men have been killed while committing acts of terrorism on Homeland and 24, in The Kingdom and Three Kings and True Lies, and in too many other films and shows to list. We've barely sat down when Waleed Zuaiter, a Palestinian-American actor in his early forties, recounts for me his death scene on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. This was about a year after September 11. "I play a guy from a sleeper cell," Waleed says. "I'm checking my e-mails. I hear the cops come in, and the first thing I go for is my box cutter. There's literally a box cutter in the scene."

"Was this in an office?" I ask Waleed.

Maz Jobrani

"It was in my home!" he replies. "I just happened to have a box cutter lying around." Waleed shakes his head, bemused. "The cops burst in, and next thing you know I've got the box cutter to some guy's neck. And then one of the cops shoots me."

"I die in Iron Man," says Sayed Badreya, an Egyptian man with a salt-and-pepper beard. "I die in Executive Decision. I get shot at by—what's his name?—Kurt Russell. I get shot by everyone. George Clooney kills me in Three Kings. Arnold blows me up in True Lies…"

As Sayed and Waleed and the others describe their various demises, it strikes me that the key to making a living in Hollywood if you're Muslim is to be good at dying. If you're a Middle Eastern actor and you can die with charisma, there is no shortage of work for you.

Here's another irony in the lives of these men: While they profoundly wish they didn't have to play terrorists, much of our lunch is taken up with them swapping tips on clever ways to stand out at terrorist auditions.

"If I'm going in for the role of a nice father, I'll talk to everybody," Sayed tells the table. "But if you're going for a terrorist role, don't fucking smile at all those white people sitting there. Treat them like shit. The minute you say hello, you break character."

"But it's smart at the end of the audition to break it," adds Hrach Titizian, who at 36 is the youngest actor here. " ‘Oh, thanks, guys.' So they know it's okay to have you on set for a couple of weeks."

Then Waleed says something you don't often hear actors say, because most actors regard their competition with dread:**** "Whenever it's that kind of role and we see each other at the auditions, it's so comforting. We're not in this alone. We're in this together."

We're in this together. By this Waleed is referring to a uniquely demeaning set of circumstances. I'm sure practically all actors, Muslim or otherwise, feel degraded. Most have no power over their careers—what roles they can play, how their performances are edited. But Muslim actors are powerless in unusually hideous ways. The last time one became a big star in America was back in 1962—Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia. These days they get offered terrorist roles and little else. And we—the paying public—barely even notice, much less worry about it. Where's the outrage? There is none, except from the actors themselves. These roles are ethically nightmarish for them, and the stress can wreak havoc on their lives. Waleed's father, for instance, threatened never to talk to him again if he ever played a terrorist. I thought that was bad enough. But then I meet another actor who had it much worse.

Ahmed Ahmed was raised a strict Muslim in Riverside, California, by his Egyptian-immigrant parents—a mother who learned English from watching soap operas, and a gas-station-attendant father who ended up buying an automotive shop. The day Ahmed told them he was quitting college to try his luck in Hollywood, his father asked if he was gay and didn't speak to him for seven years.

When I meet Ahmed at the French Roast Café in downtown New York City, he echoes Waleed's thoughts about the camaraderie among these actors. "It's always the same guys at every audition. Waleed, Sayed Badreya… You're all sitting in a row in the waiting room. Oftentimes the casting offce is right next to you. The door's shut, but you can hear what's going on."

"What do you hear?" I ask him.

"Oh, you know," he says. "‘ALLAHU AKBAR!' And then…" Ahmed switches to the voice of a bubbly casting director. " ‘Thank you! That was great!' And the guy walks out, sweating. And you walk in and they're, ‘Hey! Thanks for coming in! Whenever you're ready!' And you're thinking, ‘How do I do it differently from the guy before me? Do I go louder?' "

Sayed Badreya

When he auditioned for Executive Decision, he went louder. Executive Decision is, I realize as I talk to people from this world, considered the ground zero (as it were) of ludicrous portrayals of Islamic terrorists. This was 1996, and Ahmed was in his mid-twenties. "My agent had called me. ‘There's this film. It's a $55 million action suspense thriller starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, and Steven Seagal. They want to bring you in to read for one of the parts.' I said, ‘What's the part?' She said, ‘Terrorist Number Four.' I said, ‘I don't want to do it.' She said, ‘It's three weeks of work. It pays $30,000.' "