Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo) pleads with a journalist ( Jim Caviezel) in "The Stoning of Soraya." via latimes
"...Aghdashloo, who left Iran during the nation's Islamic revolution in the late 1970s, hasn't flinched from roles that portray a less than flattering side of the Muslim world. After earning an Oscar nomination for her role as a pampered Iranian immigrant wife in the 2003 film "House of Sand and Fog," Aghdashloo spent a season on Fox's "24" depicting a terrorist and incensing Iranian Americans who believed it perpetuated stereotypes. Last year, she portrayed Saddam Hussein's wife Sajida in the BBC/HBO miniseries "House of Saddam."
On this evening, she passionately condemned the predominantly Muslim tradition of stoning, which she said millions of people around the world still believe is a just form of punishment, often with little in the way of a fair trial. To prove her point, she referenced the Koran, the Bible, quoted Mohandas K. Gandhi and Bertolt Brecht. She quoted her own mother too, a pious woman who stayed in Iran after her children left for the U.S., and all these years later still puzzles over her daughter's daring choices. And soon, Aghdashloo seemed to be addressing the fundamentalist Muslim leaders of Iran, who shortly after this conversation were accused of fixing an election that kept hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, leading to street protests and violent bloodshed..." Read the entire article here
