An axis of laughter

Aron Kader, whose father is Palestinian and mother is Mormon, recalls being asked to go on a Mormon proselytizing mission.

"I told him, 'Look, to an Arab, a mission is a whole different deal. Generally we don't come back from those.' "

Fellow comic Maz Jobrani imitates Iranians in America trying desperately to distance themselves from their home government's hostility to America.

"I am not Iranian," he says with a huge, harmless smile. "I am Persian, like the cat. Meow! Like the rug!"

The L.A-based threesome, who worked their way up through the local comedy ranks and have performed together since 2000, form the nucleus of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (www.axisofevilcomedy.com), which debuted March 10 on Comedy Central. And with a multi-city Axis tour starting Thursday in Anaheim and Comedy Central in talks to do a TV version of "The Watch List," a series of skits and performances featuring Middle Eastern comics on www.ComedyCentral.com, it looks to be a breakthrough moment for comics with Arab and Mideast roots.

"They're going to the next level," says Jamie Masada, founder of the Laugh Factory. "They've started blooming."

Both bedeviled and inspired by life in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the comedians mine their experiences for laughs. Along the way, they say, they hope to subversively cut through ethnic stereotypes that have labeled them violent, fanatical and, ironically, humorless.

"I think comedy can change things. I think Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce showed you can raise issues and make people think. Jon Stewart does it every night," says Dean Obeidallah, a cofounder of the annual New York City-based Arab-American Comedy Festival and a creator of "The Watch List." "It's still just pebbles in a bucket of negative press about the Middle East."

The comics see themselves following the lead of black, Latino, gay and Jewish comedians who've helped kick down cultural doors.

"It's our turn to do that for our community," says Jobrani, who was born in Tehran and raised in Northern California's Marin County and who has a co-starring role in the ABC sitcom "The Knights of Prosperity."