Sisko's racial rant in Badda-Bing Badda-Bang

[Harvey]

Turns out Siddig wasn't such a bad guy on 24. He has a good run in season six, unfortunately the worst season of the series.

And Faran Tahir is in both seasons two and four of 24 (also the season four prequel). Ostensibly he's the same character, but, really he's just generic middle eastern guy #2.

 

[Magnum]

As for those saying that Bashir is English and/or British: he's neither. Siddig has said in interviews that Bashir has no discernable racial identity, and in fact that is why he appreciates the role so much (because he usually gets typecast as evil Arab terrorists).

As someone of Middle Eastern decent, I had appreciated that Dr. Bashir seemed to at least carry some lineage from that part of the world. As a young person, he was a nice fictional role model.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I don't understand why he changed his name, though...I liked the name Siddig El Fadil and thought he should've left it alone.

 

[Magnum]

I don't understand why he changed his name, though...I liked the name Siddig El Fadil and thought he should've left it alone.

I liked "Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi" even better.

I remember reading from somewhere that he said people weren't getting his name right. Just reading about that, I reminisce about when my own father changed our names to sound more 'anglo'. Even ancestors from the western side of my family altered their names a bit to fit in better.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Heh...frankly, though, his name was NOT one of the hard-to-pronounce ones. The abbreviated form was (IMHO) short, simple, and tough to screw up.

 

[DevilEyes]

As for those saying that Bashir is English and/or British: he's neither. Siddig has said in interviews that Bashir has no discernable racial identity, and in fact that is why he appreciates the role so much (because he usually gets typecast as evil Arab terrorists).

What's funny is I'd always assumed the character was Indian/Pakistani.

I should note, BTW, that Siddig's roles aren't always evil. He got to be an angel in The Nativity Story. (Granted, I haven't seen a lot of movies he's been in, but that was actually the first I saw that wasn't DS9.)

Huh. I always thought he was Arabic/of Arab descent, but since his father, as far as I remember, had a cockney accent, while he had an RP accent, I thought he was also British.

I can't think of him playing evil Arab terrorists in anything apart from his one-minute cameo in Hamburg Cell (where he was unrecognizable with a huge beard). He was a good Arab guy trying to bring down the terrorists in Spooks, he was the British Prime Minister in Doomsday, he was certainly not a terrorist in Syriana, and he played historical figures like Hannibal Barca in this and Imad-ad-Din in Kingdom of Heaven.

Heh...frankly, though, his name was NOT one of the hard-to-pronounce ones. The abbreviated form was (IMHO) short, simple, and tough to screw up.

Yeah, I don't get that, "Siddig El-Fadil" is very easy to pronounce and hard to mispronounce based on the spelling.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

You know, DevilEyes, that list of roles makes me wonder--is Siddig just too adorable for an evil role?