Bekhiet was watching "24," the popular Fox action series starring Kiefer Sutherland as a government agent who battles bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists. The show has garnered high ratings, but also has angered many Muslims across the nation over the way their community is portrayed.

"It's disgusting," Bekhiet said after watching an episode with an Associated Press reporter. "My own kids, if they see this show, they might hate me."

Bekhiet, an engineer with the state Department of Transportation, is worried that the fictional Araz family is the image most of America have of Muslims.

In January, a nationwide Muslim civil-rights group, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, met with Fox executives to complain about the show. A compromise was reached in which the network agreed to distribute CAIR's public-service announcements to local affiliates. And last month, Sutherland himself appeared in a commercial during the broadcast urging viewers to realize that the show's villains are not representative of Muslims.

"While terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism," Sutherland said. "So in watching '24,' please, bear that in mind."

Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said the network would not comment on Muslim reaction to the show other than to note the meeting with CAIR and the distribution of the public-service announcements.

"We've listened to their concerns and tried to work with them," he said.

Rabiah Ahmed, a CAIR official who attended the meeting with the network executives, said Muslims are concerned with how others view them, particularly in the mass media.

"For us it's a sensitive and urgent situation because we are facing a backlash after Sept. 11, and we need to defend our interests and our image. We understand that it's entertainment and fiction. Our concern is that others may not."

She said Fox promised that positive Muslim characters will emerge in future episodes.

On the episode Bekhiet watched, Sutherland's character, agent Jack Bauer, apprehends Dina Araz, the wife of one of the terrorist masterminds, after one nuclear plant has already melted down. He begs her to tell him where the device is that can override the computer program that hijacked the reactors, sending them out of control, pleading that millions of innocent people will die if she does not.

"Every war has casualties," she tells him coldly, a bullet from her husband's gun still in her bloodied arm. "No one is innocent."

Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Iranian-born actress who plays Dina Araz, told Time magazine she had refused for years to play terrorists. She agreed to join "24" knowing it would draw Muslim criticism.

"But this role was a full-dimensional character," she told the magazine. "She's a very, very strong woman, and she has many faces. And things may not be what they seem."

Mohamed Heva, a computer network administrator, also watched the episode at Bekhiet's home. He suspects this season's plot line was intended not only to entertain, but to validate the Bush administration's foreign policy.

"Sometimes I feel like it's being done on purpose, to instigate things and to let people know what the administration is doing is right," he said. "It makes people look at every Muslim as a terrorist. These guys want to melt down reactors and kill Americans. That makes people hate us even more."

Jumana Judeh, an activist in Dearborn, Mich., where the country's largest Arab-American community lives, said after watching one episode of '24' she finally understood how deeply offended an Italian-American friend of hers is over programs like "The Sopranos" or "The Godfather" movies.