The great joy of doing ‘The Daily Show’ for me is that I get to sit on the fence between cultures. I am commenting on the absurdity of both sides as an outsider and insider. Sometimes I’m playing the brown guy, and sometimes I’m not, but the best stuff I do always goes back to being a brown kid in a white world.
AASIF MANDVIIndian culture is essentially much more of a we culture. It’s a communal culture where you do what’s best for the community – you procreate.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is.
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Of course the law’s not racist.
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I’m Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.
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In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food… they’ve never even tasted it!
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England has an interesting relationship with the Indian subcontinent because the years of colonization and the history between the two places.
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You do find a lot of your time in the West kind of searching for your place in the world – your voice, your identity, like, who am I? Like, what is my reason for being here, you know? And in that same way who am I to be partnered with, you know?
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Bradford specifically there were a lot of Pakistanis there. Even today it has a very large Pakistani population.It was something that I experienced
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People lament that there’s no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don’t want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don’t get it both ways.
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I was born in India – but never really lived there.
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Now the bigots have to get creative. Good luck coming up with slurs for Chechens. Go back where you came from, Ushanka head.
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I mean, but obviously, in people’s eyes, it still – it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they’re white?
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In America, you have this kind of individualism and in the West, essentially, you have this individualism – this idea of my own personal fulfillment.
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I think politicians and comedians have a lot in common. One is a group of approval-seeking narcissists who will say and do anything to be liked… and comedians are always talking about politics.
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I think I discovered my first, you know, my first image of a naked woman was sort of sneaking a peek at one of those magazines that was in my dad’s store.
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Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
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