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!
AASIF MANDVII’ve always said I’m the worst representative of Muslim-Americans that’s ever existed, because I’ve been inside more bars than mosques.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad
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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 was born in India – but never really lived there.
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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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The idea that I had anything to do with speaking about Islam or about the Muslim world was just absurd to my family. … I hadn’t been to the mosque in like 10 years.
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Samantha Bee said to me when I first started on the “Daily Show”, she was like no – there is no – the only way you’ll learn this job is by doing this job.
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If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.
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If you choose to be a Muslim then you believe that it is on some level wrong to show the image of the Prophet Muhammad.
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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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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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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 think family dynamics are definitely very interesting. And in my case my sister did get married. She gave my parents a grandchild.
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It’s an organic thing that I try not to analyze too much, because I worry that it will go away.
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I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it’s been something that I’ve always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
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I thought [when I was 16] my days were just going to be spent hanging out on a beach and my girlfriend was going to be Miss Teen USA and my best friend will be a dolphin.
AASIF MANDVI