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 MANDVIThe 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.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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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 know the Gospel according to Mark better than I know any sura in the Quran.
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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’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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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.
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I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane.
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If you don’t acknowledge differences, it’s as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
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An artist’s job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It’s not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
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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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Traditional television as we have known it will make love to the Internet and have a child. That child will be the future. It’s already happening, and it’s hot!
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I was born in India – but never really lived there.
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Indian 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.
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This was in the ’70s and there was a lot of racism towards South Asians and there was a lot of hazing and bullying and racism that really probably shaped me in some way in terms of, like, wanting to get out of there.
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When you’re brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.
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North Carolina precinct chairman and GOP executive committee member Don Yelton thinks his state’s new voting restrictions are just fine.
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Getting chased home from the bus stop after school by English kids, boarding school, being targeted for praying to what they call Allah wallah ding dong.
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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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We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
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Of course the law’s not racist.
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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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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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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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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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You can get samosas in any pub in England today, pretty much. So, “Gunga Din” has come back.
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So I had this completely unrealistic idea of what America was — but I wanted to be there.
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From my parent’s generation the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love. It was a partnership. It’s about creating family. It’s about creating offspring.
AASIF MANDVI