I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad - 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.
If you don't acknowledge differences, it's as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
I've always said I'm the worst representative of Muslim-Americans that's ever existed, because I've been inside more bars than mosques.
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.
Voter fraud does just barely exist, while racism, according to the Supreme Court, is a thing of the past.
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.
I'm not really a food connoisseur.
Bradford specifically there were a lot of Pakistanis there. Even today it has a very large Pakistani population.It was something that I experienced - 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.
I'm Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.
The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.
When I was 11 my friend's mom made a peanut butter sandwich. I ate the sandwich and was like, 'I'm never eating anything else again.' And I still eat peanut butter every day. I would put peanut butter on a steak.
England has an interesting relationship with the Indian subcontinent because the years of colonization and the history between the two places.
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.
When you're brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.
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.
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.
I was born in India - but never really lived there.
It's an organic thing that I try not to analyze too much, because I worry that it will go away.
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.
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.
So I had this completely unrealistic idea of what America was — but I wanted to be there.
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.
In Britain, you never get away from the fact that you're a foreigner. In the U.S., the view is it doesn't matter where you come from.
The experience of being on a show that is very much in the center of popular culture is exciting. You really feel like you're reaching people.
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!
