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"Back when I was in law school in New York, I caught this great one-man show called Sakina&amp;#x27;s Restaurant. The writer and actor, Aasif Mandvi, captured so well the funny and quirky aspects of being a South Asian-Muslim American. I laughed until I cried! And then I laughed some more! I had never seen a real show solely devoted to identity issues of my community before. Jon Stewart must have also seen the same qualities because, a few years later, he hired Aasif on the spot when Aasif auditioned for the &amp;quot;Daily Show.&amp;quot; I am so proud to see Aasif on television (and also movies and other television shows) that I had to interview him and bring him to Glamocracy! Although he is quite funny, we mostly had serious talk about the election. Here&amp;#x27;s some of what he had to say.Aasif, many people get their political news from you and your very funny colleagues. You probably know a lot about politics now, but were you always interested? Not really. I was never a particularly political artist [or] a political junkie.... Being on the &amp;quot;Daily Show,&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s like being surrounded by politics. It becomes the air that you breathe. I personally became politicized, as an artist, after 9/11. The way America changed after 9/11, from the virtue of being raised Muslim, being brown in America, politicized me from that aspect. I was becoming more political before I got the &amp;quot;Daily Show&amp;quot; gig. Many Muslims feel that in Hollywood, as well as news coverage, there is a pro-Jewish bias that results in unflattering portrayals of Muslims or unfair reporting. As a Muslim comedian and working actor, what has been your experience? As far as my voice on the show, I feel like it&amp;#x27;s pretty even. I get to represent pretty well considering that it&amp;#x27;s not being written by Muslim writers. Would it be different if there were more Muslim writers on the show? Maybe. But I don&amp;#x27;t know. It&amp;#x27;s important that there be a stronger Muslim, satirical, comedy voice out there. I think a bigger issue in Hollywood in general is sort of dealing with race and dealing with ethnicity and how to really integrate that into the mainstream.... That&amp;#x27;s why I think Obama is such an important candidate, and his presidency, if he gets elected, would be so important. It will force people to have to deal with race. It&amp;#x27;s definitely one of those things where I feel like in Hollywood in general and on the show, there is [the question]: what is the voice of the other, what is the voice of the person who is American and not American at the same time? I play that role on a good day. On a bad day, I get relegated to a place where I am not...best utilized. But I think that&amp;#x27;s true in Hollywood in general. What is your critique of the presidential candidates? On the one hand, you have the right, conservative, the social conservatives, who I think, [he pauses] there&amp;#x27;s enough said about that [already]! You have this liberal media that is also reductive in its own way. The conservatives are like &amp;quot;Bomb the s!*% out of Iraq,&amp;quot; and the liberals are like &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t bomb Iraq!&amp;quot; There&amp;#x27;s a loss of understanding. There&amp;#x27;s a loss of real engagement with the other, a real engagement. It&amp;#x27;s all reactionary. Many Muslim men your age flirted with being a fundamentalist Muslim, being drawn to a conservative mosque or feeling alienated. Some Muslim men go through a conservative phase. Did you? Yeah, I did actually. Mine was generated by the fact that I was attracted to this girl who was a born again Christian. She probably wanted me to be a born again Christian. I couldn&amp;#x27;t bring myself to becoming [one though] because I couldn&amp;#x27;t buy into Christianity. So I decided to become a born again Muslim. I decided to examine my faith, and I actually did go to some meetings at a mosque that might be considered fundamentalist. I was young. Once I realized, oh, I can&amp;#x27;t have sex? Then, that kind of ruined it for me. That was the end of that! I have to be honest. Once sex came into the equation, I thought, you know, I am not strong enough to do this! Do you ever get any hate mail from jingoistic Americans or zealous Muslim extremists? No, I never get any hate mail. Maybe after this interview I will!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/09/back-when-i-was-in>