Is it possible to be a Muslim in stand-up comedy without being inherently political?
Yeah, because you don’t really have to reveal that you’re Muslim. We don’t have a banner on our heads that says, ‘I’m Muslim!’ Muslims come in all different sizes and colors, and unless I told people I was Muslim, no one would have known. I could have easily been the random disabled comic; and I could have just gone out and been the girl who was in drug withdrawal, if I didn’t want to claim that I had a disability. When you’re a comic, you can create your own history, your own character; you can do anything you want onstage. It’s like the last bastion of free speech. I think that if I had chosen not to say I was Muslim, I could have easily done it without trying to be more concise. But I think that once you do say you’re Muslim, it does become more inherently political for certain audience members, who have no concept of what Islam is. I felt like I had to talk about being Muslim, because we’re so inundated with these ridiculous, stereotypical images of Islam on television. And quite o
