Aasif Mandvi Quotes

I am a Muslim, yes, but I am also very English. People don't realise how proud I am to be representing my country or being from Birmingham.

I have a hard problem, being some part Native American - being a Christian: do you get burned, do you get cremated, do you get - let the sharks eat you? How do you die?

I grew up in a very westernised environment and went to a private American school. But my personality was shy and quiet, and I wanted to wear the hijab but didn't have the courage, as I knew my friends would talk me out of it.

I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.

I grew up with so much of the identity of being Muslim and being Arab tied around politics.

It's always hard to talk about the culture that you are from, especially with Islam, it is a very sensitive subject and I don't want to be seen to be adding to the problems of Islam and the west.

It took me a long time to square with the fact that none of my experiences are typical - I'm not a typical American, but I'm also not a typical Muslim.

It is plainly evident that some people who copy the polytheists in their clothes, manners, traditions or speak their language, harbor love and admiration for them. In this way, the polytheists succeed in disseminating ideas such as globalization and a universal religion which affect some sick-hearted Muslims; all of these aim at weakening the Muslim character and identity.

In Spain you are a Catholic or you are nothing.

Conversion to Christianity was my ticket of admission into European culture

The nature of the Jew is governed by the same laws as human nature in general. In England, France, Germany and the rest of Europe (except, Spain), in spite of the barbarous treatment and deadly persecution they have suffered, they have lived and spread and outlived much of the poisonous rancor and prejudice against them, and Europe has been none the worse on their account.

Islam and its tradition have until now encountered modernity as a cultural aggression (al-ghazw al-fikri), not as a historical phenomenon.

Migrants bring their culture with them… unsurprisingly, Nigerian immigrants to other societies tend to be untrusting and opportunistic.

We sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the nations in which we lived seeking just to preserve the faith, the religion of our fathers but this has not been allowed to us.

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements … Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us.

I grew up in the States, but I go back to Brazil quite often, and a big part of me is very Brazilian, so there's a constant struggle between the two cultures within me. They're very different approaches to life.

It's hard to imagine any Muslim fessing up to their secret proclivity for Sharia law knowing they would be deported if they gave the wrong answer.

Welcome to the brave new world of American multiculturalism. From a nation of diverse peoples united by a common culture, we have become a people divided by a common malady.

The only thing that said 'Lando Calrissian' was ethnic was his looks.

I lived for 30 years in the U.S., but always kept my Islamic and Iranian culture and customs... even now, western lifestyle feels strange to me.

We Muslims in the West, like Jews before us, grapple with the same issues that Jews of the past did: integration or isolation, tradition or reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.

There is an imagined thing called black culture. But culture is a construction. It is learned behavior, not innate. The black American experience is the American experience.

Let's stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that's only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit.

There's this idea that when you say you're Muslim, that you're either all in or you're trying to escape it. I love the idea of gradations and levels, just like everybody else has.

Centuries of history risk disappearing if Islamization, which up until now has been underestimated, gains the upper hand.