The American Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah has spent 15 years fighting hatred and bias against Islam, armed only with his sense of humor.
Now, the bitter tones of the US presidential campaign have added urgency to his mission.
Obeidallah’s life, like the lives of many Muslims, changed forever following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US.
Photo: AFP
“Pre-9/11, I identified as a white guy,” he told reporters.
However, after the terror attacks of that day, he said he “converted to become a minority.”
Obeidallah, the son of a Palestinian father and an Italian mother, could pass for any of a variety of ethnicities.
No one had ever guessed from his appearance that he was Arab or Muslim, said the talkative New Jersey native, a former lawyer.
Still, he decided to spotlight his Muslim identity.
“When you’re demonized, it brings it out of you. You’re either going to hide in the shadows or you’re going to step up in the light and you’re going to fight for your community,” he said.
Since making that decision, he has used every possible platform — not just the stand-up routines that are his bread-and-butter, but the 2013 documentary The Muslims are Coming! that he co-directed and now his eponymous radio show on SiriusXM — to spread his message.
He also founded a New York festival for Muslim comedians, the Muslim Funny Fest.
However, there was nothing funny about the emergence of the Islamic State group in 2013. It added urgency to his fight against the stereotypes burdening Muslims, a small and often misunderstood minority in the US.
“We’re not in the media much,” Obeidallah said. “If you don’t know us, you’ve never met us and all you see is ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and al-Qaeda, of course you don’t think we’re funny. You think we’re scary, we’re going to come kill you.”
Traversing this minefield, Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, rather than gingerly tiptoeing, has been lobbing rhetorical hand grenades.
In December last year, the New York business mogul proposed banning all Muslims from US territory “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN in an interview in March.
Obeidallah said comments like those have fomented fear.
“Muslim Americans right now feel a sense of being alone, we’re under siege,” Obeidallah said. “We feel like no one really cares about our community.”
In 2012, Obeidallah traveled to several US conservative states, including some in the deep south, to film his documentary.
At the time, he had a few people shout at him, sometimes through the windows of passing cars, “go back to your country.”
There were no verbal or physical threats, but that was before the emergence of the Islamic State group.
Obeidallah said he thinks matters might be worse now and he is not sure he would repeat his “Muslims are Coming!” tour.
However, Obeidallah is hardly intimidated.
On his radio program — the only national radio show hosted by a Muslim — and in his television appearances, he works tirelessly to open minds and jolt people’s consciences.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think I’m fighting for Muslims — I’m fighting for American values. I’m fighting for the idea that we all get treated equally,” he said. “I refuse to allow the Donald Trumps of this world to change what this country is supposed to stand for.”
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