In this insightful interview, actor and social-commentator Aasif Mandvi, talks about his recollections during 9-11, living in Manhattan as a young actor and balancing the mediocrity of attempting to go to the doctor that morning while slowly realizing the world had forever changed.
“In the immediate aftermath of September 11, America was much better for Muslims than it was subsequently,” says the comedian. “In the immediate aftermath, I think most Americans were asking why it happened. There was a need to understand. But the conversation got hijacked by the media and politicians and leveraged into sensationalism and fear mongering, and the answer became: Be afraid, be very afraid. Suddenly, you had politicians in America using what happened on September 11 as a tool to make people afraid of Muslims, to make people afraid of Islam.”
