The Muslim American 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 one September morning in 2001.
“Pre-9/11, I identified as a white guy,” he told AFP. But 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.”
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.
But there was nothing funny about the emergence of the Daesh group in 2013. It added urgency to his fight against the stereotypes burdening Muslims.
“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 Daesh 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 presidential candidate Donald Trump, rather than gingerly tiptoeing, has been lobbing rhetorical hand grenades.
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN in an interview in March.
Obeidallah says 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.”
To understand what Muslims in the US are going through today, one need only read a few of the messages the 40-something comic receives daily on social media.
“When something bad happens and Muslims are involved, my Twitter fills up with haters who know who I am and go: ‘Look what your people did.’ It does get tiring.”
Many of the messages are in far more abusive language.

Source: Arab News