Aziz Ansari: Donald Trump 'Makes Me Afraid For My Family'
BY REBECCA FISHBEIN IN NEWS ON JUN 25, 2016 12:35 PM
While Donald Trump was off putting his foot in his mouth in non-Brexit supporting Scotland, Aziz Ansari wrote a heart-wrenching op-ed for the Times about how the presidential candidate's persecution of Muslims makes him fear for his own Muslim-American family's safety.
Though Ansari's described himself as an atheist, his parents, Fatima and Shoukath Ansari (who play themselves on his Netflix show, Master of None), are still practicing Muslims, and Ansari opens his op-ed with an anecdote about how he warned his mother not to go to a mosque to pray on the Sunday of the Orlando attacks. "As I sent that text, in the aftermath of the horrible attack in Orlando, Fla., I realized how awful it was to tell an American citizen to be careful about how she worshiped," he writes. But in the age of Trump, anti-Muslim hate speech and prejudice is nothing to dismiss. "It’s visceral, and scary, and it affects how people live, work and pray. It makes me afraid for my family. It also makes no sense."
You can read the whole thing on the Times' website—Ansari points out the oft-repeated fact that more than half of the 49 mass shootings that have happened since 9/11 were carried out by white males, but no one seems to be going after them. But the most touching part of the piece is when he, then a student at NYU, describes hearing the second plane hit the Twin Towers, juxtaposed with Trump's assertion that Muslims were "cheering in the streets" in New Jersey on 9/11:
The haunting sound of the second plane hitting the towers is forever ingrained in my head. My building was close enough that it shook upon impact. I was scared for my life as my fellow students and I trekked the panicked streets of Manhattan. My family, unable to reach me on my cellphone, was terrified about my safety as they watched the towers collapse. There was absolutely no cheering. Only sadness, horror and fear.
http://gothamist.com/2016/06/25/aziz_ansari_donald_trump_makes_me_a.php
