Indian-American comedian Aziz Ansari fears for family’s safety under a Trump administration

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Comedian, actor and director Aziz Ansari, creator of the Netflix hit “Master of None,” says he would fear for the wellbeing of his family under the presidential administration of Donald Trump, and has accused the presumptive Republican nominee of fostering a dangerous environment for Muslim-Americans with his “vitriolic and hate-filled” campaign rhetoric.

“It’s visceral, and scary, and it affects how people live, work and pray,” Ansari wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “It makes me afraid for my family.”

The son of Muslim immigrants, Ansari wrote that the current political climate in the U.S. creates “a strange feeling that you must almost prove yourself worthy of feeling sad and scared like everyone else” after a terrorist attack like the one at Orlando’s Pace nightclub.

Trump’s sentiment that Muslim-Americans should make a more concerted effort to police their own neighborhoods and communities imply “that millions of innocent people are somehow complicit in awful attacks,” Ansari wrote. “Not only is this wrongheaded; but it also does nothing to address the real problems posed by terrorist attacks.”

In a June 13 speech, Trump’s first after Omar Mateen’s attack on the Orlando nightclub, the presidential candidate largely assigned the blame of December’s San Bernardino terror attack on the killers’ Muslim neighbors.

“They didn’t turn them in,” Trump said, “and we had death and destruction.”

In his op-ed, Ansari dismisses the notion entirely, arguing jokingly that by Trump’s logic, “after the huge financial crisis of 2007-08, the best way to protect the American economy would have been to ban white males.”

Ansari points out that there are roughly 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States.

He writes: “I asked a young friend of mine, a woman in her 20s of Muslim heritage, how she had been feeling after the attack. “I just feel really bad, like people think I have more in common with that idiot psychopath than I do the innocent people being killed,” she said. “I’m really sick of having to explain that I’m not a terrorist every time the shooter is brown.”

He also took the time to share a personal story of living as a Muslim-American in a post-9/11 world.

“…A few months after the attacks of Sept. 11, I remember walking home from class near N.Y.U., where I was a student. I was crossing the street and a man swore at me from his car window and yelled: “Terrorist!” To be fair, I may have been too quick to cross the street as the light changed, but I’m not sure that warranted being compared to the perpetrators of one of the most awful incidents in human history.”

He also adds: “According to reporting by Mother Jones, since 9/11, there have been 49 mass shootings in this country, and more than half of those were perpetrated by white males. I doubt we’ll hear Mr. Trump make a speech asking his fellow white males to tell authorities “who the bad ones are,” or call for restricting white males’ freedoms.