We're always going to be cherry-picking to make religion make sense. Especially in the modern context.

We're always going to be cherry-picking to make religion make sense. Especially in the modern context.

I mostly want to highlight things that feel like an injustice, and that's not really political. No one is going to - or should - say that bigotry toward Muslims is partisan. It's a matter of being just or not being just. So that's why I started calling myself a social justice comedian.

Thanks to the Internet, I think, a lot of hate has moved to more anonymous venues. A lot of people get their aggression out that way. Or they do some drive-by hating—you know, where they’re in a car and they yell something stupid out the window at a stoplight and then take off. It’s just not as involved and laborious to be a hater as it used to be. There’s not as much face-to-face interaction. Facebook’s made ’em lazy.

There's something about political comedy that sometimes closes people off, and my general goal is to open people right up.

We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn't even explain half of your behaviors!

The fundamental truth guiding social justice comedy is that people are not shitty. That sounds cheesy, but that's how I have to approach it. Everybody has the capacity for change.