Ebrahim Moosa – Radio Islam | 17 November 2016

South African-born comedian and host of The Daily Show Trevor Noah has expressed his deep concern on the state of demonization of Muslims in the USA, soon to be led by Donald Trump.

In an interview with Eusebius McKaiser on 702 regarding his debut book, Born a Crime, Noah responded to a light-hearted question on him being deported from the USA by saying, “I don’t know if I am genuinely on the brink. It’s a fun joke to make, but the truth is I think am fairly insulated and a lot of people are”.

The funnyman then however proceeded to air his concerns on the plight of Muslims in the United States.

“But what is worrying are people who are Muslim, for instance,” Noah said.

“And what’s worrying about it, is not on a hyperbolic level. Somebody can be saying you are being hyperbolic about the whole thing. But it is worrying when someone wants to ban an entire religion from a country.

“The reason it’s worrying is not [just] for the sake of the religion. It’s worrying because of how hard it is to ban a religion. What does a religion mean? How religious do you have to be to be banned? And we cannot deny that we have lived or at least read about times when people were rounded up because of their religion, or their supposed religion, and that’s a scary thing to think about – because if somebody says then, ‘Eusebius you are a Muslim’, how do you prove that you are not now, or are you being deported or ostracised? –it is a very dangerous precedent to set. Those are worrying things in the country”.

The comedian who inherited the Daily Show in September 2015 has repeatedly challenged Islamophobia on the show and in public performances.

During the 2015 New York Comedy Festival, he highlighted the random profiling of Muslims at airports and the widespread stereotyping of the adherents of the faith.

“If you are Middle Eastern you are terrorist – that’s the world we live in now,” Noah commented.

“If you are Middle Eastern, terrorism is your trademark. It’s so crazy how easy it is to get people to hate a group of people”.

Noah went further mounting a direct challenge to the notion that ‘All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim’.

“It sounds very smart to say…but it’s stupid and it’s hate speech,” he said to a rousing response.

In a segment of the Daily Show aired in December 2015 and themed around Trump’s suggested ban on the entry of Muslims to the United States, Noah declared, “Donald Trump is White Isis” coining the acronym ‘WISIS’ to refer to the now US President-elect.