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My national identity is first American. My religious identity is first Muslim.

I'm a comedian who happens to be Muslim; my comedy stems on all forms of my identity.

When I started running for Congress, it actually took me by surprise that so many people were fascinated with me being the first Muslim in Congress.

When I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

To be a veiled Muslim woman on screen is a very scary minefield for me.

I consider myself to have been formed by a lot of the locutions and aesthetics and principles of the Muslim way of life, and those are an important part of my childhood and my identity.

I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.

But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.

For me, I never wore my religion on my sleeve, you know what I'm saying? I never put myself out there as Lupe Fiasco, he's Muslim, he's from Chicago, he likes to ride a skateboard.

I identify myself as what I am. I'm half Jewish, like Proust. I have no other way to put it.