This April, Star Wars fans were gutted to hear that Riz Ahmed, who played Bodhi Rook in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, would not be appearing to an event honouring the film in Chicago.
Months later, Ahmed finally cleared the air to explain why he could not make it. During the Amplify leadership summit, he told the panel that, whilst on his way to Chicago, he was stopped by homeland security who refused to let him board his flight.
The summit is centred around diversity and multicultural issues in entertainment, sports, tech and politics. Ahmed was joined by headliners who included Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Hasan Minhaj and Eva Longoria, all of whom took the stage on Tuesday.
Speaking about his thoughts of the current situation Muslims face all over the world, he said, “[Hasan Minhaj] can win a Peabody,” Ahmed said. “I can win an Emmy, Ibtihaj Muhammad can go to the Olympics, but some of these obstacles are systemic and we can’t really face them alone, we need your help. I’m basically here to ask for your help, because it’s really scary to be a Muslim right now, super scary. I’ve often wondered, is this going to be the year when they round us up, if this is going to be the year they put Trump’s registry into action. If this is going to be the year they ship us all off.”
Ahmed also talked about code-switching, an act in which a person changes their accent or behaviour in certain situations to avoid being singled out for their identity (in this case, race.) He credits code-switching as being the reason he is able to have his platform, which he wants to use to make code-switching a thing of the past.
“How I do what I do is because like all of you here, I’m a code-switcher,” he added. “We all know how to change the way we talk, the way we dress, the way we walk as we enter one room or another. We all know how to navigate terrain that isn’t of our own making. That’s how I can do it, but that’s not why I do what I do. The why is because I don’t want to have to code-switch anymore.”
