>>7921743As someone who knows Sami from his time one the indies, Sami has a major case of identity crisis shit because even though he's Syrian, he has the face and body of a white ass ginger Mick; which has led him to in general have racial identity issues well into his adulthood.
When he got started in the indies, Sami pretended to be white/Irish and did a wigger gimmick pretending to be "hardcore". When he realized he wasn't going to get far with that gimmick, he created the "El Generico" persona and presented himself as an Irishman pretending to be Mexican and basically doing an offensive Mexican Luchadore stereotype persona. However, his family quickly became appalled about him hiding his Syrian roots and he became briefly estranged from them for a while until he ended up getting his shot at the big time in the WWE via NXT.
When he came into the WWE, Sami knew his El Generico gimmick wouldn't fly and shamelessly started playing up him being Syrian/Canadian hoping that being open with his true ethnic origins would firewall him from retaliation online for his years of ethnic stereotype comedy. Sami is DESPERATELY afraid of being canceled by idiots who think he's a white Mick making fun of Mexicans, combined with his spate of injuries causing him to (I will admit, earnestly) rediscovering his religion, as Sami was previously rather indifferent to the issue of God/Allah in that he wasn't atheist but didn't care much about religion outside acknowledging God/Allah exists.
