These three Muslims boarded a plane …

and their Official Muslim Comedy Tour is helping knock down stereotypes. Waleed Aly explores the jesters' role in society.

Comedy of terrors

MEL BROOKS ONCE insisted that no subject, however dark or serious, is unfit for comedy. He should know; his musical comedy The Producers derived much its humour from Hitler's Holocaust. Still, stand-up comedy scarcely thrived in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, particularly in the United States. Some sores were just too sensitive to be prodded.

But according to the cliche, humour equals tragedy plus time. If this could be true of the Holocaust, it was inevitable that September 11 would eventually provide swathes of new material, opening new comedic spaces. Yet few would have expected Muslims to fill them.

Enter Azeem, Azhar Usman and Preacher Moss, three American Muslim comics who form Allah Made Me Funny: The Official Muslim Comedy Tour.

The trio came together in 2004 and have toured across the US and Canada, attracting extraordinary attention at every stop. Their media file is impressive, featuring reviews and interviews from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time and US TV, plus international coverage on the BBC and in The Guardian. The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, though smacking of quaint curiosity.

Muslim comedy? Surely, in the popular imagination, there is no phrase more oxymoronic. The public Muslim is pathologically humourless. Not surprisingly, these Muslim comedians are under no illusions about the cynicism that confronts them.

"A lot of people don't expect the tour to be funny," Usman admits frankly. Azeem agrees: "They think a Muslim comedy show is like going to a prostate exam and telling him he's going to have a great time."

Meantime, Muslim comedians are emerging with surprising regularity. Arab-American comics, many of whom are Muslims, have long been a fixture in the US. Across the Atlantic, British-born Shazia Mirza is perhaps the first person to do stand-up in a headscarf. Her career took off with the opening line of her first gig after September 11: "My name is Shazia Mirza. At least that's what it says on my pilot's licence." Other Muslim comics joining Mirza at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival were fellow Brit Paul Chowdry and Danish-Egyptian Omar Marzouk.

Perhaps, then, it is to be expected that Allah Made Me Funny is shooting for the mainstream. What began in mosques and Islamic community centres has now ventured successfully into some of America's best-known comedy clubs, such as The Improv. This is a calculated step, designed to force Muslims and non-Muslims to come together and interact through laughter.

Also, this is a comedy tour with a pedigree. It is the brainchild of Preacher Moss, a veteran of the industry who has written for Damon Wayans, George Lopez and Saturday Night Live. Azeem has shared the stage with Steve Harvey, Adam Ferrara and John Pinnette. Moss and Azeem are black American Muslim converts of about 20 years, and their roots have left an unmistakable imprint on their acts. Much of their material trades on the kind of racial observational humour mastered by Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.

The result is a kind of black-Muslim fusion. Azeem recalls being 17 and telling his grandmother, a devout southern US Baptist, that he had become a Muslim. "I said, 'Grandma, I'm a Muslim.' She looked up and said, 'No you're not. You ain't never been to jail.'"

Usman, by contrast, goes straight to the political Zeitgeist, opening with a disclaimer: "I am not in any way affiliated with al-Qaeda. Nor am I a member of the Taliban. I just play one on TV." The joke is visual. Usman, with his skull cap and long beard, quite unlike his colleagues who could pass for jazz musicians, is the very caricature of the fundamentalist Muslim image - a fact he exploits regularly in his act.

He discusses how people stare at him in utter fear whenever he boards a plane. "Everybody's real nice to me once the plane safely lands," he says. Drawing on his Indian heritage, he adds: "People look at me like I was responsible for 9/11. Can you believe that? Me, responsible for 9/11 - 7-Eleven, maybe."

In many ways, Usman is the odd one out. The Chicago-born former lawyer is the only one of the trio born into a Muslim family. He is also probably the least experienced, having only started performing what he calls his "Muslim schtick" a few months before September 11. His act hasn't changed substantially since. "The main difference," he says, "is now people care."

Usman is right. To borrow from John Howard, the times suit him. Muslims in the West find themselves in the intense, perpetual spotlight, and this can be thoroughly exhausting. "Muslims need a laugh," says Usman, and Moss quips that after September 11 the tension and paranoia was so high that you couldn't even tell a Muslim a knock-knock joke. Try it, he says:

"Knock knock."

"Don't answer it!"

This environment guarantees no shortage of stereotypes waiting to be given the stand-up treatment. "Muslims are the most peaceful people on the planet Earth," retorts Azeem to the common perception that Muslims are violent.

"Y'all don't believe it? Think about it. Mike Tyson ain't won a fight since he became a Muslim."

Like all good comedians, Azeem, Usman and Moss are quite prepared to laugh at themselves. Usman's character comedy brings us "Sheikh Abdul, the radical imam", who intersperses vitriolic lectures with announcements about double-parked cars and meetings to re-elect the mosque committee that has remained unchanged for 37 years.

There's also "Uncle Letmesplainyou", an antique Muslim who barely speaks English, has crazy political views and a voracious desire to share them, elbowing others aside to embarrass the community in television interviews. He also brags about the growth of Muslim America to people who don't care. "He's bragging to his friends at work: 'Can you believe it, Bob? Seven million Muslims in America!' He thinks Bob is impressed. He's not, he's scared."

Muslims connect immediately with these characters because they, and the elements of internal community dysfunction they represent, are so achingly familiar. Usman recounts a conversation with a friend who says he is completely uninterested in organised religion. "I said: 'Great! Become a Muslim. We're the most disorganised people on Earth!'" In this way, Allah Made Me Funny gives Muslims permission to acknowledge and laugh at the problems in their own community, and to share that process with non-Muslims. "It is therapy," says Usman.

[…]

Usman calls this "comedy of distortion", where "the minority group that is the butt of the stereotype (is) using that stereotype, flipping it inside-out, and exposing it for what it is".

In truth though, Muslim stereotypes scarcely need explicit treatment. The mere existence of Allah Made Me Funny is often treatment enough. "When was the last time you saw a happy, bearded Muslim on TV?" asks Usman.

From all reports, the sense of empowerment is apparent in Muslim audiences. "The group of people that I've noticed that come out are those persons who, for some reason, have felt spiritually disenfranchised," says Azeem. "What I've noticed is that as they leave, it's like they just came from a spiritual revival."

It is as though the comedy gives Muslims permission to celebrate who and what they are. In a world of intense pressure and relentless maligning, such opportunities for celebration are otherwise in critically short supply.

But if stand-up at its best is a commentary on the human condition, and if the lives of American Muslims are by now indelibly politicised, it is inevitable that Allah Made Me Funny would have a political edge. Jokes about the absurdities of modern security measures are high on the agenda. Xenophobes are also useful fodder.

Usman wonders how some archetypical callers to Fox News manage to get through the screening process: "Yeah, hi, my name is Billy-Bob. I'm calling from Louisiana and I just wanna say that all them Muslims - and them Islams - and all them Pakistanis and Afghanistanis and Iraqistanis - they should just go back to Africa!"

[…]

Comedy has this unique power. As Australian comic Adam Vincent says: "The jester would be the only one who could get away with telling the king what was wrong with the kingdom."

Usman is explicit on this point. "There's a history of the underdog using stand-up comedy to speak truth to power. People take notice and are transformed by the experience."

Viewed through this lens, Allah Made Me Funny represents the forging of a new American Muslim identity. And like all social development, it is not without its resistance. Some Muslims will be uncomfortable with mixing comedy with religion.

Moss is frank about the challenges: "You know, some Muslims just take themselves too seriously," he muses. When Usman was booked to perform for a Shi'ite audience, some members of the community objected. It took a favourable ruling from the Ayatollah himself before the show could go ahead. Now, Usman is dubbed the "Ayatollah of comedy".

But for all the obstacles, Allah Made Me Funny has been hugely successful. Plans are afoot for the tour to go to Britain, and requests have flooded in from the Muslim world. Australian Muslims have made similar requests, but so far the tyranny of distance and economics have not yet made it viable.

Globally, it seems, there is an insatiable appetite for the Western Muslim voice. It's fitting that via the speech of the jester they are beginning to find it.

I really, really want these guys to come to Neverland (aka Australia)! I love the Mike Tyson joke. And Joey, does the term "Islams" ring a bell? lol

By the way, I tried very hard to cut the original article down. I failed miserably. :p