2023-24
JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient
Holy and Hilarious: Humor in Islam and Contemporary American Muslim Comedy
Ritu Belani
Holy and Hilarious:
Humor in Islam and Contemporary American Muslim Comedy
2024 John Near Scholar
Mentors: Ms. Bronwen Callahan & Mrs. Meredith Cranston
April 10, 2024
No Laughing Matter
In the 2005 American film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, the American government sends a Jewish comedian to India and Pakistan in search of the Muslim sense of humor. Since the comedian must effectively teach others how to appreciate humor and his mission has little success, the movie endorses the idea that Muslims do not value humor, while it ignores Islamic traditions of humor.1 In the Western world, misconceptions about humor and Muslims abound, despite long-established Islamic traditions of joking and satire. Cultural theorist Edward Said’s work Orientalism establishes that the West has a tradition of viewing itself as superior to the Orient.2 This historical sense of moral superiority provides evidence for an ingrained Western propensity for ignoring a Muslim sense of humor.
The assumption that Muslims lack a sense of humor entered the mainstream media after the first “transnational ‘humour scandal’” in 2005: violent and nonviolent global Muslim backlash to satirical, provocative cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish magazine, which Muslims perceived as offensive.3 In the face of more violent Muslim responses to French satirical cartoons in the 2010s, media discourse has solidified the narrative of the humorless Muslim “Other.”4 Alternative Muslim voices that condemned the violence argued that these cartoons unjustly exploited imperialistic power dynamics as a ploy to further marginalize the minority Muslim population in the Western world.5
1 Jaclyn Michael, “American Muslims Stand up and Speak Out: Trajectories of Humor in Muslim American Stand-up Comedy,“ ContemporaryIslam7, no. 2 (December 16, 2011): 133, Springer Link.
2 Edward W. Said, ed., Orientalism(New York, USA: Vintage Books Edition, 1979), 7.
3 Giselinde Kuipers, "The Politics of Humour in the Public Sphere: Cartoons, Power and Modernity in the First Transnational Humour Scandal," EuropeanJournalofCulturalStudies14, no. 1 (February 2011): 64, accessed June 13, 2023, https://www.folklore.ee/rl/fo/konve/ishs2018/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Kuipersseminar5_Kuipers-2011.pdf
4 Jaclyn Michael, "Contemporary Muslim Comedy," in HandbookofContemporaryIslamandMuslimLives , ed. Ronald Lukens-Bull and Mark Woodward (Cham, 2021), 776-777, Springer Link.
5 Michael, 776-777.
The humorless Muslim stereotype has several consequences: it excludes Muslims from society, ties Muslims to fundamentalism, and makes them appear unmodern.6 Nearly all research on humor in Islam begins under the premise of disproving this stereotype, which has been refuted many times over.7 The objective of this paper is not to convince the reader that Muslims can be funny, but rather to provide a critical overview of the history of humor in Islam, with a focus on what the evolution of American Muslim comedy over the last two decades reveals about American society. In the face of the humorless Muslim stereotype, American Muslim comedians in the decade after 9/11 used humor to ameliorate public panic about Islamic terrorism, while prominent American Muslim comedians in the mid-2010s melded their watereddown Muslim identities with their ethnic heritage, simultaneously taking control of their narratives, yet promoting the otherization of Muslims globally.
Subject Matter Context
Western scholars of Islam fall into a common trap of defining Islamic rules by the “traditionalist interpretation” of early Islamic “puritans.”8 When defining the Muslim world, Western scholars tend to fixate on the conduct and beliefs established the first few centuries of Islam, rather than the diversity of the global Muslim population across time.9 These scholars have also long perceived a division between what they believe to be the hedonistic Arab culture
6 Kuipers, "The Politics," 75-76.
7 Samah Selina Choudhury, "American Muslim Comedy," in OxfordResearchEncyclopediaofReligion(Oxford University Press, 2023), last modified March 22, 2023, accessed June 22, 2023, https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e884#notes.
8 Ulrich Marzolph, "The Muslim Sense of Humour," in HumourandReligion , ed. Hans Geybels and Walter Van Herck (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011), 184, accessed June 13, 2023, https://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~umarzol/files/84Marzolph_Muslim-Sense-of-Humor.pdf.
9 Marzolph, 184.
and the ascetic values Islam imposed upon the Arabs.10 This oversimplified view neglects the multifaceted Islamic society that expressed its creativity through many outlets including jocular literature and legends, which this paper will analyze.
Not all Arabs are Muslim, but since Islam began in and spread across Arabia, many Muslim examples of humor featured in this paper take place in Arab societies. Wherever this paper mentions “Allah,” this term is equivalent to the Arabic form of “God,” and is the preferred Muslim nomenclature to emphasize the oneness of God. The Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, which Muslims believe to be the word of Allah, is divided into 114 sections, each section called a surat.
The term humor evokes different meanings in different settings. This paper will use Franz Rosenthal’s broad definition of humor as “the relief felt at the momentary lifting of one of the many restrictions” related to a human’s environment.11 The paper will employ Bernard Schweizer and Lina Molokotos-Liederman’s study’s scale of religious humor: jokes about individuals are least subversive, jokes about religious practices are moderately subversive, and jokes about God and the prophets are most subversive.12 This scale implies the existence of rules governing joking, a concept that sociologist Giselinde Kuipers names “humour regimes” (hereafter humor regimes.)13 Each society has their own set of humor regimes, so to appreciate Muslim humor, the reader has to first understand the restrictions it lifts.
10 Ze'ev Maghen, "The Merry Men of Medina: Comedy and Humanity in the Early Days of Islam," DerIslam83, no. 2 (2006): 282, ProQuest.
11 Franz Rosenthal, HumorinEarlyIslam(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1956), 1.
12 Bernard Schweizer and Lina Molokotos-Liederman, eds., MuslimsandHumour(Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2022), 6-7, De Gruyter.
13 Kuipers, "The Politics," 69.
This paper will begin with a discussion of what the Qur’an says about humor and joking. Then, this paper will analyze the Prophet Muhammad’s sense of humor and the precedent it set for later Muslim humorists. The paper will explore the types of humor in adab, early Islamic texts for edification, and entertaining stories of medieval Islamic tricksters. These traditions have informed Muslim humor for centuries, but this paper will focus on a survey of American Muslim comedy after 9/11 and in the mid-2010s because of its relevance to the author’s practice of standup comedy. This paper applies a broad definition of Muslim comedy to encompass the racialized scope of Muslim and Muslim-adjacent identity in America.
Qur'anic Guidelines on Humor and Laughter
As the Qur'an is the primary source that informs Islamic ethics, analyzing its discussion of humor is key to ground this paper. In Surat An-Najm, the Qur’an presents humor as evidence of Allah’s power over humans: Allah “makes (men) laugh and makes (them) weep ”14 This verse justifies laughter as a natural aspect of human existence, and the dichotomy that the following verse creates strengthens this notion: “Who causes death and gives life.”15 These verses’ pairing implies that the former two actions are just as central to the human experience as the latter two.16 Surat ‘Abasa depicts righteous Muslims rewarded in the afterlife who laugh and smile with happiness.17 Because laughter is associated with proof of Allah’s divine design and with a reward from Allah in these respective Qur’anic examples, Islamic scholars have relied on these examples to defend Muslims’ natural rights to laughter and joking.18
14 The Holy Qur’an 53:43; Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 768.
15 The Holy Qur’an 53:44; Marzolph, "The Muslim," 173
16 Marzolph, 173
17 The Holy Qur’an 80:38-39; Ch. Pellat, "Seriousness and Humour in Early Islam (al-Jidd Wa'l-Hazl Fī Ṣadr alIslām)," IslamicStudies2, no. 3 (September 1963): 354, JSTOR.
18 Ch. Pellat, 354.
The Qur'an itself contains various instances of humor, these instances mainly characterized by a dramatic irony that defies the reader’s expectations.19 In one anecdote, Moses engages in a dialogue with Allah about his staff.20 When Allah inquires about its purpose, Moses responds with the seemingly self-evident: his staff aids him when he needs to rest and assists in managing his flock.21 While Allah's underlying objective is to inspire gratitude in Moses, this intention seemingly slips through the prophet's perception.22 The touch of absurd humor and irony in this anecdote emerge through Moses’ failure to recognize Allah's purpose behind the questioning.23 This story about Moses fits into other tales about prophets in the Qur'an featuring subtle examples of satire and caricature.24 In these cases, the Qur’an employs the least subversive form of religious humor on the Schweizer-Molokotos-Liederman scale, making fun of individuals.
Another plausible aspect of Qur'anic humor lies in rhythm. Reading a translated version of the Qur'an eliminates the possibility of comprehending the significance of rhythm. Upon careful reading in its original Arabic form, one such verse (7:143) carries a unique rhythmic pattern, setting it apart.25 This rhythmic distinction, similar to a lighthearted melody or a rhyming phrase, adds humor to what otherwise seems an ordinary statement.26 Following Rosenthal’s restriction-based definition of humor, these verses subvert the reader’s expectation of a serious,
19 Mustansir Mir, "Humor in the Qur'an," MuslimWorld81 (1991): 187, accessed July 17, 2023, https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/72107/j.1478-1913.1991.tb03524.x.pdf;sequence=1.
20 The Holy Qur’an 20:17-21; Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 769.
21 The Holy Qur’an 20:17-21; Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 769.
22 Michael, 769.
23 Michael, 769.
24 Mir, "Humor in the Qur'an," 189.
25 Mir, 189.
26 Mir, 189.
straightforward religious text. While the rhythmic example is not easily analogous to later instances of Islamic humor, it promotes creativity and wittiness.
While the Qur'an affirms and even includes humor, it restricts mockery. The chapter Surah Al-Hujurat outlines that humans cannot use laughter to exercise power over others: “do not insult one another and do not call each other by [offensive] nicknames.”27 Muslims have interpreted the Qur’an through various frameworks throughout history. For example, Muslims recognize that Allah revealed certain Qur’anic verses to the Prophet Muhammad to fit the needs of the Muslim community at specific timepoints. Scholars call Qur’anic interpretation that relies on this historical context “contextualism,” as opposed to “textualism,” the literal interpretation jurists have traditionally preferred for legal matters.28 A contextualist approach reveals that the majority of Qur’anic verses expressing disapproval towards mockery appeared when the Muslim community was just beginning and was most vulnerable to verbal attacks.29 This contextualist approach advocates that Qur'anic disdain towards ridicule should be understood as a mechanism for the political survival of the early Muslim community and not as a moral ruling intended for all of time.30
Instead of strictly interpreting the Qur’anic stance towards mockery as a one-time ban or an all-time ban, this paper proposes a gray area to judge how later Muslim humorists abided by Islamic guidelines. After all, it is infeasible to make a joke without some level of mockery, whether inadvertent or intentional. A central Qur’anic principle is that Allah judges Muslims’
27 The Holy Qur’an 49:11; Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 768-769.
28Abdullah Saeed and Ali Akbar, "Contextualist Approaches and the Interpretation of the Qur'ān," Religions12, no. 7 (2021): 527, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.
29 Mostafa Abedinifard, "Ridicule in the Qur'an: The Missing Link in Islamic Humour Studies," in Muslimsand Humour , ed. Bernard Schweizer and Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2022), 21, De Gruyter.
30 Abedinifard, 21.
deeds based on their intentions. To align with this value, this paper argues that Islamic guidelines should support a Muslim committing mockery with benign intentions, but not one with malicious intentions. This framework helps contextualize the following examples of the Prophet Muhammad’s humor.
The Prophet Muhammad’s Sense of Humor
After the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad is the second-highest authority on how Muslims should lead their lives. Muslims draw upon hadith, recorded anecdotes about the Prophet’s actions and sayings, for guidance. People who encountered the Prophet Muhammad during his life passed down hadith via the oral tradition, later compiled into written texts. Schools of hadith have built-in mechanisms to distinguish authentic hadith from unreliable hadith narrations.
Arabic history scholar Ze’ev Maghen claims that because of the Prophet’s highly respected status in Islam, religious scholars have selectively picked hadith to present him in the best possible light in official compilations, leaving out “foibles.”31 As a result of this trend, other scholars have struck down the idea that any grain of humor exists in the hadith, insisting that it is wholly serious.32 Muhammad did spend much of his day nudging his followers to be cognizant of their upcoming deaths, prepare accordingly for the Day of Judgment, and not allow joviality to distract them from their priorities.33 In one hadith, Muhammad warns a companion who is
31 Maghen, "The Merry," 326.
32 Maghen, 284.
33 Maghen, 288.
always joking that “too much laughter kills the heart” and to “laugh in moderation.”34 Scholars have taken this saying to fit into a broader Muslim value of moderation, or hilm, deciding that laughter is allowed so long as it is not too intense.35
Despite the severity of Muhammad’s disposition at first glance, however, it would be foolish to leap to the conclusion that the Prophet Muhammad did not joke around. Maghen claims that for each saying in the hadith that suppresses jest, another saying upholds its importance:
If we read above in one source that Muhammad would cast down his eyes when gladdened in order to avoid the evils of jocularity (mazḥ), we read in another that "The Prophet, may God's peace and blessings be upon him, was wont to joke (kāna yamzaḥu) as were the leaders of the community (al-a'imma) after him."
36
Several anecdotes feature the Prophet laughing with his companions and telling jokes characterized by a subtle sense of humor, seemingly validating the practice of joking for Muslims.37 Commonly referenced books of hadith include chapters named “‘The Book of When the Prophet Laughed,’ and ‘The Time the Prophet Joked.’”38 In fact, many sayings in the hadith describe the Prophet as “laughing at times so intensely that his molar teeth were visible.”39 Because of semantic disagreements about the original Arabic, this phrase could also translate to his smiling, with varying degrees of dental exposure.40 As much as I would love to learn the
34 Maghen, 292.
35 Marzolph, "The Muslim," 174.
36 Maghen, "The Merry," 291.
37 Marzolph, 174.
38 "Preacher Moss," in ContemporaryBlackBiography(Detroit, MI: Gale, 2008), Gale in Context: U.S. History.
39 Marzolph, "The Muslim," 174.
40 Maghen, "The Merry," 304.
precise amount of teeth he displayed, the significant factor is these sources all point to the Prophet projecting his hearty mood onto others with his joking.
There are many ways of joking without crossing the limits of the sacred, and the Prophet made harmless jokes about his surroundings. In one story, when a follower asked for a camel, the Prophet replied that he would give him the child of a female camel.41 As the follower questioned what good a young camel would be for riding, the Prophet reminded him ironically that every camel is the child of a female camel.42 Another similar anecdote features the Prophet referring to a woman’s husband as a man with “whiteness in his eyes.”43 Upon the woman’s confusion, the Prophet clarified that everyone’s eyes have “whiteness.”44 Maghen calls this genre of humor the Prophet’s “kosher material,” embellishing this analysis with “groan” while I prefer to call them dad jokes.45 Although these remarks may not seem particularly funny to the modern reader, they revealed the relaxed nature of the Prophet, who had no inhibitions about poking fun at the unsuspecting bystander over a tiny matter.
The Prophet also appeared in stories that seemed to contradict some of the virtuous characteristics usually associated with him. One day, he was chatting good-naturedly with a group of women in his home, when another friend knocked on the door and asked to come in.46 Instantly, the women put on their headscarves, and as the friend walked in, the Prophet began laughing.47 The Prophet explained his amusement at how quickly the women had covered themselves, and as the friend expressed his surprise that they had not already covered themselves
41 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 769-770.
42 Michael, 769-770.
43 Maghen, "The Merry," 314.
44 Maghen, 314.
45 Maghen, 317.
46 Maghen, 327.
47 Maghen, 327.
before the Prophet, the women confirmed that they were more afraid of his severity than the Prophet’s.48 In this story, the Prophet appears lenient with respect to “a lapse of female modesty,” demonstrating his moderate personality in spite of his position as a role model and guide for the entire Muslim community.49 The Prophet’s jest towards a widely accepted Islamic practice, women covering their heads, counts as a form of the moderately subversive religious humor against religious rituals. Other anecdotes recorded in even the “most orthodox sources” featured the Prophet making bawdy jokes or laughing at inappropriate instances.50 While this paper will not go into the details of these stories, they serve as the most subversive form of religious humor in a way: would records of the Prophet’s cheeky insinuations reflect poorly on the religion he represented? This paper argues that they would not.
The Prophet used humor to prevent his fellow Muslims from taking daily life and Islamic rules too seriously. Humor also helped him appear more down to earth: the willingness of the Prophet to joke around with his companions led Maghen to call them “a group of ‘regular guys,’” though they were much greater than that.51 They set a precedent of spreading Islamic teachings and modeling righteous behavior while joking and valuing light-hearted moments, a trend that influenced medieval Islamic scholarly work, adab.
Humor in Adab from Medieval Islam
Created in the ninth century and circulating up through the Middle Ages (into the fifteenth century), adab, an Islamic literary genre for edification, contains various examples of humor. To fulfill their goal of “teaching without tiring,” authors of adab included entertaining
48 Maghen, 327.
49 Maghen, 328.
50 Maghen, 332.
51 Maghen, 333.
moments to make their work more engaging.52 A joke here and there provided a moment of levity so the reader could return more attentively to the moral subject, a technique known as aljidd wa-’l-hazl or “seriousness and joking.”53 One of the most well-known products of adab, alIbshîhî’s fifteenth-century encyclopedia with the rhyming title al-Mustatraf fî kulli fannin mustazraf (translating to “Enchanting items picked from all areas of knowledge”) is a balanced mix between serious and amusing.54 Today, al-Ibshîhî’s encyclopedia is one of the most widely disseminated works in literary collections of the Arabian peninsula, speaking to the popularity of Islamic humor.55
Another humorous strategy of adab authors included applying Qur'anic references in unrelated contexts. As audience members were typically well-versed in this religious text, they would find the misuse of Qur'anic references entertaining and hilarious.56 This trend abounds in compilations of nawādir, short stories often delivered orally.57 As an example, one genre of nawādir jokes focus on condemning the behavior of ṭufaylīs, or “party-crashers,” such as Bunān in the following excerpt: Bunān said: ‘I used to know the entire Qur’an by heart then I forgot it all except one verse, “Bring to us our morning meal, certainly we have met with fatigue from this our journey”’ [Q 18:62]. (al-Baghdādī, 1983: 139–140, emphasis added).58
52 Pellat, "Seriousness and Humour," 359.
53 Marzolph, "The Muslim," 176.
54 Marzolph, 180.
55 Marzolph, 180.
56 Webber, "Humor and Religion," 6:4214-4215.
57 Yasmin Amin, "Using/Abusing the Qur'an in Jocular Literature: Blasphemy, Qur'anophilia, or Familiarity?," in MuslimsandHumour , ed. Bernard Schweizer and Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2022), 94, De Gruyter.
58 Amin, 96-97.
Because ṭufaylīs did all they could for free food (not unlike the modern-day shopper seeking samples in Costco), this joke demonstrates how they warped religious scripture to fuel their activities. The storyteller’s inserted Qur'anic verse illustrated the ṭufaylī’s greed and stigmatized their behavior without explicitly criticizing them.59 The use of Qur'anic quoting helped the storytellers achieve their goal of moralization, while delighting the audience.60 Still, these orators were careful not to cross the boundaries of blasphemy, so while they were happy to laugh along with the religious text, they were not necessarily laughing at it.
61
Other adab authors took a more upfront approach to justify their use of humor. One twelfth-century author Ibn al-Jawzî put together entertaining stories about “foolish people.”
62 Although his work disobeyed the traditionalist Qur'anic guidelines towards mockery, he crafted a clever explanation of its merit to ward off potential opponents. He declared in his introduction that his tales would imbue the reader with gratitude that they themselves were not “fools” and cause them to be more mindful of their own behavior.63 He added that in addition to these moral benefits, the reader would have the ability to enjoy some well-deserved jokes.64 This explanation demonstrates his good intentions, abiding by Islamic. In the fifteenth century, adab author alJâhiz used theologically-grounded claims, drawing upon examples from the Qur'an and the hadith, to argue that laughter at appropriate times is beneficial for human wellbeing, but humans should avoid excessive amusement.65 Like the ṭufaylī anecdotes, his fictional exposé Book of
59 Amin, 97.
60 Amin, 97.
61 Schweizer and Molokotos-Liederman, MuslimsandHumour , 9.
62 Marzolph, "The Muslim," 177.
63 Marzolph, 177.
64 Marzolph, 177.
65 Pellat, "Seriousness and Humour," 360.
Misers led the reader to reflect on their own greed as they laughed about the humorous stories.66 These writers’ inclinations to justify using humor with ethical and Islamic reasons implies that this choice was controversial.
In contrast to the examples above, various adab authors shifted to purely jocular writing, providing little to no justification. An eleventh-century author al-Âbî wrote a humorous anthology spread across multiple volumes, brimming with thousands of evocative tales, witty jokes, and comedic narratives.67 He included no introduction or justification for his work, which sequentially increases in levity, even reaching ribald material.68 During the ninth century, Abu’l’Anbas, who also penned several books on morals, wrote amusing anecdotes as part of his appointment to the Caliph’s court.69 Designed purely for entertainment, his stories ranged from parodies to bawdy works.70 These popular examples demonstrate the versatility of Islamic adab authors, who like the Prophet Muhammad could step away from their religious precepts to amuse their audiences with light-hearted material that could even offend. But like the nawādir orators, these adab authors did not jest about religious principles, and they largely stayed within the realm of human experiences.
Islamic Tricksters
So far, examples of Islamic humor discussed in this paper have largely not ridiculed the religion itself, but stories about tricksters often cross these religious boundaries. Broadly defined, Islamic tricksters are semi-mythical figures who perform daring, entertaining antics and defy
66 Pellat, 361.
67 Marzolph, "The Muslim," 179.
68 Marzolph, 179.
69 Pellat, "Seriousness and Humour," 357-358.
70 Pellat, 357-358.
societal expectations.71 When they interact with religious institutions, they break fundamental Islamic guidelines and seemingly promote circumventing these norms.72 Interestingly, Maghen cites the playful nature of the Prophet and his companions to support the validity of the tricksters’ behavior and argue that history has wrongfully marginalized these tricksters as “rebels,” when in reality they are devotees of Islam and the Prophet.73 While trickster tales include a few extreme anti-religious examples, for the most part, because they often teach the readers a lesson, the tricksters provide harmless and necessary levity.
Ash’ab “the greedy,” one well-known trickster who lived in Medina in the ninth century, made jokes about religion, politics, and his position in the urban middle class, although his legendary personality now exceeds his historical one.74 The tenth-century encyclopedia Kitâb alAghânî attributes over one hundred sayings to Ash’ab, which Franz Rosenthal translates and analyzes in his book Humor in Early Islam 75 In one story, Ash’ab pokes fun at the haphazard nature of hadith transmission: he claims to a passerby that he recalled a saying of the Prophet about the two best traits a Muslim can have.76 When asked about these traits, Ash’ab admits that his source forgot one, and he could not remember the other.77 Because of the importance Islamic jurisprudence gives to hadith, their authenticity is crucial, and this anecdote brings attention to the “pedantry of hadith transmitters” and how easily hadith can be faked or misconstrued.78 This story falls under the moderately subversive type of religious humor, laughing at religious
71 Webber, "Humor and Religion," 6:4213-4214.
72 Webber, 6:4214.
73 Maghen, "The Merry," 284-285.
74 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 771.
75 Rosenthal, HumorinEarly , 36.
76 Rosenthal, 29.
77 Rosenthal, 29.
78 Rosenthal, 29.
practices, or rather, faults therein. Rosenthal argues that Ash’ab’s jokes were not intended to criticize Islam, but rather played on widely relatable topics that any listener could understand and laugh about.
79 By this justification, Ash’ab’s humor was similar to that of adab authors who misapplied verses from the Qur'an into funny contexts, not to disrespect Islam, but to resonate with the audience’s experiences.
Nasreddin Hodja, a trickster who lived in Anatolia in the thirteenth century, remains famous in Turkish folklore up to the modern day for his witty remarks and joviality. Nasreddin’s stories encompassed every imaginable topic, and their common factor was his optimism.
80
Although Nasreddin occasionally took on a dishonest personality, the underlying morals of his stories taught the reader to be honest, open-minded, and respectful towards others.81 Such stories also used humor to criticize corrupt, illogical, or un-Islamic practices, with the following anecdote concerning superstitions:
One day [the people] ask Nasreddin Hodja:
“In funeral ceremonies, is it better to be on the right side or the left side of the coffin?”
82
“It doesn’t matter, unless you are inside.”
In this joke, Nasreddin made fun of individuals who entertain excessively punctilious questions. his invocation of the listeners’ mortality teaches others to think clearly and enjoy life to its fullest. Sometimes, Nasreddin took on the character of a religious scholar or jurist, and his platform called attention to problems in society.83 Overall, Nasreddin’s tales used humor to
79 Rosenthal, 28.
80 Bayram Asilioglu, "The Educational Value of Nasreddin Hodja's Anecdotes," Children'sLiteraturein Education39 (2008): 5. Springer.
81 Asilioglu, 6.
82 Asilioglu, 7.
83 Webber, "Humor and Religion," 6:4214.
deliver a meaningful social commentary, similarly to the adab authors though with more informality.
Juha, another Islamic trickster from the ninth century, occupied many roles with varying degrees of morality and trespassed more severe religious boundaries than Ash’ab and Nasreddin.84 Juha frequently outwitted the educated or wealthy class.85 In one relatively innocuous example of Juha’s religious tales, he stepped up to the pulpit after Friday prayers and asked the congregation if they knew what he had to tell them.86 After they answered “no,” he reasoned that if they did not know, it was not worth his effort to tell them.87 The next week, he asked the same question, to which they replied “yes.”88 Now, he claimed that there was no point in him telling them if they already knew.89 The following Friday, after he asked the same question, some answered “yes,” while others answered “no.”90 Then, Juha said, “Those who know will inform those who do not,” and steps down.91 Juha’s intentionally laconic exchange criticized the solemnity of sermons and highlighted how little Muslims learn from them. Because Juha succeeded with his ridiculous experiment, he compelled the listener to laugh at the expense of the religious clergy.
In a more extreme religious example, Juha, irritated by the loud call to prayer at dawn and his mother’s seizure of their blanket so she can pray, cut off the prayer caller’s head and threw it into a well.92 His mother protected him by also throwing down a ram’s head, so when
84 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 771.
85 In some stories, Juha even outwitted Allah. Webber, "Humor and Religion," 6:4213-4214.
86 Pellat, "Seriousness and Humour," 358.
87 Pellat, 358.
88 Pellat, 358.
89 Pellat, 358.
90 Pellat, 358.
91 Pellat, 358.
92 Webber, "Humor and Religion," 6:4211.
the town residents looked for the prayer caller, they found the ram’s head in the well and wondered aloud whether the prayer caller had horns.93 In this story, Juha not only mocked the required Islamic prayers, but also broke a major rule in the religion by killing another man, without showing any sign of repentance. His story would likely compel audiences to burst out laughing and reflect on the inconvenience of waking up early in the morning to pray. This bold genre of Juha stories that broke Islamic guidelines would particularly resonate with Muslims who struggled to live within the boundaries of Islam.
These beloved tricksters served as a meaningful outlet for Muslims disgruntled with social or religious aspects of their lives. Like the Prophet Muhammad, they helped people not take the rules of Islam too seriously. With the tricksters’ breaking of taboos, they acted as the prototypes for modern Muslim comedy.94 Out of the many examples of Muslim humor over the centuries, in the next section, this paper will specifically analyze the breaking of taboos or humor regimes in post-9/11 Muslim comedy in America.
American Muslim Comedy Post-9/11
Considering the previous context on Islamic humor, the premise of the 2005 American movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, that Muslims do not have a sense of humor, which is likely a representation of the thoughts of many Americans, seems ridiculous. However, viewers must examine the world events of the early 2000s to understand the political context of the movie and the sensibilities of its audience. The terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, in New York and other US targets and the War on Terror influenced American attitudes towards Muslims and subsequently, how American Muslim comedy reacted to these sentiments.
93 Webber, 6:4211.
94 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 771.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/1l and the ensuing rise in Islamophobia, American Muslim stand-up comedians took up humor to address stereotypes and correct false assumptions about Islam and Muslims.95 At the time, comedy was an alternative to the defensive academic discourse published around the world about Islam.96 Although there had been American Muslim comedians performing material before 9/11, the attacks lent a “new social relevance” to the Muslim identity.97 To be sure, different comedians had divergent attitudes about defining their material to fit the aftermath of 9/11.98 In the words of Preacher Moss, a prominent American Muslim comedian and founding member of the travelling comedy group Allah Made Me Funny, “We are firm to point out that this tour is not a response to 9/11 but a call to action for Muslim, and non-Muslim communities to take action in bringing humanity to the forefront of daily living.”99 While his point that not all Muslim comedy should be defined by 9/11 is valid, it is impossible to fully appreciate the themes in contemporary American Muslim comedy without recognizing the impact that 9/11 had on American social and political discourse.
A few American Muslim comedians drew upon religious frameworks to inform their material. One comedian Baba Ali noted after studying the hadith that although the Prophet joked, he would never lie to create a joke, as was the common practice for modern stand-up comedians.100 To follow the Prophet’s example and stay within Islamic guidelines, Baba Ali
95 Michael, "American Muslims," 130.
96 Michael, 130.
97 Michael, 135.
98 Morgane Thonnart, "American Muslims and Contemporary Hahahahalal Comedy," IslamandChristian–MuslimRelations27, no. 2 (March 22, 2016): 134, Taylor & Francis Online.
99 Hayat Alyaqout, "The Three Musketeers of Humorism! The Story of How Allaah Made Them Funny!," IMAG, last modified December 3, 2005, accessed July 21, 2023, https://www.i-mag.org/intellectualsections/capita/147.html?task=view.
100 Thonnart, 135.
promised to only tell his audience about true events.101 While launching the comedy group Allah Made Me Funny, Preacher Moss checked with leading Islamic scholars to learn about the Islamic guidelines around laughter and studied instances of laughter in the hadith. 102 Throughout the Allah Made Me Funny shows, the comedians erred on the side of material that would not offend the audience, abandoning explicit language and sexual topics.103 In this respect, they were even more careful than Arabic authors of adab over a thousand years ago whose subject matters included ribald themes.
As opposed to finding inspiration from Islamic history, many American Muslim comedians identified with American ethnic minority comedians like Richard Pryor who used humor as a call for social justice.104 For example, Allah Made Me Funny member Azhar Usman cited his inspiration as the “distinctly American lineage of Black, Jewish, and Latinx comedians” who addressed the social challenges of their specific eras.105 Therefore, while some American Muslim comedians’ moral compasses compelled them to refer to past examples of humor in Islam, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that Islamic guidelines dictated American Muslim comedy.
In American Muslim comedy, particularly material performed by men, themes of racial profiling at places like airports dominated their sets. As the George W. Bush administration pursued the War on Terror in the Middle East, the American media boosted a racialized image of a Muslim “other” who could be a danger to civilian safety.106 These threatening archetypes, who
101 Thonnart, 135.
102 "Preacher Moss.”
103 "Preacher Moss.”
104 Michael, "American Muslims," 131.
105 Choudhury, "American Muslim.”
106 Michael, "American Muslims," 132.
were typically male, could be identified by their ethnic features including “beards, dark eyes, and turbans.”107 In a self-aware fashion, American Muslim comedians played on these racialized tropes to motivate the audience members to redress their internalized stereotypes. Usman subversively joked about his experience walking into an airport with an appearance that caused the authorities to pinpoint him as a probable threat and inspired fear within the airplane passengers:
To be honest with you, I don’t understand what they’re all scared of. Because truthfully, if I was a crazy Muslim fundamentalist terrorist about to hijack the plane, [pauses, then gestures towards his large beard] this is probably not the disguise I would go with. Doesn’t exactly keep me under the radar (Kalin 2008).108
After 9/11, just looking “Muslim” attracted public scrutiny, so much so that non-Muslim populations who fit this bill could relate to discriminatory experiences. Four American comedians with roots in Egypt, Palestine, and Iran formed the comedy group the Axis of Evil in 2006.109 Though only two of the comedians identified as Muslim, the Axis of Evil performed similar racial profiling jokes as American Muslim comedians, such as material related to microaggressions at airport security.110 For example, in their Comedy Central show, each episode started with all the comedians passing through a metal detector to reach the stage.111
107 Michael, 132.
108 Michael, 140.
109 A George W. Bush 2002 address to the Union where he called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea a global “axis of evil” inspired the name of this comedy group. Jill Dougherty, "'Axis of Evil' inspires laughs," CNN , June 30, 2007, accessed March 2, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/30/axis.comedy/index.html; "President Delivers State of the Union Address," George W Bush White House Archives, last modified January 29, 2002, accessed March 2, 2024, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/2002012911.html.
110 Michael, "American Muslims," 134.
111 James Poniewozik, "Culture Complex: Stand-Up Diplomacy," TIME Magazine, March 8, 2007, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1597524,00.html.
Their emphasis on a seemingly straightforward bureaucratic process highlighted how for Muslim and Muslim-appearing people, airport security felt like a predatory spotlight. These American Muslim and Middle Eastern comedians who used their platforms to decry bigotry defied the humor regimes of joking about terrorism after 9/11.
In a hilarious twist, to remedy Muslim mistrust of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after its surveillance of Muslim communities, the agency sponsored an Axis of Evil performance at a American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee convention in 2007.112 Among other Axis of Evil jokes that targeted the FBI, comedian Maz Jobrani positioned his camera to face the FBI tables in the audience and commenting “I just want to take a picture of you,” inverting the political roles of surveillant and surveilled.113 The Axis of Evil’s material was subversive and socially relevant, yet the FBI sponsorship hints towards the political expediency of comedy. This Axis of Evil performance took on the role that comedians embraced at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where their comedy acts as a service through which the audience can feel heard and validated without anything tangible changing for them.
The War on Terror cemented Americans’ attitudes that Islam oppressed women. The terrorist group responsible for 9/11, Al-Qaeda, operated in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and when the Taliban opposed Bush’s petition to release Al-Qaeda’s leaders to the United States, the United States initiated the Afghanistan War.114 To buoy support for the war, in addition to the American media framing the war as a fight against terrorism, the media justified the war via
112 Andrea Shalal-Esa, "FBI in Public Appeal to Muslims, Arab-Americans," Reuters (Washington), August 9, 2007, accessed March 2, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN13308901/. 113 Shalal-Esa.
114 Congressional Research Service, TalibanGovernmentinAfghanistan:BackgroundandIssuesforCongress , by Clayton Thomas, 2, November 2, 2021, accessed March 2, 2024, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46955#:~:text=By%201996%2C%20they%20had%20come,they %20did%20in%20the%201990s.
feminism. The visibility of this women-centered messaging is exemplified through First Lady Laura Bush’s radio address that decried the “brutal oppression” of women in Afghanistan before wishing listeners a happy Thanksgiving a month after the attacks.115 Despite the First Lady’s distinction between the Taliban’s treatment of women and true Muslim values, the media tended to conflate the Taliban regime’s oppression of women with all Muslim women.116 For example, following 9/11, media scholar Suad Joseph compared the portrayals of Muslim women in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, publications with opposing partisan views, and found that both leaned on depictions of Muslim women as marginalized and lacking power.117
While American media stereotyped Muslim men as dangerous, they also stereotyped Muslim women as overly covered and oppressed, labels that American Muslim female comedians would work to unravel.118 For example, an analysis of post-9/11 New York Times articles about Muslim women noted unnecessary mentions of women’s long clothing and veils, with relatively no attention paid to the apparel of Muslim men.119 As a result of this bias, according to Islamic performance scholar Jaclyn Michael, American Muslim female comedians’ material often took on a more “sexualized nature” in comparison to their male equivalents.120 Comedian Tissa Hami would begin her set wearing a costume of a long covering coat and a headscarf and calling out her “‘Islamic dress,’” then in the middle, declare that she would
115 "Radio Address by Mrs. Bush," George W Bush White House Archives, last modified November 17, 2001, accessed March 4, 2024, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011117.html.
116 "Radio Address.”
117 Alex Russell, "Correcting a Flawed Lens on Muslim Women: Anthropologist Works to Counterbalance Misrepresentations of Muslim Women in National Media," UC Davis College of Letters and Science, last modified February 1, 2024, accessed April 10, 2024, https://lettersandscience.ucdavis.edu/news/correcting-flawed-lensmuslim-women.
118 Michael, "American Muslims," 132.
119 Samantha Weiss, "Muslim Women According to the New York Times: A Post-September 11, Reading of American News Coverage," Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Works, Spring 2016, 26-27, accessed April 10, 2024, https://jayscholar.etown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=commstu.
120 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 778.
perform a “‘striptease.’”121 At this point, she would shed her outer garments and end up appearing more “normal” to the audience.122 Her transformation forced the audience to grapple with their expectations of Islam’s restrictive dress for women and with the reality of Hami being the same woman she was when she was covered.123 Since one Islamic guideline is that no compulsion is allowed in religion, Hami was entitled to forgo traditional Islamic dress, but she might have also come across as mocking Muslim women who opted to fully cover themselves. Another comedian Maysoon Zayid made fun of strange rules her Muslim dad enforced so that she would maintain her virginity, such as not riding a bicycle, which had virtually no basis in Islamic precepts.
124
By bringing taboo topics into the open, female American Muslim comedians addressed mainstream beliefs that they were voiceless. Because they aimed to subvert the audience’s expectations about an oppressive religion, they were less able to dwell on other aspects of Islam in their sets. However unorthodox their material was in the eyes of their fellow Muslims, since they were ultimately defending Islam, they did not approach the level of irreverence of tricksters like ninth-century Juha who mocked the religion itself.
American Muslim comedians also used their platforms to address societal issues within the Muslim community. Preacher Moss, a Black man, called out Muslims’ internalized racism and performed a humorous rendition of how different ethnic groups in Muslim America said “salam ‘aleekum” to one another, emphasizing the diversity of their community.125 Other comedians like Ali and Mohammed Amer spotlighted the cultural divisions within the Muslim
121 Michael, "American Muslims," 143.
122 Michael, 143.
123 Michael, 143.
124 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 778.
125 Thonnart, "American Muslims," 138.
community.126 Omar Regan even went so far as to touch upon a Qur'anic verse about how Allah created different groups so we could learn from each other.127 Regan’s act used the Qur'an as a framework to make a social critique, rather than as a punchline like the nawādir. Preacher Moss also devised jokes about a Muslim sickness “9/11-itis,” in which Muslims distanced themselves as much as possible from outwardly expressing their Muslim-ness to avoid discrimination.128 He labeled these people as “weak” Muslims and encouraged them through his teasing to reclaim their Muslim identities.129 With their in-group joking, American Muslim comedians sought to point out social faults in order to boost the strength of the Muslim community.
Beyond making social commentary for Muslims and non-Muslims, American Muslim comedy served as a tool to promote Islam. Regan and Ali often performed comedy at Islamic organizations for young Muslims, even reminding their audiences to read the Qur'an.130 Their use of humor as a tool for edification was like the instructive purposes of joking in adab. Ali even used comedy to encourage da’wa, or calling others to Islam: he told his fellow Muslims to pack Islamic pamphlets when going to the airport so if security checked their bags, the officials could learn the true teachings of Islam.131 When American Muslim comedians who had converted to Islam described their conversion stories, they acted in the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who spread knowledge of Islam to others.132 These comedians took advantage of their marginalized situations in post-9/11 America by publicly joking about their experiences as Muslims in a way that compelled audience members to learn more about Islam.
126 Thonnart, 140-141.
127 Thonnart, 138.
128 Michael, "Contemporary Muslim," 778.
129 Michael, "American Muslims," 145.
130 Thonnart, "American Muslims," 141.
131 Thonnart, 145.
132 Thonnart, 145.
While American Muslim comedy called attention to Islamophobia, it also established divisions within the Muslim community because of difficulties with representation and inconsistencies within their “socially critical humor.”133 For example, some male Muslim comedians made stereotypical jokes about women and emotional tendencies.134 As an effect of the racialized Muslim image, American Muslim comedians who achieved fame were mostly male and of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. This overrepresentation reinforced stereotypes about whose voices mattered most in Muslim communities. Still, American Muslim comedy mirrored the tricksters’ ability to call sensitive subjects to the forefront of their material.
Mainstream American Muslim Comedy in the Mid-2010s
The movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World generalized Indian and Pakistani experiences to all Muslim experiences. Yet, this narrow scope of Muslim representation is not so far removed from mainstream American media today. Mainstream American Muslim comedians in the mid-2010s such as Hasan Minhaj, Kumail Nanjiani, and Aziz Ansari have spotlighted their South Asian identities in relationship with their Muslim identities. By doing so, they portray themselves as champions of progress, while subtly belittling Muslims around the world. In addition to stand-up comedy, examples include comedic representations in mass media, since similar themes around Muslim humor emerge across mediums intended for popular consumption.
Indian American Muslim comedian Hasan Minhaj frequently centers his experiences with prejudice as a theme of his comedy. In his 2017 Netflix comedy special Homecoming King, he described the personal effects of Islamophobia on his life, detailing anonymous assailants who 133 Michael, "American Muslims," 151.
134 Michael, 148.
attacked his car and house windows with rocks following 9/11.135 In another story from the special, he shared how an FBI agent spied on his mosque under the guise of converting to Islam and nearly falsely charged Minhaj with nefarious behavior.136 Later, Minhaj admitted that he fabricated the FBI story, with inspiration from various true events, to convey the “emotional truth” of what it was like to be Muslim in America after 9/11.137 With Minhaj’s commitment to educate his large, diverse audience about the impacts of Islamophobia and FBI surveillance on Muslim populations, this facet of his comedy reflects the Axis of Evil’s 2000s genre of humor.
Throughout his performances, Hasan Minhaj turns being Muslim into a racial identity, otherizing Muslims from mainstream America. He often conflates his Muslim identity with being “brown,” using the terms interchangeably.138 Though his word choice empowers Muslims who identify as brown, Minhaj brushes over the racial diversity of the Muslim community, reinforcing the dominance of South Asian and Middle Eastern ancestries within it 139 In Homecoming King, he famously announces the rise of a “New Brown America,” characterized by people who look like him getting the opportunity to access wide audiences, such as speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.140 While Minhaj rallies brown solidarity, Minhaj’s use of the term implies distance from an American identity, entrenching himself as a perpetual foreigner given his religious and racial status. Minhaj walks a tight line between cultural pride and self-imposed cultural alienation. Within the charged political context of President Donald
135 Hasan Minhaj, HomecomingKing , New York, NY, 2017, HomecomingKing , directed by Christopher Storer, aired on Netflix.
136 Minhaj.
137 Clare Malone, "Hasan Minhaj's Emotional Truths," TheNewYorker , September 15, 2023, accessed January 13, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/hasan-minhajs-emotional-truths.
138 Jaclyn Michael, "Religion and Representation in the 'New Brown America' of Muslim Comedy," Ecumenica 11, no. 2 (2018): 63, Scholarly Publishing Collective.
139 Michael, 63.
140 Minhaj, HomecomingKing,HomecomingKing .
Trump’s Muslim travel ban, which demarcated a predominantly Muslim region of the Middle East as unacceptable, Minhaj’s racialized rhetoric lumping Muslims with an ethnic group holds some merit as addressing one genre of prejudice.141 Like Allah Made Me Funny and the Axis of Evil, Minhaj recognized that bigots do not stop to ask which religion you follow or which country you belong to: prejudice tends to overgeneralize with arbitrary justifications, characterized by split second judgements on whether someone is a threat or not. However, when Minhaj keeps marking himself and others like him as foreign, his stories of otherness prevent non-Muslim people from feeling like they can view Muslims as neighbors.
By rejecting aspects of his cultural and religious heritage, Nanjiani, a Pakistani American Muslim-raised comedian, has promoted the archetype of a modern American Muslim man. When Nanjiani began stand-up comedy during the post-9/11 boom in American Muslim and Middle Eastern comedians, as he described it, he decided he would avoid the overdone topics Muslims were all addressing, like being “cabdrivers or working at 7-Eleven or working at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
142 Nanjiani’s dissatisfaction with the limited range of material Muslim comedians covered suggests a shortcoming with post-9/11 Muslim comedy: when everyone was performing them, jokes that once seemed subversive became stereotypical and cliché. After all, there are only so many times you can laugh about Muslims at airport security.
While Nanjiani’s contemporaries toured the world dispelling myths about Muslims, Nanjiani stuck to observational, nonpersonal humor until 2007, when he launched a comedy show Unpronounceable about his cultural evolution from a Shiite household in Pakistan to
141 Michael, "Religion and Representation," 1.
142 Kumail Nanjiani, "For Comedian Kumail Nanjiani, Getting Personal Is Complicated," interview by Ann Marie Baldonado, NPR, last modified June 10, 2015, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2015/06/10/413270558/for-comedian-kumail-nanjiani-getting-personal-is-complicated.
college and comedy in America.
143 Rather than seeking to speak on behalf of all Muslims, Nanjiani described his personal experience with Islam, including his questioning of the Qur’an and Pakistani religious practices.
144 A short video advertisement for the show centers Nanjiani’s anecdote of secretly accessing adult video clips during adolescence in his conservative household.145 By openly sharing this un-Islamic practice, Nanjiani establishes himself not as a perfect representative of Islam, but as a hilariously rebellious, relatable human who refuses to let societal norms sway him from pursuing his desires. Or, in other words, an American.
Nanjiani continued developing this theme of being an unapologetically twenty-firstcentury Muslim in his 2017 loosely autobiographical movie The Big Sick. The movie follows his estrangement from his Muslim parents as he defies Pakistani tradition by marrying a white, nonMuslim American woman.146 Nanjiani’s acts of rebellion extend to the more everyday moments as well. In one scene, he opts to play a mobile game under the pretense of completing his prayer.
147 In an interview, though Nanjiani acknowledges that “everything is political” these days, he did not intend on making the movie political and rather sees it as him sharing his personal story as a secular Muslim with the world.
148 At the risk of overgeneralizing one man’s experiences to a cultural statement, by inventing himself as an independent character who pursues what he wants (playing mobile games instead of praying and marrying his girlfriend
143 Nanjiani.
144 Sean L. McCarthy, "Review: Kumail Nanjiani, 'Unpronounceable,'" The Comic's Comic, last modified April 11, 2008, accessed March 4, 2024, https://thecomicscomic.com/2008/04/11/review-kumail-n/.
145 "Kumail Nanjiani's 'Unpronounceable' at Lakeshore Theater," video, YouTube, posted by LakeshoreTheater, August 5, 2007, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtuSLI_JKuQ.
146 Michael, "Religion and Representation," 64.
147 Michael, 64.
148 Andrew Marantz, "Kumail Nanjiani's Culture-Clash Comedy," TheNewYorker , May 1, 2017, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/kumail-nanjianis-culture-clash-comedy.
instead of following a traditional arranged marriage), Nanjiani portrays himself as “making heroic choices,” breaking free from the shackles of Islamic responsibilities.149
Playing the irreverent Muslim-ish character Dev in the 2015 show Master of None, Indian American Muslim-raised comedian Ansari takes on an individualistic agenda to criticize Islam. In the episode “Religion,” he tries bacon while with a friend, enjoys it, then flaunts his newfound taste for pork by ordering pork (which is prohibited in Islam) when eating out with his family.150 His family feels distraught at this betrayal, and they ultimately agree to disagree about Dev following Islam after Dev justifies his independence using a verse from the Qur’an: “to you be your religion, and to me my religion” (109:6).151 Like the nawādir, Dev (perhaps unintentionally) misapplies this Qur’anic verse in a way that will feel humorous to viewers acquainted with Islamic history, since this chapter of the Qur’an is not meant to justify straying from Islam, but rather to set boundaries when among other people who do stray from Islam.152 Since Dev successfully escapes his parents’ regulations and achieves contentment (drinking in the last scene as his parents are elsewhere praying), he reduces Islam to a set of prohibitive rules.153
The mid-2010s performances of Hasan Minhaj, Kumail Nanjiani, and Aziz Ansari, whom Jaclyn Michael categorizes as representatives of “New Brown America,” signal a close tie between ethnicity and religion, while setting themselves apart as more liberated than the rest of the Muslim world.154 Michael argues that by turning away from traditional Islamic practices like 149 Michael, "Religion and Representation," 65.
150 Michael, 64.
151 Michael, 64.
152 Michael, 64-65.
153 Michael, 65.
154 Michael, 65.
prayer, Nanjiani and Ansari as Dev position themselves as more American and rational than other Muslims who are “backward, illiberal, and un-American.”155 Nanjiani and Dev’s performances ultimately do not present Muslims in a favorable light, yet an important consideration is the fact that neither Nanjiani nor Ansari identify as practicing Muslims. Since both experienced a cultural Muslim upbringing, their shared decision to leave Islam influences their irreverent attitudes towards Islam in their performances. Even Hasan Minhaj identifies more as a spiritual Muslim than a devout, rule-following one, and he has defied Islamic tradition by marrying a Hindu woman.156 Regardless of these men’s private relationships with Islam, they have been recognized and celebrated for their contributions to Muslim comedy. Islamic humor scholar Samah Choudhury describes their convergence into “the Right Muslim Man,” whereby “all three men keep specific racial and patriarchal hierarchies in place in order to console and pacify secular gatekeepers of their own correct secular subjecthood.”157 In other words, they capitalize on their belonging to the racialized Muslim identity without actually centering the practice of Islam in their comedy.
After Laughter
Despite mainstream Western assumptions, humor has been present in Islamic history since Islam’s beginning, and Muslims have applied humor to subvert societal expectations. With specific Qur'anic sanctions of laughter, and anecdotal examples of the Prophet joking with his friends, Muslims have ample evidence for Islamic guidelines surrounding humor and precedents
155 Michael, 65.
156 Hasan Minhaj, "Hasan Minhaj On Faith And Seeking Answers," interview by Sam Sanders, NPR, last modified June 2, 2020, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/864313818.
157 Samah Selina Choudhury, "American Muslim Humor, Secular Aesthetics, and the Politics of Recognition" (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2020), 276, accessed June 13, 2023, https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/nc580w304.
of subversive humor. Religious scholars in early Islamic history wrote instructive texts known as adab that combined seriousness and joking to teach the reader moral lessons, while entertaining them. These adab works, as well as short jocular narratives known as nawādir, often humorously misquoted the Qur'an to amuse audiences familiar with the scripture. Other stories within the Muslim world featured tricksters, who disobeyed Islamic rules, made fun of a wide range of societal wrongs, and exaggerated everyday religious practices. Following 9/11, to counteract misinformation and racialized stereotypes about Islam, American Muslim comedians took to the stage and made jokes about their experiences in airports and with conservative Islamic dress. Partially inspired by Islamic precedents, their comedy also targeted problems within the Muslim community and improved outsiders’ perceptions of the religion. In the mid-2010s, American comedians who entered mainstream media as Muslim voices have blurred the lines between their cultural and religious identities to portray themselves as progressive Americans in contrast with the rest of the Muslim world.
As satisfying as using humor to address prejudice sounds, the true impact of this endeavor is hard to quantify. Zahra Noorbakhsh, an Iranian American Muslim comedian, wrote in 2017 that she feels limited and disappointed by commercial pressure to perform “We’re just like you!” comedy material convincing Americans that Muslims are not a problematic population.158 In 2011, she created the comedy show “All Atheists Are Muslim” on confronting her parents about her moving in with her atheist American boyfriend, and she observed a limited impact from this attempt to add humor and humanity to the Muslim identity:
158 Zahra Noorbakhsh, "It's Not This Muslim Comedian's Job to Open Your Mind," TheNewYorkTimes , May 6, 2017, accessed January 13, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/opinion/sunday/its-not-this-muslimcomedians-job-to-open-your-mind.html.
While mixed-race and interfaith couples often thanked me after my shows, many others let me know that I was one of the “good Muslims” whom they didn’t have a problem with. I hadn’t made them more empathetic to Muslims as a whole.159
Even if watching one Muslim comedy show does not change someone’s opinions towards Muslims, that does not mean Muslim comedy is a waste of time. Muslim comedians can serve as visible, easily relatable spokespeople of Islam. For example, after 9/11, comedian Dean Obeidallah was inundated with requests from news media to talk about Islam, and even though he suggested they contact academics, they insisted they wanted a comedian’s voice.160 A study of Muslim American college students found that students believed Muslim stand-up comedy is improving perceptions about Islam and makes Muslims seem “just like everyone else.”161 There is still room for research on non-Muslim perceptions of Muslim stand-up comedy in order to determine the efficacy of comedy on reducing prejudice.162 Even if there is not a significant change in bias, just like other groups, Muslim comedians have a right to express themselves, and Muslim audiences have a right to see themselves represented in media.
As an amateur stand-up comedian, I have experimented with integrating my Muslim identity in my own comedy. Since I am a convert to Islam, my Muslim experience, and as a result, my Muslim comedy material, centers more around religious discovery and assimilation rather than a Muslim cultural upbringing. During the summer of 2023, I hosted a comedy open
159 Noorbakhsh, "It's Not This.”
160 Budd Mishkin, "One on 1 Profile: Comedian Dean Obeidallah Is a Voice for Muslim- and Arab-Americans," Spectrum News (New York City), February 6, 2017, accessed March 2, 2024, https://ny1.com/nyc/allboroughs/one-on-1/2017/02/6/one-on-1-profile comedian-dean-obeidallah-is-a-voice-for-muslim and-arabamericans.
161 (Essentially the direction Noorbakhsh wished to avoid, yet with more positive overtones.) Bilal Hussain, "Muslims Never Bomb on Stage: Audience Perceptions of Muslim Standup Comedy" (master's thesis, Loyola University Chicago, 2015), 25, accessed June 22, 2023, https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4136&context=luc_theses.
162 Hussain, 77.
mic night at a mosque, Hahahalal, where I and other Muslim performers shared halal (Islamically acceptable) material.163 Because we were performing to a primarily Muslim audience, Hahahalal was characterized by in-group jokes, without the political baggage of having to prove anything to non-Muslim listeners, as many of the comedians I have analyzed in this paper have grappled with. I also performed at Yuk Yuk’s, a comedy club in Toronto, Canada, where I called out Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie’s success with humanizing Muslims (a fantastic show that I could not fit into this paper), described Ramadan in humorous terms, and referenced a Toronto anti-Islamophobia campaign to encourage audience members to embrace inclusivity.164 Since there were Muslim members in the Toronto audience who related to my religious jokes, part of my performance referenced in-group material, though I believe I fell into the “We’re just like you!” trap Noorbakhsh warns against. Going forward, I aspire to authentically portray my relationship with Islam in a way that does not beg for the audience’s acceptance. I agree with Noorbakhsh that as Muslim comedians, Islam is just one aspect of our identity and not something we should be expected to discuss all the time.
It will be fascinating to see the turn that Muslim stand-up comedy takes in the next ten years. Will it root itself more firmly in Islamic history and guidelines? Will it maintain the same agenda of addressing stereotypes about Muslims? Will it feature more underrepresented voices?
Based on this history, the reader can be sure to look out for Muslim comedy that educates and challenges boundaries while entertaining.
163 "Stopping Islamophobia One Modest Swimsuit at a Time (Comedy) - Ritu," video, YouTube, posted by At The Intersection Series, June 17, 2023, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDkcV5RKt_8&list=PLkmAwkpTIhi8IulvEQFRQ6sVizSOd1T6L&index=1
164 "A Californian's Halal Hot Dogged Quest in Toronto | Yuk Yuk's Comedy 2023," video, YouTube, posted by Ritu Does Comedy, July 11, 2023, accessed March 4, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjbqyKoIMfA.
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