Comedy of the `Allah Tour’ Has Muslims Laughing

c. 2005 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ Even for those non-Muslims who know Islam is far more than a religion of violent zealots, the idea of a Muslim comedy show may seem incongruous. Muslims laughing? Yes, actually. And guffawing, snorting, even gasping for air. “My stomach is hurting, I was laughing so hard,” said Arooj […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Even for those non-Muslims who know Islam is far more than a religion of violent zealots, the idea of a Muslim comedy show may seem incongruous.

Muslims laughing?


Yes, actually. And guffawing, snorting, even gasping for air.

“My stomach is hurting, I was laughing so hard,” said Arooj Ashraf, a Pakistani Muslim who studies communications at Cleveland State University. She had just finished watching Azeem, Preacher Moss and Azhar Usman, three Muslim comedians, perform at the City Club of Cleveland in the “Allah Made Me Funny” comedy tour.

Sabiqah Muhammed laughed as she saw a piece of herself onstage, especially when Usman talked about the perils of a Muslim getting the once-over by airport security.

“Hilarious. Happens to me every time. Every time. I just go two or three hours ahead now,” she said, laughing as she relived Usman’s jokes.

Laughter is universal. And, the Muslim comics who formed the Allah tour believe, unifying.

“Comedy is the rawest of expression. It’s a totally honest thing and it can be taken so many different ways, just like a jazz chord can be played three or four different ways,” said Bryant Moss, who goes by Preacher Moss on stage and is the most experienced of the three Muslim comics.

“We’re three guys that come from three different Islamic communities and we realize people of the religion are important and people not of the religion are important. And through comedy, we’re able to break down a lot of walls very quickly and establish a connection.”

Where comedians often lean on the crutch of profanity, these comedians are clean, funny and sometimes daring. Audience members of all faiths laughed.

Usman, a Chicago-born Muslim of Asian Indian descent, took the stage in front of 80 people at the City Club and declared, “I am an American Muslim. That’s right. I consider myself a patriotic American Muslim, which means I would die for this country … by blowing myself up.”

Later, he pricked the stereotypical callers to talk shows who claim Islam is violent and is spread by the sword. He wondered aloud whether Islam was some giant tub of cream cheese ready to be spread, by the sword, onto bagels.


“If a non-Muslim, an anti-Islamic, stood up and said Islam is like cream cheese, we would not accept that. I personally believe in the issue of intention. Coming from a Muslim, we can accept it,” said Ramez Islambouli, who teaches about Islam at Case Western Reserve University and John Carroll University and who chuckled, and occasionally laughed heartily, during the show.

Usman concurred that audience perception determines how his humor is accepted and said, “It actually is serving the purpose of undermining the stereotypes.”

Usman, who also joked about the fear on fellow fliers’ faces when he boards a plane wearing a skull cap and sporting his bushy beard, tiptoes closest to the line of discomfort. But there are boundaries.

Muslims wouldn’t accept jokes about the Quran or anyone making fun of Allah or the prophet Muhammad. But jokes about the practice of their religion, the peculiarities of their culture, even the idiosyncrasies of an imam, can all be respectful as well as funny.

“There is room for artistic license in Islam,” said Julia Shearson, director of the Cleveland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There is room for humor or for a good laugh, but not at the expense of the part of Islam we revere very carefully.”

The importance of a Muslim comedy tour isn’t only in the kind of jokes the comics tell but that, in telling them, they break down cultural barriers.


“We laugh, we cry, we feel happy and we can make fun of the way we act. We’re just like anybody else,” said Shearson.

One common misconception, said Islambouli, is that all Muslims are the same. “We watch TV and think all Muslims are like (Osama) bin Laden and all women are oppressed and no girls go to school. The stereotyping comes because people don’t know, they tend to have very limited information of other societies, other cultures. This is now changing; Muslims are trying to go outside their cocoon and trying to share their culture and part of it is this comedy, too.”

Moss is an African-American convert to Islam who founded the “Allah Made Me Funny” tour with Usman a year ago, hoping to do maybe 30 shows in three years. They’ve already done more than 50 gigs and garnered media attention from the likes of the BBC and ABC News’ “Nightline.”

On stage, Moss bemoans the fact that the media do not portray many smiling Muslims, especially since Sept. 11, quipping that television always shows the same angry guy who is ranting and waving his arms, “because somebody just parked a tank on his house.”

Offstage, he reflects more fully on the stereotypical image of Islam.

“I can honestly say that the Muslims that are portrayed on television, I don’t know those guys. I don’t hang out with them. Like Azhar said on `Nightline,’ the religion has been hijacked,” said Moss. “This tour was an issue of us getting out and validating ourselves in the mainstream society instead of waiting for somebody else. You wait for Fox to validate Muslims, you’ll keep waiting.”

Usman, who has been called “The Ayatollah of Comedy” (he prefers it over another moniker a fellow comic gave him _ “bin Laughin”), left a law practice to pursue his comedy. He is an Islamic scholar who can speak at length about serious issues of religion and history. Offstage, he sounds more like a sage than a stand-up.


“There are fundamentally two aspects of what I am trying to say to my audience,” said Usman. “To my fellow Americans who are not Muslim, I want them to hear me say proudly and uniquely that I am an American like you. And guess what? I am a Muslim, too, and I am not going to apologize for that. … And my message to fellow Muslims around the world is, guess what, I am a Muslim just like you and I am also an American and I am not going to apologize for that.”

Usman sees the comedy tour as more than just a venue for his jokes; it is a way to show that preconceived notions that Muslims are violent, humorless, even Arab (a small percentage of the world’s Muslims are Arab) are wrong.

“My goal as a comic is to make them both laugh and think,” he said.

KRE/PH END MCINTYRE

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos to accompany this story. Search by slug.

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