American Muslim Humor, Secular Aesthetics, and the Politics of Recognition (2024)

American Muslims stand up and speak out: trajectories of humor in Muslim American stand-up comedy

Muslim American stand-up comedy is a unique response to post-9/11 negative social discrimination where socially critical comedians debate the stereotypes and realities of Muslim American life. Thus they continue an American minority tradition of engaging with American social life through public humor. The analysis draws from functionalist theories of the sociology of humor in order to discern the intended social messages of jokes that are meant to entertain and also educate. It shows how Muslim American comedy intends to influence opinions held not only about Muslims but also amongst Muslims. The paper suggests how competing forces related to being Muslim and American undercut the critical public humor of comedians who use these performances to argue what American Muslims should be saying and doing in order to advance their cause for social justice.

(Re-)presenting Islam: A comparative study of groups of comedians in the United States of America and France

2013

Over the last few years, humour has provided many Muslims with a means of seeking to establish a positive sense of self-identity, as well as a means of challenging misconceptions and fears of Islam in a wide variety of countries on both sides of the Atlantic. This article brings together two interviews with performers who use comedy to engage with perceptions of Islam and (re-)present Muslims in a generally non-threatening and everyday context. It compares and contrasts atrio of American stand-up comedians who tour under the name ‘Allah Made Me Funny’ and the two French performers who created ‘À part ça tout va bien’/‘Apart from that everything’s fine’, a humorous web series in France. The interviews provide an insight into processes of identity negotiation and (re)presentation by performers based in countries with very differing approaches to multiculturalism and diversity.

Laughter the Best Medicine: Muslim Comedians and Social Criticism in Post-9/11 America

This paper explores the role that Muslim standup comedians are playing in breaking down cultural barriers, promoting inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue, as well as tackling the misperceptions about Muslim and Arab Americans in the United States. I argue that Muslim comedians are increasingly taking on the role of Gramscian “organic intellectuals” capable of successfully participating in a quintessentially American activity—standup comedy—on behalf of their respective communities. Some scholars of Islam may argue that Muslim comedians, if they have any significance at all, are confined to the periphery of any meaningful discussions regarding Islam and Muslims after September 11. I will show that this is not only false, but fails to fully grasp the multifaceted responses that have arisen to combat Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the United States since the events of September 11, 2001.

Comedy and Islam in America

Islam arguably produced some of the greatest humour in world literature. What would we do without the 8th+ century 1001 Nights, 13th century Nasreddin? So how do Muslim humorists adapt to modern secularism? There has been an explosion of Arab and south Asian stand-up comics in the past two decades, coinciding with 9/11.

Muslims Never Bomb on Stage: Audience Perceptions of Muslim Standup Comedy

2015

Thinking Twice: Uses of Comedy to Challenge Islamophobic Stereotypes

This research and writing is presented as a “pre-curriculum,” containing theoretical frameworks within which antiracist educators may apply their talents and sensitivities towards opening dialogue and critical exploration of the functioning of Islamophobia. Resistance to sustained examination of dominant Islamophobic stereotypes in this time of ongoing military aggression towards Muslim populations internationally and racial and religious discrimination domestically, poses exceptional challenges. Entrenched media representations, and political discourse on both right and left tend towards demonization at worst or flattening and invisibilization at best. Oftentimes dedicated, sophisticated facilitators who are immersed in anti-oppression curriculum and anti-racism work in particular, share that they “hit a wall” when it comes to Islamophobia, or express a distancing lack of knowledge. This paper poses the inquiry: How can political humor and social justice comedy effectively open up greater curiosity, deeper engagement, and interrogation of Islamophobic and anti-Arab narratives, and illuminate the deployment of stereotypes with a critical media literacy lens? Strategic incorporation of comedic “texts” offers a form of epistemological inquiry that can surface and problematize what is “known.” As diverse comic artists employ humor as educational bridge-building outreach, antiracist educators can in turn draw from this prolific material as pedagogical tools.

Creating Humor in the Middle East

All humor has a common structure. It involves “double framing” in which something is presented that is suddenly revealed to be something else, often by being recontextualized during the course of the humorous presentation. The apparent “frame” of the humorous item is broken to reveal the second (and occasionally a third or fourth) frame to the surprise of the listener. The combination of double framing coupled with surprise produces an autonomic reaction—usually spontaneous laughter. Freud linked humor with aggression in part because the process of recontextualiztion and surprise is designed to take the consumer of humor unawares—a kind of assault. Cultural differences in humor arise because of the variety of bases for framing in different social traditions, conditioned by history, shared knowledge and behavioral expectations. For this reason it is often difficult for persons from one cultural tradition to understand the humor generated by other traditions. This paper will explore the generation of humor in the Middle East. Humor generated by exploiting expectations arising from social customs, language, shared symbolism and ironic distance between the “inside” and “outside” reality of current events create a rich humorous tapestry often unappreciated by persons from outside the region. Examples will be drawn from Egypt, Iran and the Persian Gulf states.

Comedy and Tolerance: Vir Das, Standup Comedy and Religious Tolerance in India

Media Studies, 2020

This essay examines the relationship between stand-up comedy and identity representation. The methods for examination begin with an overview of relevant humour theories, culminating in a case study of comedian Vir Das’s role in cultivating a collective secular identity in India. The case study takes on the method of critical textual analysis. By contextualizing the content of Vir Das’s 2018 Netflix stand-up special, Losing It, in relation to the historical and present landscape of religio-politics in India, I argue that stand-up routines like Vir Das’s represent humour being used as a tool to promote secularism and religious tolerance. I then conclude by suggesting that the use of this type of humour in India should continue in order to foster an Indian collective identity that promotes secularism, religious freedom, and religious tolerance. Unexpectedly, I also conclude that Vir Das’s religious-themed humour takes on a more tolerant, encompassing approach to mocking religious hegemony, compared to Western comedy approaches.

‘It’s not God I’m joking about’: Religion, stand-up comedy, dark comedy, and public sphere

Simulacra

This article tries to look at the social aspects of dark comedy used in stand-up comedy. Dark comedy is seen as problematic because it is in a vortex of humor, subjectivity, and the public. To capture and analyze these various phenomena, the authors use socio-anthropological perspective with the play theory from Sastramidjaja’s dissertation (2016) which is complemented by publicness from Sasono’s PhD theses (2019). This research is qualitative, using data collection methods in the form of semi-structured interviews with several main questions which are deepened by still referring to the main questions, especially to know the process of preparing jokes and stand-up comedy performances.This research was conducted in the Stand Up Indo Bekasi community and the Stand Up University Bhayangkara Jaya (UBJ) Bekasi with three comedians who often used dark joke material consisting of Bilal (Muslim), Ahmad (Muslim), and James (son of a Christian priest). This paper reveals the finding that dark...

Humor and Identity on Twitter: #muslimcandyheartrejects as a Digital Space for Identity Construction

Through examining the hashtag #muslimcandyheartrejects, a one-time, short-term, joke hashtag used on Twitter among a group of Muslim tweeters in 2012, we argue that members of Muslim digital diaspora communities use social media to construct and reinforce a Muslim diaspora identity. The architecture of Twitter provides the structure for these engagements, while humor serves meaning-making, cohesion building, and tension-relief functions within the conversation. The conversation itself combines a variety of topics to both describe Muslim identity in diaspora and to critique both Muslim community practices and conditions for Muslims in non- Muslim countries.