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

Jaclyn Michael

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Muslim American stand-up comedy is a unique response to post-9/11 negative social discrimination where socially critical comedians debate the stereo- types 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 com- peting 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.

Keywords Muslim Americans . Gender. Humor. 9/11 . Stand-up comedy

Muslim American comedian Azhar Usman opens a typical stand-up routine with a joke that quickly and simply addresses contemporary perceptions of the relationship between Muslims and humor. Exclaims Usman: “I’m going to do something you’ve never seen a Muslim do before!” He pauses for a few seconds, and then grins broadly to deliver the punchline: “Smile!” (Kalin 2008). Of course, the pretext to this joke is that the audience knows what it is Muslims do, and it has nothing to do with smiling or laughter. Indeed, public opinions of Islam and American Muslims in the post September 11th, 2001 (9/11) context often reflect a combination of fascination and fear. This fear is concerned with a perceived imminent threat that the Muslim presents to public safety. Contemporary fascination with American Muslims wonders how they can be patriotic citizens and believers in Islam at the same time.

Cont Islam DOI 10.1007/s11562-011-0183-6

J. Michael (*) Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1240 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Although negative stereotypes about Islam and American Muslims existed long before 9/11, the consequences of that event led to an intensified public scrutiny that continues to produce different yet targeted responses from the Muslim community. Many American Muslims retreated inward in response to these suddenly very negative social conditions. Bookstores around the world are replete with the latest attempts by Muslims and non-Muslims to explain, defend, or apologize on behalf of the Islamic faith.1 However, a parallel development to the apologist for Islam is the emergence of Muslim American stand-up comedy. In stark contrast to a defensive posture, these men and women use humor to boldly challenge widely held social assumptions of Muslim America. Indeed, many of the new Muslim comedians are forthcoming with the socially critical goals of their comedy—they want to correct misinformed views that they feel distort the Muslim American identity.

Stand-up humor is a new and unique analytical site to reveal and evaluate the ways that Muslim Americans engage with the stereotypes and realities of being both Muslim and American in a post-9/11 context. The emergence of this humor places Muslims in a long history of American minority groups using public humor to address and contest the terms of American social life and national belonging. Interestingly, this comedy is meant not only to entertain but also to address certain outsider attitudes held about Muslims and insider attitudes amongst Muslims. This essay discusses the social messages delivered in jokes that are opportunities for comedians to promote social cohesion and provoke social conflict through laughter that can encourage but also ridicule. Although these jokes have the potential to convey important social messages to both non-Muslims and Muslims, their critical force is undercut both by the ambiguity of humor and by un-stated social contexts that influence their reception.2

Pointing to the gap and laughing: minority humor and stand-up comedy in American culture

Fascination and fear of social minorities has a long history in America and an important connection to American humor. A country that was founded by immigrants traditionally expresses social tensions through the propagation of stereotypes about a group of people. Social anxieties about the presumed characteristics of an unfamiliar minority often first appear as jokes and public satire created outside of the community by majority groups. American comedic traditions include negative presentations of minorities such as joking slurs about an Irish propensity to drink and fight, min- strelsy’s exploitation of a dimwitted coon, and a stingy, conniving Jew.3 Thusly

1 These books cover a wide spectrum, exampled by works such as Clark (2003) and Manji (2003). 2 The content of stand-up performances is drawn from material available (through April 2009) through diverse media products such as websites, online performance clips and interviews, documentaries, and print materials. And although there are many Muslim American men and women who perform stand-up, this analysis is strictly interested in those comedians who promote themselves as Muslim, and who are candid about having socially critical messages as an important goal for their humorous work. 3 For historical works on American minority humor, see Boskin (1997), Mintz (1996), and Rappoport (2005). For more specific work on Jewish American humor, see Brodkin (1998) and Nachman (2003); for black American humor see Carpio (2008), Haggins (2007), Levine (1977), and Watkins (1994).

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prompted, stereotyped minorities respond to and engage with their comedic relevance in public settings. These acts and these spaces—such as vaudeville plays, minstrel shows, and comedy clubs—are also important sites for observers of social life to index the cultural integration of minorities. So perhaps it is not surprising that contemporary anxieties about Islam and American Muslims are today explored in a very public and satirical way by a new group of enterprising Muslim American comedians. In this history of minorities using humorous performance to ingratiate into American culture and society, many performers stand out for their relevance to the social justice goals of contemporary Muslim stand-up comics.

Stand-up comedians like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Moms Mabley, and Dick Gregory were among the first popular entertainers in America to use their stand-up comedy as occasion for social commentary and cultural critique. These men and women laid the foundation for a tradition of humorous social insight and paved the way for the man whom many contemporary Muslim American comedians cite as their inspiration, Richard Pryor. Like these comedians before him, Pryor used his stand-up comedy to voice his social commentary and critique in ways that reflect the chasms of American cultural life in the 1970s and 1980s. It is in his stark pointing out of the gap between the fictions and the realities of race in America with comedy that Pryor made the biggest impact for the stand-up comedians concerned with issues of social justice that would succeed him. Out of Pryor’s work, his 1976 album Bicentennial Nigger stands out for its cutting commentary on the state of a black America that continued to deal with the ramifications of slavery (Pryor 2000). In this recording, Pryor uses parody to voice the sentiments of a thankful slave on the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of America. With this comedic and incongru- ous juxtaposition of the tragic history of slavery with the joyous celebrations of American freedom, Pryor reveals the ironic tragedy of that celebration for American blacks. The example of Pryor’s thankful slave shows how the humorous trope of absurdity was important to his exposure of the fictions of stereotypes about black American attitudes and history.

Richard Pryor publicly and humorously voiced the black American argument for social rights in intimate ways in comedy clubs all over America. Although the social discrimination that American Muslims are subjected to today differs in many ways from the black American experience, it is similarly driven by a racialized stereotype that privileges skin color and appearance as markers of broad social attitudes and behaviors. Therefore it is fitting that Muslim American comedians today similarly use the technique of incongruity to interrogate absurd presumptions in order to reveal the false nature of stereotypes about Muslim America. Pryor’s work that uncovered the fundamentals of the black American demand for civil rights finds contemporary expression in the work of Muslim comedians.4 His legacy is clear in their use of socially critical humor to expose the human face of Muslim America that is erased by the power of fictitious stereotypes.

Changes to American immigration rules in the mid-1960s produced a new period in immigration history where, for the first time, a majority of migrants to the US came not from Europe, but from Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia. As a

4 For more on Richard Pryor’s comedy and its work in context of the values of the African American civil rights movement, see Carpio (2008: 79).

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result, the ethnic makeup of American society became much more diverse, and the national color scheme expanded to include all shades of brown, black, and white. The new American multiculturalism was replicated in popular culture, and particularly in popular comedy, to the extent that in the final decades of the twentieth century, many upcoming stand-up comedians came from Hispanic American and Asian American communities. And like their predecessors, these new funny men and women used stand-up humor to expose the contradictions between the realities of the American racial system and the American ideal of social equality. The issues that inform the humor of today’s ethnically diverse minority comics reveal how their concerns go beyond issues of race and social class to challenge how the social image of the American nation is constructed by its citizens. For example, Asian American comic Margaret Cho often points to the gap between the eroticization of foreignness and gender and the realities that Asian American women live every day. One of her more famous parodies is that of a starry-eyed young Asian American girl who dreams of making it in show business. Affecting an Asian female accent, Cho innocently looks at the audience and voices the dreams of a young girl of Asian heritage: “Maybe someday…. I could be an extra on M.A.S.H.” The audience erupts in a long, extended laugh while Cho’s face is frozen in its innocence. Then she continues in a feminine voice, “Maybe someday I could play a hooker in something” (Machado 2002). From the comedic perspective of Cho, the daughter of Korean immigrants, the problems of American social life are defined by problems relating to race, consumer culture, traditional gender roles, and homophobia. Cho is just one of many new comedians whose social commentary has exploded the construct of American social life as defined by white/black racial relations, and instead revealed how issues of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality similarly critique the “American Dream.”

Today Muslim Americans are the latest minority group ascribed with a particular relevance that makes being Muslim noteworthy in national discourses of social belonging. Arab and Muslim connections to several incidents of global terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s contributed much to contemporary negative stereotypes of American Muslims. However, the participation of Muslims and Arabs in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks dramatically increased negative attitudes about both social groups. Furthermore, in response to those attacks the American government aggressively promoted and reproduced a racialized stereotype in consumer culture in order to educate the public how to spot potential threats to national security. This stereotype combined what the government decided were important cultural and social “attrib- utes” of Arabs, Muslims, and Middle Easterners. As Grewal (2003: 547) explains, this new national “other” was defined not by national origin or religious affiliation. Rather, it was based on outward markers of looking “Muslim” such as “beards, dark eyes, and turbans”—a profile that marked a vast spectrum of people from West and South Asia, as well as the Middle East. It was a gendered male stereotype because it was connected to “masculine violence, fanaticism, and barbarism.” That is not to say that stereotypes of the Muslim female—for example, images of women on American streets wearing black “Islamic” dress from head to toe—are irrelevant, for represen- tations such as this remain potent symbols of the argument that Islam is not an American religion. These are some examples of the amalgamated properties that inform negative outsider stereotypes of Muslim and Arab Americans. Muslim American stand-up comedy is a cultural space where the targets of these stereotypes

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publicly question their validity to define being Muslim and / or Arab in a post-9/11 America.

Since the early twentieth century, publicly staged humor has emerged as a unique cultural space for American minorities to respond to the pressures of assimilation and to the contradictions of the American racial system. As other observers of Muslim comedy note (Bilici 2010: 197), it is precisely the new and negative associations (described by Bilici as “negative charisma”) with being Muslim in America that produce Muslim responses in the form of public stand-up humor. As the newest minority to gain national relevance as a source of social anxiety, Muslim Americans continue a historical tradition of using stand-up comedy as a way of lending their voices to the discourses of what it means to be a minority and an American at a critical moment in American social history.

Can Muslims actually be funny?: Muslim American comedy’s spaces, audiences, and methods

The 2006 American comedy film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World followed a Jewish American comic, played by real-life comedian Albert Brooks, as he traveled to South Asia on behalf of the American government in hopes of finding out what it was that Muslims found funny.5 The film’s story is informed by a bifurcation between Muslims and humor or being funny; this distinction is undercut by the fact of humor in many Muslim traditions. These literatures circulated perhaps most prominently in Arabic Islamic circles during the classical period.6 The story’s secondary premise, that one has to go outside of the US to find Muslim laughter, seemingly ignores the many American Muslim men and women who have been performing stand-up to audiences around the world. Many of these comics were performing or writing material before 9/11; however, that event was an opportunity that launched both new Muslim comics, and a new genre of Muslim stand-up comedy.

An early development in this recent history of American Muslim humor was the creation in 2004 of the all-Muslim comedy troupe “Allah Made Me Funny” (AMMF). Founded by Muslim stand-up comics Azhar Usman and Bryant “Preacher” Moss, the tour has performed throughout North America and Europe, and most recently in the Middle East. Bryant Moss grew up in Washington, D.C. and at the age of 21 years, took steps to join the Muslim community. Prior to joining AMMF, Moss performed stand-up and also wrote material for fellow comics, includ- ing the entertainer George Lopez and the comic Darrell Hammond. Preacher Moss also performs as a solo act called “The End of Racism,” where he follows his routine with a talk on race in contemporary America that is geared towards a college-age audience. His promotional material explains that he uses stand-up humor to challenge social prejudices and encourage Muslim self-pride.7 Azhar Usman, the son of Indian

5 Brooks (2006). 6 For a study of early classical traditions of humor, see Rosenthal (1956). For a discussion of how to resolve the contemporary contradictory view of Muslims and humor using evidence of humor from classical Muslim literatures, see Marzolph (2011). 7 Quoted from Preacher Moss’s biography on the official website of the “Allah Made Me Funny Tour.” http://www.allahmademefunny.com. Resource Document. Accessed 27 February 2011.

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immigrants and raised in Chicago, completed law school at the University of Minnesota prior to embarking on his solo stand-up career. In addition to AMMF, Usman performs as the Muslim complement to comic Rabbi Bob Alper for the “Laugh in Peace Tour,” and as part of the all-South Asian ensemble “Make Chai Not War.” At present, it seems as if AMMF is the first (and perhaps only) comedy act that features strictly Muslim performers.

It is worth noting that the members of the AMMF troupe are consistently male comics, in light of the success of several American Muslim female comics such as Tissa Hami and Maysoon Zayid, both of whom work in socially critical humor. After completing professional training in dramatic acting, Palestinian American Zayid turned to stand-up comedy as a way to enter the industry. In 2003, Zayid teamed with prominent Palestinian American comedian Dean Obiedallah to organize the annual Arab-American Comedy Festival, which brings Arab comedians from all over the world to many performance venues in New York City. She often performs on her own, and occasionally tours with other Middle Eastern comedians as part of the “Axis of Evil” Tour. Iranian American Tissa Hami worked on Wall Street for several years, but when she was unemployed in late 2001 she took the opportunity to pursue a long desire to work in comedy. Hami earned early successes at local Boston-area comedy clubs and bars—as well as at Muslim cultural centers and mosques. She performs around the US on her own and with the “Coexist Comedy Tour,” where she represents the Muslim as part of a multi-religious ensemble cast. Although she is not American, another prominent female Muslim comic to note is Shazia Mirza, born in Britain to Pakistani parents. Mirza began performing stand-up in 2000, and the intensity of negative reactions to her work is well known, as she has been verbally and physically attacked while in the midst of performance (Lockyer and Pickering 2005: 100). Given the dominance of men in stand-up performance generally, the voices of these women are important parts of the larger agenda of socially critical Muslim comedy to challenge how Muslims are defined in popular discourse.

Part of the American government’s response to the terrorist events of 9/11 was President George W. Bush’s famous 2002 speech in which he labeled Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the members of an international “axis of evil.”8 Taking advantage of this new relevance, several American stand-up comics with back- grounds from these countries began performing as a comedy troupe called simply the “Axis of Evil.” This comedy is very much defined by comics’ ethnic identities, therefore the performers may or may not include Muslim comics, and those comics may or may not discuss issues related to being Muslim on stage.9 However, because the new threat to public safety is a stereotype whose attributes include “ethnic” traits associated with Middle Easterners as well as the outward markers of an Islamic identity, the themes and discourses referenced by “Axis of Evil” comedians are also likely relevant to Muslim humor. For example, in a recent Comedy Central broadcast of an “Axis of Evil” performance, as each comic entered the stage they literally were screened by a female security agent in a clever parody of the degrading experience of

8 The President's State of the Union Address (2011). 9 See Bilici (2008) for more on how the “Allah Made Me Funny” and “Axis of Evil” comedy tours represent distinct branding strategies that differently emphasize the ethnic or Muslim qualities of each tour’s comics and their humor.

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public searches.10 Convergence of themes in the humor between Muslim and ethni- cally Middle Eastern comedians such as those with the “Axis” tour is evidence that being Muslim is very much linked to ethno-racial stereotypes associated with Middle Eastern and Arab cultures.

Recent events and developments that involve Muslims and humor beyond stand- up performance are important because they are part of the public discourse that characterizes Muslim relationships to humor and comedy. In a milestone for North American television history, the Canadian situational comedy “Little Mosque on the Prairie” debuted in 2007 as the first serial set in a Muslim community in North America. Shown on the Canadian Broadcast Channel (CBC), the series follows the lives of Muslim characters that participate in the community life of their local mosque. This serial is developed by Zarqa Nawaz, a Canadian Muslim of Pakistani heritage.11 On this show, the diversity of the Canadian Muslim community is implied both in terms of the show’s characters (one woman is a local Canadian convert to Islam) and storylines (the show explores tensions between more conservative and liberal Muslim characters). This show is an opportunity to use the television sitcom format as a vehicle for presenting Canadian Muslims in situations other then those in popular media that associate Muslims chiefly with danger and violence. The success of this Canadian series suggests that the sitcom format attracts those in the larger public who wish to explore this “new” community; undoubtedly many who also tune- in are Canadian Muslims interested in how their community is depicted. Some wonder if a similar show would work in an American context, where televised serials have been known to take up controversial issues related to racial and class tensions.12

At present, an important and international debate about the relationship between Muslims, Islam, and humor continues to inspire reflection and produce new attitudes on the opportunity of humor to offend.13 This particular debate began in late 2005, when a Danish newspaper published cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, and those Muslims who took offense reacted with protests and demonstrations covered by media around the world. To many observers, negative Muslim reactions confirmed a stereotype that Muslims are not funny, and that there is no space for humor in Islamic traditions. However, the Muslim men and women who use humor to address that stereotype prove those assumptions incorrect with every performance. The new social relevance ascribed to being Muslim after 9/11 is what created Muslim American comedy, and the preceding overview introduced those men and women who have taken this opportunity to lend their voices to this discourse. Interestingly, it is exactly the

10 The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, DVD, produced by Image Entertainment (2007). 11 Nawaz also directed the 1995 feature film BBQ Muslims, the story of an American Muslim family accused of terrorism when their backyard barbeque explodes. 12 This precedent informs American journalist Katie Couric’s recent comments that ignorance about American Muslims could be remedied if Muslims had their own version of the popular 1980s television series “The Cosby Show.” This view is based on her conclusion that “The Cosby Show,” a serial about an upper middle-class black American family, helped to improve mainstream American attitudes about African-Americans. See http://twitter.com/katiecouric, “2010 In Review,” CBSNews.com. Resource Document. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id07176387n&tag0contentBody;housing. Accessed 27 February 2011. 13 For more on the offensive potential of humor in relation to the 2005 Danish cartoons, see The Muhammad Cartoons and Humor Research (2008). For a discussion of the ethics of humor, see Lockyer and Pickering (2005).

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unreal assumptions that underlie this social significance that Muslim American comedy hopes to undermine in its investigation of the social realities of a post-9/11 America.

America’s newest humorists in an internet age: the promotion and consumption of American Muslim stand-up

Contemporary stand-up comedy is consumed in places that the early comedy club circuit comedians would never have imagined—the virtual world provided by the Internet. Today comics promote themselves on personal websites, as well as on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. In these spaces comedians offer short clips of recorded performances that are marked statistically by a public list of page views. Comedians maintain a significant virtual presence by uploading performances onto other Internet sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Free and easily accessible material means that these comedians reach a wide and diverse international viewing audience. For comedians who perform humor that appeals to more specific audiences, like Muslim American comedians, this global access is significant for popular recognition. That much material from Muslim comedians is available through Internet sites such as these suggests the importance of this medium for the dissemination and consumption of Muslim stand-up comedy.

The promotion and consumption of American stand-up comedy goes beyond the intimate setting of the club with the recording of comedic performances and the distribution of these events through various media outlets. Today’s Muslim American comedians are promoted widely and their routines are accessible through documentaries and mainstream media sources; this attention belies a fascination with the idea of “funny” Muslims. The cultural cache of Muslim American comedy is what brought the “Allah Made Me Funny” comedy tour from the club scene to movie audiences around the country. In October 2008, their work was made into a documentary and released in select American theatres. The film followed comedians Bryant “Preacher” Moss, Azhar Usman, and Mohammed “Mo” Amer as they traveled around the United States and performed at an unspecified event in the Los Angeles area. An interesting aspect of this documentary and its promotion lies in the fact that two organizations involved in its creation—One Nation and Unity Productions Foundation (UPF)—are committed to the promotion of Muslim American diversity and experiences to challenge stereotypes and misperceptions of that community. According to its website, One Nation “sponsors projects. . . that challenge stereotypes and misperceptions of Muslims and Islam by shining a spotlight on our shared values, beliefs and responsibilities.”14

Through these educational initiatives, One Nation reaches out to non-Muslims and at the same time indirectly intervenes in Muslim American definitions of community. Similarly, UPF’s website explains that their work is “focused on creating greater understanding about Muslims and Islam” that acts as a “catalyst for ending the ‘Clash of Civilizations.”15 Whereas One Nation’s products explore more contemporary

14 From One Nation’s official website. Resource Document. http://www.onenationforall.org/content/view/ 14/98/. Accessed 24 April 2009. 15 Both quotations taken from Unity Productions Foundation’s official website. Resource Document. http:// www.upf.tv/upf06/AboutUPF/TheOrganization/tabid/240/Default.aspx. Accessed 24 April 2009.

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social issues for Muslim Americans, UPF has produced several historical documenta- ries about the Prophet Muhammad and medieval Muslim civilizations. The need and market for educational resources on Islam and Muslim American histories is obvious in the post-9/11 context of American curiosity about this community and its history. While the evident target market is non-Muslim Americans, these products also provoke in-group Muslim conversations about community history, diversity, and their social status in the US. That there are new foundations and educational enter- tainment institutions investing in public Muslim American conversations about community signals that these conversations are important for future generations of Americans—and especially for Muslim Americans.

Explaining social laughter: superiority, incongruity, and relief

This analysis is particularly interested in the sociology of humor, and draws from a functionalist approach that highlights the social functions of humor for the social group—in this case, for Muslim Americans. The general study of humor is highly multidisciplinary, although most scholarship is based in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. As a particularly human response, laughter is related directly to human biological drives and physiological responses, and involves careful contortions of language and semantics. The three major explanations of humor are superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity. According to the superiority theory, we laugh in order to express a superior feeling over others. Thomas Hobbes (1999: 54–55) suggests an important connection between humor and ridicule that informs the laughter of superiority: “the power of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others.” Hobbes points out a key power dynamic between the subject and object of ridiculing laughter. This laughter is a subtle expression of power that also conveys important social messages related to social positions and hierarchical relationships. When used by subordinate social groups, superiority humor provides an imagined role reversal that is a vehicle for their resistance in the face of social oppression. Laughter that is informed by the perception of superiority in context of social life is an important trope of humor. The superiority theory reveals how humor marks social relationships and is connected to social domination as well as resistance.

A second major explanation of humor is the relief theory. The laughter of relief is connected intimately with human psychology and theorizes humor as a mechanism to release social tensions. The most well known study of the humor of relief is Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1963), in which he argues that the humor of tendentious (taboo) jokes serves as a mechanism to sublimate illicit energies, which are rechanneled as relief through the laugh. The energy expressed through laughter is pleasurable because it provides relief from the otherwise constant need to keep those desires in check. In terms of the social functions of humor, relief theory suggests how shared laughter within the group can promote psychological bonding and social cohesion. In the American context, the relief functions of humor have served important social needs for oppressed groups such as black Americans. In his study of black American laughter and humor, Lawrence Levine (1977: 63) argues that black comedians such as Jackie “Moms” Mabley cultivated kinship with

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their audience using a “laughter of recognition” that expressed shared cultural associations. The social bonding potential of humor and laughter explains why socially critical Muslim American comedians deliberately encourage the laughter of relief to promote positive group association in the face of widespread and outsider negative group definition.

The third major theory of humor, incongruity, explains that laughter is a physical and psychological reaction to perceiving the difference between expectations and results. When invoked in humor, the perception of incongruity includes ideas and images that are inconsistent, inappropriate, absurd or inverted. Key to the humor of incongruity is shared knowledge or common presumptions from which to measure expectations. For something or someone to be perceived as incongruous, there must already be a preformed social idea of congruity. Henri Bergson (1911: 32) observed that incongruous laughter first requires a “social signification” that is shared among the group that is then called into question by humor that compares it with an inconsistent or illogical image. Laughter’s connections to social relevance and expectations are crucial for the emergence of Muslim American humor, for it is precisely the accepted nature of social attributes ascribed to a group of people (Muslims) that produces responses from the targeted group to engage those meanings. These theories of the social functions of humor suggest why Muslim American comedians choose stand-up comedy as a method to intervene in social relations. Although people from all classes, races, and ethnic groups enact social relationships through humor, its social functions and subversive capacities make it a key tool for minorities to challenge social assumptions and re-imagine social life.

Insider–outsider humor: provoking ridicule and promoting in-group laughter

A large, stout man with brown skin who sports a fully-grown beard and a white Muslim cap with jeans and a graphic t-shirt, Muslim American comedian Azhar Usman is someone whose identity cannot quite be discerned at first glance. Usman joked about the ambiguous position he enjoys in the American spectrum of social categories during his set in the recent (2008) Allah Made Me Funny documentary:

I’m in a car, and a couple of white dudes pull up next to me at a stoplight. All of the sudden I hear them say, “What’s up Osama? Yeah what’s up, Gandhi!” All I could keep thinking was, how can I embody the world’s most wanted terrorist, and the spokesperson for non-violence at the same time? [pauses] Must be like, terrorism through peace. But truthfully, I walk down the street, I get a lot of dirty looks. I mean honestly, people are scared. People are looking at me as if I were responsible for 9/11. Can you believe that? Me, responsible for 9/11? [pauses] 7-Eleven, maybe” (Kalin 2008).

Of course, Usman can’t be “Osama bin Laden” and “Gandhi” at the same time— but his hecklers are on to something in their confusion. His skin color and facial features seem Indian, but the beard and cap are a dead give away: Muslim terrorist. It is the assumption that all Indians are Hindu that dictates that Usman cannot be Indian (Gandhi) and Muslim (Osama) at the same time. The absurd notion of “terrorism through peace” is an implicit mockery of how Americans cannot seem to get their

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races, religions, and ethnicities straight. In this joke, Usman questions the ways in which American Muslims like himself are all assumed to be connected to the attacks of 9/11, when in reality his “people” (Indians) are probably responsible for something much more mundane—running the well-known American convenience store chain 7- Eleven. This joke examples the insider to outsider dynamic that characterizes much of Muslim American stand-up comedy.

Muslim American comedy, performed by Muslims taking humorous advantage of a new and negative relevance, has an obvious audience comprised of non-Muslim outsiders. Muslim stand-up performance is an opportunity for important social exchange; Muslim comics are eager to explain and educate about Muslim America, and many Americans are intrigued by the idea of “funny Muslims” and want to learn more about this community.16 Jokes that are told from the perspective of a Muslim insider to a non-Muslim outsider are a staple of the stand-up routines of many socially critical Muslim comics. These jokes rely on the humors of incongruity, superiority, and social relief to send important social messages to both Muslims and non-Muslims about how American Muslims relate to post-9/11 discourses that define them nega- tively in American social life.

Muslims at the airport: laughing at Americans and each other

The idea of being Muslim in the American imagination is often defined by the hijacking of planes, the taking of hostages, and, in the case of 9/11, of using airliners as terrorist weapons. These associations produce everyday negative discrimination for American Muslims, particularly in public places. As other observers of Muslim American comedy have remarked (Bilici 2010: 198), the negative relevance ascribed to looking or acting “Muslim” is at its most apparent in airports around the world, specifically in the context of public screenings to protect air passengers’ safety. It is in these interactions that the quotidian aspects of Muslim American life—such as one’s name, dress, or casual banter—suddenly become the matter of public concern in the state’s (and the observant individual’s) work to assess threats to public safety. The simple act of air travel is for Muslims today often a very public humiliation that exposes the myopic power of stereotypes. Muslim air travel and its implications are imbued with significant social meaning for all Americans, and it is an experience where the outcome—positive or negative—comes down to assumptions and judg- ments often based on negative stereotypes strictly associated with being or looking Muslim. For these reasons the experience of “flying while Muslim” is a prominent theme in Muslim American comedy, especially in the humor of socially critical comedians.

As a man who literally personifies the ethno-racialized stereotype of a threatening Muslim, comedian Azhar Usman is very much subject to stereotypical attitudes related to security and safety. Therefore it is not surprising that the experience of

16 Speaking about why she gave up her job to be a comedian, Muslim American comic Tissa Hami (2009) stand-up explained that her intentions were political: “I wanted to show that just because you are a Muslim woman doesn’t mean you are voiceless. Doesn’t mean that you’re oppressed. Doesn’t mean that you can’t speak for yourself. I wanted to give people something they didn’t expect. I wanted to go up, and fight back. Speak out. And be funny.”

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“flying while Muslim” is a regular part of his comic material.17 Usman’s jokes about air travel both induce the laughter of in-group social bonding at the predicament of “looking Muslim” and laughter at the absurd and scared presumptions of outsiders. He begins by describing how his dramatic appearance produces immediate and shocked responses:

Imagine what it feels like, looking like me, walking into the airport. Heads turn simultaneously. And security guys are like, [talks into an imagined walkie- talkie] “Muhammad, four o’clock, we got him right there. You take the smelly one; I’ll take the hairy one. Excuse me sir, can I see your I.D.?” [addresses the audience] And my middle name actually is Muhammad. [as the security officer] “That’s what I thought. Come with me. You’re goin’ through the extra-special security.”

His joke continues to catalogue the fearful reactions of other passengers once he is lucky enough to make it onboard the aircraft:

People can’t believe it—in the middle of conversations [as a passenger], “So, where you from?” [the passenger turns their head and sees Usman, then gasps astonishingly] “Oooh! [silently, head in hands] I’m gonna die! [talking into a cellular phone] Honey, I love you….he’s so hairy! He smells like curry! He’s staring at me!”

The sequence of jokes about his airport experiences reaches a climax when Usman imagines a candid exchange between him and a relieved passenger once the plane reaches its destination:

Of course, everybody is nice to me once the plane safely lands. I’m just waiting for a real honest passenger at the end of the flight to come up [as the relieved passenger]: “Excuse me, sir [chuckles in relief]. I thought you were going to kill us [embarrassed laughter]. Sorry about that [more laughs]. Remember when you went up to go the bathroom? [pauses] I was going to stab you!”

In a final joking observation on the perception of fear induced by dress, speech, and manners, Usman comments on the absurdity of the entire scenario:

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).

Jokes performed by Muslims on themes related to being stereotyped in American airports provoke a laughter of ridicule at the absurd assumptions of outsiders while at

17 This point is underscored by the comic’s actual position in the disturbing nexus that is the racialized stereotype of Arab/Middle Easterner/Muslim. Usman’s South Asian heritage is evident through external racial characteristics; therefore he cannot pass for white, and he cannot hide the fact that his Arabic name and “Muslim” appearance is that what determines who goes on the “no-fly” list. In contrast, Usman’s fellow “Allah Made Me Funny” comic Preacher Moss, a black American Muslim, does not perform “flying while Muslim” jokes. The implication is that does Moss not have the same airport experiences as someone like Usman who in comparison “looks” more Muslim.

Cont Islam

the same time promote in-group laughter that encourages empathy and social relief. Usman’s flying while Muslim scenario encourages laughter at the outsider who naively assumes that he is a hijacker because he looks like the stereotype. Usman knows that Americans have been trained to spot out potential threats based on questionable premises; these jokes therefore are an opportunity to discredit this presumptive posture through questioning of its absurd conclusions. In an example of humor’s social function as a bonding and cohesive force for the group, Muslims will relate to how he explains that his Muslim identity as observed through dress, name, or manner is suddenly heightened once he steps foot into an airport and subsequently becomes an imminent threat to public safety. In a post-9/11 world, being or looking “Muslim” serves to embarrass a person when it leads to public humiliation like what Usman describes. In his satire of a shared Muslim experience of public humiliation, Usman gives Muslims an opportunity to laugh at themselves and at a common anxiety producing experience. Muslim Americans laughing about the negative social discrimination they face is a contemporary form of “gallows humor,” defined by Fine (1983: 173) as “humor that grows out of a tragic situation in which an oppressed group attempts to transform their misery by poking fun at their oppres- sors.” Laughing about a larger plight with others in the group can indirectly create a shared sense of community pride in the face of negative social strife. And if one can say that today American Muslims are in the gallows, it is clear that Muslim American comedians are continuing an American minority tradition of using laughter as a method of resistance and humor as a way to cope with social injustice.

Although the threatening ethno-racial stereotype of Arab/Muslim is often defined as male, the airport jokes of Muslim American female comedians suggest that Muslim women are also conscious of the threat that is conjured in the minds of security and fellow passengers just by their very presence in the airport space. Comedian Maysoon Zayid’s parody of going to the airport draws on her personal situation of multiple marginalities as an “Arab” looking woman with a handicap to create a ridiculous scenario that very quickly takes her from air traveler to suspected terrorist. Her airport jokes begin with a scene at home in New Jersey, where her girlfriends ask if she is afraid to travel to Palestine. Zayid (2009) shares with the audience what it is that really frightens her: “I am not afraid to go to Palestine! I am afraid to go to Newark Airport! And this is why. Because when I walk into an airport, security sees an Arab trying to board a plane, and we don’t have a good record.” The joke continues to describe how her handicap serves to deepen the suspicion that she is up to something:

So I walk in and they see an Arab trying to board a plane. But as I mentioned before I have cerebral palsy, which means I shake all the time. So they don’t see just an Arab, they see a shaky Arab, and they’re like, that bitch is nervous! And I’m usually crying also, because I’m terrified of flying. And the reason I’m terrified of flying because I know that if God forbid, the plane I’m on crashes [in an emphatic voice] they will blame me.

Similar to Usman’s airport humor, Zayid’s jokes about being Arab at the airport encourage the laughter of relief as other Arabs and Muslims in the audience will empathize with her struggles with stereotyping. Read as intended from an insider to

Cont Islam

an outsider, Zayid uses incongruous humor to reveal the illogical premises that she is a serious threat to security because she looks Arab. By playing up the consequence of her cerebral palsy—shaking—Zayid articulates an image for the audience of a helpless, scared female to juxtapose with the common public image of a “Muslim” terrorist who is determined and confident.

As she performs on stage, Zayid’s palsy is evident to the audience and thus she is a literal presentation of the scared, shaking Arab. She demonstrates how socially critical humor can serve to deconstruct and challenge stereotypes using a method of re-signification. Re-signification in this sense is to take an idea or image that is signified with a contestable meaning (Muslim / Arab as terrorist) and attempt to redefine that idea through a subversive performance. Judith Butler’s work in the study of gender is instructive to understanding the relation- ship between signification and re-signification as it is used to challenge stereo- types in humorous performance. In her study Gender Trouble, Butler (1990: 145) explains the necessary and contingent relationship between the assertion and subver- sion of identities to re-signification,

If the rules governing signification not only restrict, but enable the assertion of alternative domains of cultural intelligibility, i.e., new possibilities for gender that contest the rigid codes of hierarchical binarisms, then it is only within the practices of repetitive signifying that a subversion of identity becomes possible.

In the example of Zayid’s “crying, shaking Arab” at the airport, her premise that Arabs “don’t have a good record” conjures the stereotype of Arabs as hijackers of planes. When she follows that assertion with the literal performance of a scared, vulnerable Arab woman she presents the audience with a new image of “Arab” that subverts the typical stereotype. This joke is an opportunity for outsiders in the audience to reconsider what being Arab and / or Muslim means now that Zayid has re-signified the image of danger with her subversive perfor- mance of helplessness.

“Those women are so oppressed”: insider–outsider humor in Muslim women’s comedy

Muslim American women are subject to negative stereotypes both of Muslims (they are terrorists and threats to public safety) and of Muslim women (they are oppressed socially and sexually). It is a subject position that requires these women inhabit a “dual consciousness” (Walker 1988: 118) that has consequences for the themes in their humor. Muslim American female comedians take comic advantage of this negative relevance and serve as an insider voice to address assumptions of Muslim women’s social life that these women imply are condescending. Muslim American female comedy responds to popular media images of Muslim women that efface their humanity, stress their religiosity, and that connect them with violence and danger. These jokes use the humor of incongruity to question how some people take pity on them for their “marginal” status. In one joke Tissa Hami (Baker 2008) suggests that the Muslim woman’s position in the mosque is not a subordinate one but rather a place from which they can indulge in voyeurism:

Cont Islam

I’ve noticed though, that a lot of Americans have misconceptions about Islam. You know, like in a mosque, the men pray in the front and the women pray in the back, right? Now see, Americans look at that and they think: those women are so oppressed. You see, we’re not in the back because we’re oppressed. We just like the view! We’re praying for a piece of that!

In another joke Hami (2009) indirectly addresses how those in the audience associate Muslim women to what may seem like unconventional work in stand-up performance: “I was talking to a reporter recently, and he asked me, “As a Muslim woman, is there anything you wouldn’t talk about on stage? [She pauses and looks at the audience exasperatedly. Then in a deadpan tone, she answers the question] My dick.” The setup of the joke supposes that there are things a Muslim woman should not talk about, and Hami’s ridiculous reply mocks that there is even a question of what it is Muslim women should talk about.

Hami wears a black chador (outer long covering) and hijab (head scarf) as performance costume (she does not wear these outside of her performances), and midway through her routine surprises the audience by taking these outer layers off in front of them. The tight fitting black covering that conceals all of the hair and the clothes she wears underneath; for maximum comedic effect, the garment must be severe in order to provide the contrast that results when she removes it. This act is part of a joke that Hami (Baker 2008) begins by acknowledging the audience may not know quite what to think about her “Islamic” dress:

You might be wondering why I’m dressed like this, and well—I’m Muslim, and to be honest I should be wearing a long coat, but I was feeling kind of slutty today [shakes her hips side to side]. Speaking of stripping, I thought I’d do a little striptease of my own if that’s okay [she takes off her outer black chador, then her headscarf and throws the clothing behind her on stage].

As she disrobes she addresses the heavy silence: “some encouragement would be nice, but okay,” to which some in the audience respond with applause. Once she has disrobed, the audience is forced to confront her on new terms as someone who looks very much like them, in contrast to any negative perceptions that outsiders may connect with wearing the chador and hijab. When Hami sheds this modesty costume as part of her routine, she suggests that these outer garments are just that—clothing—which are not integral to the identity of an American Muslim woman. The comic is clear that her intentions with this act are part of her broader goal to challenge negative stereotypes of Muslim women. In a recent interview Hami (Baker 2008) explains, “in Iran, where I was born, I could never get up on stage or get up anywhere in public and take off the hijab; I would get arrested on the spot. So in a place where I could do that, I wanted to do that—to show that I’m the exact same person whether I have it on or not.”

Insider–insider humor: constructing boundaries through ridicule

Muslim American comedians perform jokes that in subject and implication address fellow Muslims in the audience; this humor represents attempts by comics to engage

Cont Islam

discourses as a spokesperson within their community.18 Humor that engages one’s social group—in-group or insider humor—is an opportunity for the humorist to argue what should be normative in terms of social assumptions and in-group relations. In its function as a method of social control, insider humor can serve two related but seemingly contradictory functions: as a device of group solidarity and as an enforcer of group boundaries (Fine 1983: 174, Kuipers 2008: 66). Billig (2005: 202) calls this social function of humor “disciplinary” because it uses the technique of public mockery to provoke changes in social behavior. In his explanation of this social function of humor, Billig (2005: 215) makes a critical connection between laughter and embarrassment: the laughter of mocking produces embarrassment that is a negative social consequence of deviant behavior, and therefore a tool of social control. Some of the new Muslim American comics use insider humor as a technique of in-group discipline in ways that support these mentioned theories of the social functions of humor. Another important feature of this insider humor is its potential as a prescriptive argument to Muslims in the audience. As part of the Muslim response to social discrimination in post-9/11 America, these comics argue that Muslim Americans are not doing and saying the “right” things to advance social justice for community. They then go the next step and prescribe what to their estimation are the “correct” ways of acting and being Muslim in context of a discriminating America.

The problem of “weak” Muslims: “If you didn’t do anything, act like you didn’t do it!”

Post-9/11 public scrutiny and discrimination caused many American Muslims to take steps to conceal their Muslim identity in public spaces, which often meant altering patterns of observable “Muslim” behavior such as dress or speech. To some in the community, responding to discrimination by not acting “Muslim” in public—in terms of words or actions with other Muslims—is a symptom of a deficient commitment to Islam. To some in the community these people are mockingly called “weak” Muslims. It is in this context that parodies of weak Muslims are a significant argument in the prescriptive insider humor of Muslim American comedy. “Allah Made Me Funny” comic Preacher Moss performs a sequence of jokes that argue how American Muslims should respond to the perception that all Muslims are somehow responsible for what happened on 9/11. Diagnosed as the latest ailment affecting American Muslims, Moss identifies the problem as “9/11-itis”:

Some of us are still suffering from 9/11-itis. You’ve got to let it go people, let it go! 9/11 was 3 years ago, and you got Muslims still worried about it. For real. You can’t change it. And I mean, think about it. 9/11 was 3 years ago, you couldn’t even tell a Muslim a knock-knock joke. You ever try, you be like, “Hey brother, knock-knock!” [as the startled recipient] “Don’t answer that!”19

18 Comics that feel they speak on behalf of their social group demonstrate the role of stand-up comics as what Mintz (1977: 1) termed a “licensed spokesman” for controversial subjects. 19 Moss (2008).

Cont Islam

In another performance Moss expands on this theme and states directly how one should respond to the accusation that all Muslims are implicated in the 9/11 attacks: “Let me tell you something. If you didn’t do anything, act like you didn’t do it!”20

This argument of weak Muslims goes further when Moss tells jokes that investigate the similar problem of weak salaams (peace). As he performs this joke, Moss bounds onto the stage and sounds off a boisterous “salaam” greeting to the crowd. After pausing to hear any response from the crowd, Moss observes that, “I love it when Muslims give a hearty salaam. It makes me feel better about me. Have you ever been in that odd position when you give salaams to a Muslim, and he’s not ready, or she’s not ready, or worse—they’re not comfortable?” Next, Moss acts out the scene of two Muslims greeting each other on the stage; one says to the other “As-salaam alaykum (peace be upon you)!” which causes Moss, as the recipient, to fearfully reply, “Shh!!” The scared Muslim mentions for the greeter to follow him to the side stage; Moss looks to his right and left and then delivers the punchline in hushed urgency: “Wa alaykum as-salaam (and peace be upon you)!”21

In his ridicule of “weak” Muslims, Moss constructs a boundary between those who are “weak” and those who are “strong” Muslims. His demarcation of an in-group (strong Muslims) from an out-group (weak Muslims) is a social function of insider humor that constructs a group culture that includes and excludes at the same time. It is an example of the disciplinary function of insider humor to discipline through mockery, as some Muslims in the audience may feel embarrassed at the ways that Moss publicly derides how they respond to social discrimination. Moss uses his public forum to provoke a laughter that mocks those fellow Muslims who are not “being Muslim enough” and in so doing implies that this behavior is deviant. His jokes demonstrate Fine’s (1983: 174) remarks that conflict humor is “indirect ag- gression and serves to separate a group from an undesirable, deviant out-group and may even provoke hostility by that group.” Moss’ voicing his public distain is an opportunity for Muslims in the audience to express indirect hostility—through laughter—that can both provoke conflict within the larger group, and promote in- group control.

“We need more Muslim policymakers!”: the politics of being Muslim and American

Muslim comedians tend to draw significant Muslim crowds, and these stand-up performances are a unique public platform to speak unfiltered to other Muslims about the issues facing their community using insider to insider humor. In this context, Azhar Usman’s prescriptive jokes often voice his arguments of how American Muslims should work for social justice and work to improve their image to outsider Americans. Similar to Preacher Moss’ jokes about weak Muslims, Usman’s jokes use the laughter of in-group ridicule to engage his community on how they relate to American civic and social life. One example of this insider—insider humor is a joke that raises the issue of American Muslim political participation:

20 Moss (2009a). 21 Moss (2009a).

Cont Islam

We’re not a politically organized community. That makes me sad. Because this is in spite of the fact that we have conference…after conference…after confer- ence. About what? Muslim participation in the political process. Always that one guy at the conference—real passionate, right? [as the man, speaking in an accent] “We need more Muslim politicians! We need more Muslims in the media! Arey, bhai (indeed, friend)—we need more Muslim policymakers!” [as himself, responding to the man] What about you, uncle? You have three sons— what do they do? [as the passionate man] “Mashallah (thanks to Allah), they are all doctors. I am so proud of them, even though one of them had to go to the Caribbean.”22

Usman’s critical view towards the valorization of children who go on to become doctors and lawyers challenges a traditional immigrant discourse that narrowly associates professional success with those who go into medicine and law. As a comedian who in fact holds a law degree, Usman has personal reasons to argue that achievement should not be defined so strictly. In this joke Usman mocks a hypocrit- ical and outspoken fellow Muslim and in doing so implies that Muslims who talk about their achievements but do not participate in American civic life will not be enough to serve the cause of social justice. Usman’s assertion that American Muslims need to be more active politically is an example of how humor works through mockery and ridicule to encourage in-group conformity through ridicule and mockery.

As other observers of Muslim American comedy note (Bilici 2008), it appears that second-generation American Muslims predominate in both the performance and consumption of Muslim stand-up humor. The content of contemporary stand-up joking reflects themes that concern primarily the second-generation, especially debates on how exactly to participate in American civic and social life. In this context, it is noteworthy that some second-generation Muslim American comedians perform jokes that indirectly satirize first-generation Muslims. One example is Azhar Usman’s jokes about the one person in the Muslim community that always seems to make it on the television news—“Uncle Letmesplainyou” (let me explain to you). This is the one person who is very eager to respond to inquiries about Islam or about the Muslim American community and so is featured prominently in the American media. The problem is that this individual may not be the wisest choice for the important job of translating Islam and Muslims for curious Americans. Usman (2004) begins these jokes by laying out the problem:

No disrespect intended, but for lack of a better word—he’s an uncle, okay? Looks like he just rolled out of bed, didn’t comb his hair that morning, he’s got rice in his beard. Here’s my biggest problem with this guy—he can’t speak English. Now let me be perfectly honest with you. I don’t really care that you can’t speak English—I don’t mind. [yells] Why are you on T.V.?! We couldn’t find anybody better for the job?

Instead of responding to a reporter’s questions about local Muslims, Uncle Letmesplainyou is only too happy to talk about Israel and Palestine:

22 Usman (2009b).

Cont Islam

Muslim means the peace. Muslim is the good one. Muslim is telling whole world should know, Israel is the problem. Problem is Israel. [with excitement] Palesti- nian people are already having injustice! Israeli is problem. You people is telling Muslim is having terrorist bomb. Shut up your mouth before I kick it out!

Usman’s imitation of this curmudgeonly Uncle conjures a stereotypical image of American Islam as foreign-born, old, and male. This idea is evoked with a voice that is accented in Indian English, with incorrect English grammar, and with unyielding views on topics related to his community. Usman acts out the stereotype of Muslims as foreigners in America with narrow and un-American concerns. In doing so he ridicules an in-group view that is passionate about politics abroad yet silent on events occurring locally. His humorous and public critique of how other Muslims represent the community to Americans shows how concerns of second-generation American Muslims differ from particular concerns of first generation immigrant Muslims, who departed physically from their homelands but often remained tied to that geographic and sentimental space.23

“You get one wife…with four personalities!”: insider humor and gender politics

For as much as Muslim comedians claim to be speaking out for the community in order to change social attitudes, it is important to question how male Muslim comedians approach issues that concern Muslim women. Male Muslim comedians commenting on the attitudes and behaviors of Muslim women are a form of insider humor that needs to be compared to their socially critical agenda. While he may advance progressive views for American Muslims as a community, several Muslim male comedians’ jokes about Muslim women suggest that their critical humor may not be as incisive when it comes to gender roles and Muslim women’s lives. One such joke begins as Moss (Kalin 2008) explains his friends’ observations upon hearing that he “is Muslim now”:

[as his friend] “But son—don’t play. You’re a Muslim, you know what that means.” [as himself] I said, “What?” [as his friend] He said, “That means you can have four wives!” [to the audience] People! You get married, you get one wife. With four personalities.

When he claims that his wife has “four personalities,” Moss invokes a stereotype of women as the crazy problem to male rationality. This stereotype is what informs a similar joke in which Moss (Kalin 2008) confesses to the crowd, “Listen, I’m not gonna front. I heard about the four wives thing. Hey, I can’t barely handle the one I got.” Azhar Usman (Kalin 2008) performs a joke that addresses a stereotype about gendered oppression in Muslim social life:

What are the two biggest stereotypes about Muslim men and Muslim women? Muslim men are terrorists, Muslim women are oppressed. Have these people been inside of a Muslim household? Because if you bother to investigate you quickly figure you have it exactly opposite. That’s right, Muslim women are

23 See Haddad (2002) for more on the sojourner to settler spectrum of perspectives of first-generation American Muslim immigrants towards their countries of origin.

Cont Islam

terrorists, Muslim men are oppressed. They talk a big game [as the man]: “Yeah, that’s what I said. Isn’t that right honey?” Unless they’re rich Arabs in the Gulf then they say: “Isn’t that right honey…honey….honey?”

As Usman finishes the last line of the joke he turns his body to his left, right, and then front as if he were addressing three different women. In another joke Preacher Moss asserts that Muslim women have noticeably changed since 9/11. He illustrates that the change has not been positive through narration of a scene where a Muslim woman goes ballistic when two boys attempt to play a joke:

I don’t know—after 9/11, sisters, you’re all kind of rough. I was on a bus in Philadelphia—that was a whole other story. There was a Jamaican sister there, she was covered. And, you know how people pick at the sisters cause they think they’re weak. I was like, “Don’t do it.” I heard the conversation: [as the boys] “Hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if we yanked her scarf?” [as himself] I was in the back, like [shakes his head no]. They reached for it. I was trying to save his life. I was like, [Moss imitates running towards them in slow motion] “Don't….do…. it…..she’ll…kill….us….all!”

In her study of black American comics in the “post-soul” era, Bambi Haggins (2007: 89) describes heterosexism in stand-up performance as a regressive impulse. These types of jokes can serve to bolster regressive gender stereotypes rather than challenge them; thus they are evidence of what Hutcheon (1995: 10) terms the “transideological” potential of social humor. Regressive humor—such as worn out clichés about male and female relationships—tends to get easy laughs and so it proliferates in stand-up humor generally. Jokes such as these are evidence that not all social humor has a socially critical force. They also verify humor’s potential to both promote and undercut ideologies.

What Muslim comedy says (and doesn’t say) about Muslim America

Muslim American stand-up comedy has the potential to convey important social messages to both non-Muslims and Muslims regarding contemporary debates on American social belonging and Muslim American debates on how they relate to their group’s cause of social justice in a post-9/11 America. Muslim American airport humor is the public airing of an ethno-racialized stereotype that these women and men are subject to because of their name or their appearance. Because they challenge this stereotype’s assumptions by voicing the absurd conclusions it warrants, these comics disrupt its power to define the social realities related to being Muslim and American. Importantly, Muslim women who perform jokes about being profiled in airports reveal that this negative discrimination extends beyond the male gender. Joking about the ridiculous ways in which their presence induces fear in the public airport space is an important way that Muslim American comedy argues for a realistic judgment about exactly what it is that produces social anxiety. By parodying the trepidation they cause these Muslim Americans can undermine the power of stereo- types to dictate the real terms of what is determined to be a danger to public air travel.

Cont Islam

The context of insider to outsider humor is a particular form of stand-up joking that socially critical comics use to change misinformed or negative social attitudes. Haggins (2007: 7) argues how these comedians may be successful in their social aims through comedy: “in order for the comedic discourse produced by the black comic to be effectively edifying, it must be self-aware and self-reflexive—able to elicit thought along with the laughter.” Public humor is an opportunity for learning that can lead to social change, yet there are competing forces at work in these social interactions. The intended messages of socially critical comedians are constantly undercut by what is left un-said in jokes yet is relevant to the context of this humor. The act of invoking stereotypes, part of nearly all humor, can serve to confirm and reinforce those assumptions rather then challenge them (Hutcheon 1995). In the case of the humor of incongruity this is especially true, because the act of reconstructing illogical social assumptions often uses exaggeration to make the point. This is a risk for the use of humor and comedy to serve socially critical goals. The edifying role of comedy can be seriously undercut by competing interpretations that encourage, rather then challenge, negative social assumptions. It is the ambiguous trajectories of public humor that cast doubt on its effectiveness for social change.

Preacher Moss’ argument against weak Muslims is a contentious and narrow stance that equates dedication to Islam with its public visibility. According to Moss, being Muslim in America in the post-9/11 moment necessitates a publicly confident commitment to Islam. It also is a vision of being Muslim that rejects the pressures of assimilation and highly values public affirmation. His articulation of the American Muslim as empowered by his or her faith interrupts the fear and anxiety that are often associated with being Muslim. This rhetoric of a strong identity is influenced by Moss’s identity as an African American, something he explained in an interview with the “Voice of Islam” television network:

We have a lot of Muslims who fall into the trap that we must apologize for everything we don’t do. Everything we do, everything we don’t do. No—you can’t have it both ways. My background, which is African American, it was if you didn’t do it, act like you didn’t do it. It’s not an attitude—I didn’t do it.24

In this comedic view, Preacher Moss promotes a particular reading of Muslim selfhood that argues Muslims must aggressively respond to hate and discrimination. As Moss himself acknowledges, it is a perspective influenced by the firm posture of the black American struggle for social justice. Moss’s promotion of his views is an expression of a new form of American Muslim assertiveness that argues Muslim expressions have a right to be heard freely in the public space. Yet in its promotion of reform in the individual person, this argument may suffer from a narrow perspective. There are two sides to the weak Muslim discourse, and what is unsaid in the sentiment that Muslims need to stop being “weak” and “let it go” is that it—stereotyping—keeps happening. The question remains if this focus on individuals abstracted from larger social contexts will be enough to advance the American Muslim cause for social justice.

A crucial issue that many second-generation American Muslims face is the question of participating in civic institutions that imbue them with varying degrees of legal and cultural American citizenship, as they work to construct an identity as an American

24 Moss (2009b).

Cont Islam

Muslim. This issue has only become more attenuated in the years after 9/11 as Muslims are routinely singled out for scrutiny and skepticism. In his insider humor, Azhar Usman intervenes in this community discourse and argues Muslims should actively work within American political and civic institutions. Yet the ridiculing force of Usman’s “Uncle Letmesplainyou” jokes shows that he feels not just any Muslim should be representing the community in political life. By imbuing his stereotypical Uncle with the concerns of first-generation immigrants Usman implies that this Muslim perspective is not appro- priate for the important task of cultural translation. His parody of an older man who cannot speak English properly and who represents an antiquated view on making roots in America has an important social message for the Muslims in his audience. This instruction is conveyed in Usman’s rhetorical question that wondered if “we couldn’t find anybody better for the job.” The insinuation is that community spokespeople should be able to speak and translate in ways that will promote, not complicate, how Muslims are treated in the mainstream media.

Muslim American women’s comedy challenges outsider and insider views about what it means to be Muslim and female. Tissa Hami’s pointed retort when asked if there are things she cannot talk about in public suggests that outsider and insider assumptions of proper Muslim women’s behavior are presumptive and misinformed. An obvious target of Hami’s hijab as costume act is the outsider perspective, yet this performance also indirectly addresses Muslim attitudes about what it means to wear (and not wear) hijab. Muslims in the audience can reflect on Hami’s intended message with this joke—that she is “the exact same person” with or without the covering. Therefore her act enables her to add her voice to the in-group discourse that debates the relationship between wearing hijab and the widely accepted terms of appropriate Muslim female piety.

The issue of regressive humor is important for the analysis of those comedians such as Moss who promote themselves as socially conscious or critical.25 Disparaging com- mentary from Muslim men on Muslim women reveals a fault line in Muslim comedy between social qualities attributed to men and women, and how that expression compares to Muslim comedy’s broader objectives to argue for a progressive view of selfhood. This humor marginalizes Muslim women when it fails to be relevant to their concerns as objects part of a dehumanizing social discourse and undercuts the intention of his social messages to be relevant to all American Muslims. This humor suggests that it is a problem for some socially critical comics to promote an advanced view of female concerns as part of a progressive American Muslim agenda.

Muslim women’s occasionally controversial and sometimes sexualized jokes is a style of humor distinct from those male Muslim comics who locate themselves publicly as closer to “proper” Muslim styles of comic expression.26 Public humor

25 Preacher Moss’s biography on the “Allah Made Me Funny” official website describes him as a “socially conscious warrior.” 26 Comedian Azhar Usman is an example of this tendency for some Muslim male comedians to view their humor as needing to uphold Islamic standards of propriety. Usman promotes his brand of comedy as “halal” humor, as he explained in a BBC interview (Usman 2009a): “I’ve actually gone through the effort of developing a set of rules that are literally do’s and don’ts for my comedy. And whenever I write a joke or I have a funny idea, I’ll go back to that framework or that set of rules, and I’ll make sure that I’m not violating any of those rules… I turn to religious legal scholars to guide me. I don’t curse—that’s another rule. I don't do any sexual or blue humor at all, and I don’t back bite people.”

Cont Islam

of stand-up comedians intersects with community expectations about gender roles and appropriate expression in sometimes prohibitive ways. Tissa Hami, for example, in a interview available online explained what happened when she was scheduled to perform at a university with fellow Muslim American male comic Azhar Usman but at the last minute was told that she was not welcome by the consortium of Muslim student groups sponsoring the show. According to Hami, after the student group contacted Usman he reached out to her and explained that the students went to her website, read some of her jokes, and concluded that her performance would not be appropriate for a “traditional Muslim audience.” Hami (2009) recalled her reaction to being asked to “stand down”: “I was so angry, I was so upset. Because one of the things about stand-up comedy is the freedom it gives you to stand up and say your mind. And to say anything you want, as long as it is funny.” From this example of a negative reaction to controversial Muslim comedy, it seems that simply being funny does not always guarantee community acceptance.

The above examples raise issues and provide examples that complicate the socially critical goals of Muslim American comedians. Many of these forces are related to the inherent and remarkable diversity of the American Muslim community. The sub- stance and promotion of Muslim stand-up comedy exposes differences within the community along lines of normative religiosity, gender, and engagement with American social life. Fault lines are often revealed in what is unsaid, rather than in what is said. The challenge of describing a diverse community on stage seems to be the most influential force that complicates the imperative that some Muslim comics feel to properly represent their stereotyped community to audiences around the world. When comedians use humor to create boundaries that not only include but also exclude, they shed doubt on the potential of socially critical humor to advance the cause of social justice for all American Muslims.

Conclusion: the future trajectories of Muslim American stand-up comedy

The future of Muslim American comedy depends on varied and competing forces that are inherent to stand-up comedy as a genre, such as a continued public relevance that encourages jokes about Muslim Americans. Yet the history of American minority humor indicates that public relevance, or lack of it, will determine continued interest in Muslim comedy. Joseph Boskin’s work on American humor (1997: 129) shows how jokes about immigrant groups serve as an important barometer of assimilation, as the themes and punchlines of jokes about minorities are important indicators of the degree of cultural acceptance into the majority community. While jokes about the Irish were popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, these jokes do not resonate in contemporary American culture. Muslim American minorities responding to stereotypes that negatively define their group are an index of Muslim socio-cultural acceptance within the context of American social life; if history is an indicator, as Muslims (as a particularly stereotyped entity) become less relevant to Americans, so too will Muslim American comedy.

Where Muslim comedy heads in the future is dependent not only on a continued Muslim social relevance—the imperative for comedians to have a wide commercial appeal is also a factor. In the American context socially critical comedians have a

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tendency to discontinue their more controversial material as they achieve mainstream commercial success. Jenkins (1994: 199) describes this American phenomenon as a “trajectory from engagement to detachment” and cites examples such as Roseanne Barr as comedians that mellowed their material in response to the commercialization of their work. Even if Muslim American comedians continue to enjoy the social relevance that brings in audiences, the need to entertain may render jokes that challenge social attitudes unsuitable.

Many of the comedians profiled here were performing prior to the attacks of 9/11. The increased salience of negative Muslim stereotypes as a result of that day galvanized these men and women to take to the stage and bring their voices to the social discourse of Muslims in America. Every time a Muslim man or woman uses the public stage of stand-up to announce his or her Muslim identity, they confront misinformed associations mapped onto Muslims and demonstrate that in fact, Muslims can be very funny. For American Muslims who are routinely subject to dehumanizing stereotypes, stand-up comedy is a new and culturally significant space within which to collectively process the negative consequences through laughter. Muslim American comedy is a symptom of the community’s integration into the social and cultural fabric of American social life. It is a development that now places Muslims into the long history of how minorities have entered, laughing, into American society.

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