Muslim humor

WASHINGTON — Sporting a bushy beard and black skullcap, Azhar Usman bounded onto the stage. “I’m Osama bin Laden’s cousin,” he declared. “They call me ‘bin Laughin.’ ”

His audience, in suburban Rockville, Md., was a family crowd, immigrant parents with American-born children.

Some dressed Western; others wore the traditional dress of their native lands in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

All were there on this Saturday night to laugh — at Usman, at themselves and at the tricky predicament of being Muslim in post-9-11 America.

“I get some dirty looks walking down the street,” the Chicago comedian protested. “People looking at me as if I was responsible for 9-11.

“Can you believe that?

“Me responsible for 9-11?

Pause.

“7-Eleven, maybe?”

Like their Jewish, Irish and African American predecessors, Muslim comics are embracing ethnic humor, not just to draw laughs but also to promote Muslim acceptance into mainstream American society.

“My goal as a comedian is to make people laugh. But if I can also make them think, then that’s an added bonus,” said Tissa Hami, 31, an Iranian-born stand-up comic in Boston. “I want to show we’re not all terrorists, we’re not all fanatics. That not all Muslim women are oppressed and voiceless.”

Muslim stand-up comics are increasingly in demand by both Muslim and non-Muslim groups.

Canadian filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz produces what she calls “terrodies,” or comedies about terrorism, and has named her company FUNdamentalist Films.

And this month, a new comedy tour will debut. “Allah Made Me Funny, The Official Muslim Comedy Tour” was put together by African American Muslim Bryant Reginald Moss, 37, of Los Angeles, who for years has specialized in black-themed humor under his stage name, Preacher Moss.

The new tour, Moss said, is a way to highlight both the diversity of Muslims and the fact that African Americans make up one of the largest groups of Muslims in this country. The show gives Moss a forum to banter about both his race and religion.

With John Ashcroft as attorney general, mused Moss: “I’m worried they’re going to put race and religion on driver’s licenses… . So when I get pulled over … I get two tickets!”

Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African studies at Howard University and a scholar of Islamic issues, said the emergence of American Muslim comedians is a sign that this community has “assimilated into the American way of self-lampooning or satirizing, which is part of the society.”

Muslims say their comics help them by easing the stresses they have faced since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Which is why a young, hip crowd of mostly Muslims filled the Improv in Washington, D.C., one night recently to laugh at what normally isn’t a laughing matter: airport security.

Maysoon Zayid, 27, one of five Muslim stand-ups that night, described how she hates flying out of the Newark airport.

“I have cerebral palsy,” said Zayid, who was born in New Jersey to Palestinian parents. “So when I walk in, security doesn’t just see an Arab. They see a shaking Arab. ‘She’s nervous!’

“And I’m afraid of flying, so I’m crying. So now I’m a crying, shaking Arab. ‘She’s guilty!’ ”

To make matters worse, Zayid said, her father always drives her to the airport, and “he looks like Saddam Hussein. Before the hole!”

“It’s a bad time to be named Ahmed,” lamented Egyptian-born Ahmed Ahmed, 33.

Once, Ahmed said, a ticket agent was skeptical about his occupation.

“Oh, you’re a comedian,”’ the agent purportedly said. ” ‘Say something funny.’ ”

Pause.

“Ah-h-h … I just graduated from flight school?”

Ahmed, who with two other California-based Muslim comedians forms a comedy team called Arabian Knights, described his idea for a new reality television show: “It’s called ‘Mideastern Eye for the Midwestern Guy.’ … Five Arabs … bust into a white guy’s house and teach him how to make bombs and hate women.” (Pause amid laughter.) “I’m kidding. Midwestern guys already know how to do that.”

Boston’s Hami, who doesn’t normally wear a headscarf, uses one in her act. “I thought it would be so funny to see a veiled woman cracking jokes about airport security,” she said. “But I also did it to counter people’s image of what a veiled woman is … to counter that stereotype.”

Muslim comedians range from the very secular-minded to the rigorously observant.

Reflecting Moss’ religious practices, for example, alcohol will not be served on the “Allah Made Me Funny” tour. Hami, on the other hand, calls herself an “irreverent Muslim.”

Usman, 28, who is strictly observant, does not use foul language in his routine, which was recently cited as “praiseworthy” by a Muslim religious scholar discussing whether “stand-up comedy is permissible in the Shariah,” or Islamic law. He ruled that stand-up is allowed if it is “to make people laugh” and “accompanied by noble intentions.”

Though the prophet Muhammad is said to have liked smiling and jokes, Usman said, “there are a lot of very conservative Muslims” who don’t approve of having fun.

By contrast, American Muslims “are finally feeling comfortable laughing at themselves and … at their fellow Muslims around the world,” he said.