In 2005 Albert Brooks starred in a film called Looking for
Comedy in the Muslim World. Like a lot of things associated
with fundamentalist Islam it bombed. Perhaps one reason was that
the film was set largely in India, a nation that is 80 percent
Hindu. And while Indians have a sophisticated, dry sense of humor,
Mr. Brooks's lame stand-up routine provided little incentive for
laughter.
Had Brooks gone to Saudi Arabia or Iraq he would have met with
the same stony silence, though for reasons having little to do with
his material. In totalitarian states a sense of humor is both a
survival skill and a dangerous quality to have. Sovietologists have
long noted that Russians and East Europeans relied on humor to get
through the darkest days of communism. Black humor was in itself a
form of resistance, or, in Orwell's phrase, "a tiny revolution."
Russians were natural comedians because they were eager to "attack
the beliefs and virtues on which society necessarily rests," which
Orwell claimed to be the chief characteristic of the humorist. Ben
Lewis, writing in Prospect, gives this example
of a Soviet-era joke:
A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he
has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell.
Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to
capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a
bit like Ronald Reagan. "What's it like in there?" asks the
visitor. "Well," the devil replies, "in capitalist hell, they flay
you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into
small pieces with sharp knives."
"That's terrible!" he gasps. "I'm going to check out communist
hell!" He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge
queue of people waiting to get in. Eventually he gets to the front
of the line and there at the door to communist hell is a little old
man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. "I'm still in the free world,"
he says, "and before I come in, I want to know what it's like in
there."
"In communist hell," says Marx impatiently, "they flay you
alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into
small pieces with sharp knives."
"But... but that's the same as capitalist hell!" protests the
visitor. "Why such a long queue?"
"Well," sighs Marx, "Sometimes we're out of oil, sometimes we
don't have knives, sometimes no hot water..."
Unlike the Russians, Muslims have been forced to suppress their
sense of humor for centuries, a fact which has doubtless led to its
diminution. But there's another reason Islam seems to lack a funny
bone.
When I first saw the T-shirts and bumper stickers featuring
Islamic Rage Boy and the caption "My child
beheaded your honor student," I got a chuckle out of it. Muslims,
however, are unable to see the absurdity in it. Not only do they
not find it funny, they cannot understand how it can be
funny, simply because they do not understand the concept of
absurdist, satiric or ironic humor. Satire and irony are largely
Western concepts dating back to Ancient Greece. Aristophanes
employed political satire to criticize certain prominent Greeks
while Socrates was celebrated for his sense of irony (hence the
term Socratic irony). Absurdism is a more recent phenomenon
originating with early 20th century Dadaism, and later the
surrealists and the Theatre of the Absurd. These were philosophical
and artistic forms that highlighted the essential precariousness
and meaninglessness of human life, again concepts foreign to
Islam.
Islam, on the other hand, has very strict rules about what is
funny (very little) and what kind of jokes one can crack (very
few). Seriousness is prized as a virtue. Hurtful jokes (such as
mother-in-law jokes) are not allowed, nor, obviously, are religious
or sexual jokes. Exaggerated or continuous joking is said to
distract from the worship of Allah. Some Islamic scholars teach
that "Everything has a beginning and hostility begins with joking."
And again, "Joking shows foolishness and arrogance" and causes one
to lose respect for the joker. Eddie Murphy would last about ten
seconds on a Tehran stage, before the spectacle degenerated into a
more satisfying public execution.
I WENT POKING the Internets looking for examples of acceptable
Islamic jokes. They weren't easy to find, but I eventually located
a few on the Islamica Community Forum. Get ready to bust your
gut:
Once Ali was sleeping on the ground and was covered with dust.
Muhammad happened to pass that way and said to Ali, "Father of
dust."
And another:
Once Abu Hurairah was playing with a cat when Muhammad came
along and said, "Abu Hurairah, 'Father of cats.'"
Clearly the yucks got lost in the translation.
According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Rage Boy images that so
amused me are not only not funny, but another form of Western
racism and bigotry. Apparently Rage Boy's offensive image promotes
hatred and could ultimately get some young innocent American Muslim
student beat up. As usual Mr. Hooper seems more concerned with how
satire will cause violence than with how the actions of suicide
bombers and their supporters will.
Mr. Hooper then compares the images of Rage Boy to the images
and films created by the Nazis in the 1930s in which Jews were
likened to rats. One problem: Nazi agitprop was neither satire nor
absurdist humor, but racist propaganda. Unsurprisingly, Hooper is
unable to see the difference.
Images like Islamic Rage Boy effectively use satire to ridicule
the absurdity of Islamofascism. Far from being racist or
anti-Islamic satire helps us deal with despotism. It is an
all-American form of resistance. Jokes are simply a (mostly)
harmless way to let off steam. Perhaps if Muslims joked around a
little more there wouldn't be an Islamic Rage Boy.
Christopher Orlet writes the Existential Journalist
blog.
topics:
Satire, Islam, Law, Iraq, Russia, Communism, Fascism, Oil
