These Muslims Put Their Faith in Comedy
Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah are two New York City-based comics. They are very funny. They are also Muslims. They fear that fellow Americans, particularly in the boonies, are getting the wrong impression of Muslims based on the actions of a few and the rhetoric of non-Muslim pontificators.
Rhetoric like this: “There is a virus more toxic than swine flu (sweeping the land) … They are trying to force Shariah law on the country … Every single, solitary butterball turkey that has been sold in the U.S. for Thanksgiving has been sacrificed to Allah — (because it’s) halal … Why don’t they go back to the countries they came from.”
So Farsad and Obeidallah decided to take affirmative action. They organized a tour with a band of standups and hit, not safe cities like New York, L.A. and Chicago, but the American heartland — where natives rarely come into contact with Muslims. The comics not only performed for free, but they set up Ask the Muslim and Hug a Muslim booths as well as offering a Bowl with a Muslim service.
The idea was to demystify their religion and to combat Islamphobia, as well to lay a few laughs on the folks. They appear to have succeeded, too.
Farsad and Obeidallah captured their odyssey on film and emerged with the revealing and whimsical docucomedy The Muslims Are Coming! (which has been released theatrically in the U.S. and which is now available for download on iTunes in this country).
Farsad and Obeidallah, as well as the other touring comics, look like, dress like and sound like any other urban American. But just so those living in the deep Southern regions they visited didn’t get misled, they travelled in vehicles with The Muslims Are Coming signs affixed to them, not to mention setting up their Muslim booths.
In concerts, Farsad sought to disarm audiences with her genial, self-deprecating banter: “The advantage of being a Muslim is that I can fly around on a magic carpet, granting wishes.”
Obeidallah, whose mother is Italian, confessed: “I was white before 9/11. Now I’m an Arab.” On the plus side, though, he does get this sort of reaction from some Americans: “I really like hummus, too.”
On the other hand, Omar Elba, one of the touring comics, has faced a different reality. His family moved to the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2001. “It was fine here on Sept. 9,” he recalled. “Pretty good on the 10th … and that’s about it.”
On that note, the directing duo of Farsad and Obeidallah conducted an unofficial survey among some Americans and asked them to name the country’s most hated groups. The Muslims led the way, followed by Jews, blacks, vegans, gays, aliens and, yes, boy bands. And as the acerbic Lewis Black points out, tongue in cheek, in an interview: gay Muslims would probably top the list.
Also weighing in with commentary in the film are Jon Stewart, his Daily Show crony Aasif Mandvi, Colin Quinn, David Cross, CNN’s Ali Velshi, Soledad O’Brien and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The consensus seems to be that many Americans are under the illusion that Muslims are humour-challenged.
Farsad did her best to dispel that theory in one concert: “I believe in a two-genital solution for peace in the Middle East.” She then revealed that she has a Jewish boyfriend.
Farsad also offered a comparison between modern-day Iran and the U.S. of the early last century: “With Prohibition, Iran is now just like the roarin’ … 1320s.”
Preacher Moss, another of the touring comics, felt compassion for white folk. “Muslims have a month for themselves with Ramadan. Blacks have Black History Month. But there is no Caucasian Awareness Month. No Whitey Week. No Cracker Day.”
Obeidallah even worried that the day might come when the forces of political correctness might associate “Muslim with the N-word and start calling us Pork-Free Americans instead.”
Obeidallah came away from the tour rather heartened by the reaction of rural Americans. “The funny thing is that we had our own preconceptions about the South,” he said in a phone interview. “People had lots of questions, but they were overwhelmingly open-minded. And we went to the most teeny rural areas we could find, like gun shows in the backwoods of Georgia — where there were no brown people.”
The gang also made a pit-stop in Mormon country, in Salt Lake City, Utah, where their Hug a Muslim initiative was particularly well received. “The Mormons really felt a connection with the Muslims,” Obeidallah says. “They’re demonized a lot. We were there when Romney was running for the presidency, and there were Christians saying that Mormons were not real Christians.”
But Obeidallah also notes that the comics faced some tough probing during the tour. Such as: why don’t moderate Muslims speak up more against the actions of radical Muslims?
“Aasif (Mandvi) says why do I have to denounce people with whom I have no connection whatsoever. Then we have an imam who says he denounces terrorism everywhere he can, but the message is just not getting through.”
Obeidallah has a theory that some Americans tend to be situational racists. “People appear to pay no attention to four Arabs talking to each other in Arabic at a deli. But when they hear four Arabs talking to each other in Arabic while boarding an airplane … ” he said. “But it’s the same thing with black people in certain situations. The situation changes all the time. White people may even turn to black people to protect them from the Arabs on the airplane.”
The release of the film on iTunes unfortunately comes at the same time Islamic terrorists went on a killing spree of civilians in Kenya. “The Muslim community often seems to get tarnished with the horrific actions of people they have no control over or connection with,” said Obeidallah, who also writes for CNN and The Daily Beast.
“I can’t do anything other than denounce those horrific actions. But people have to realize that the motivation of those groups is not about Islam — it’s all about power. It is not written in the Koran that it’s OK to kill people in a shopping mall. There is no connection to the faith.”
<i>The Muslims Are Coming is available for download on iTunes.</i>
Bill Brownstein
The Gazette