[01] What happens when you write and/or perform comedy involving religion? Especially about Islam? And in a world where many think Muslims aren't supposed to have a sense of humour?
[02] Some years back, a rightwing Danish newspaper commissioned some cartoonists to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (s). The cartoons were supposed to be hilarious, though I must say that after seeing all 12 of them, I couldn't see much humour. Though many will recall the imbecile nature of the responses of protests by a minority across Muslim communities.
[03] (From memory, there was one cartoon in which the Prophet was shown at the gates of heaven telling a suicide bomber that there were no virgins left. Now that one was worth a chuckle.)
[04] What made me wonder was why so many were so offended. After all, in many languages spoken commonly by Muslims, humour and jokes and Islamic religious symbols are common. Yes, I haven't heard anyone made jokes about the Prophet, but I have heard God dragged into a few punchlines, often in the most blasphemous way. Often these jokes are targetted at allegedly religious politicians. Few seem to mind.
[05] Comedy about ethnics by ethnics is nothing knew. Most of us find it funny because - let's face it - we are all ethnic in some way. We recognise that you can be racial without being racist. Stereotypes can be upsetting, but it depends on the intentions of the one doing the stereotyping.
On Tuesday 19 October 2010, Adelaide-based Eugenia Flynn spoke at a gathering at Melbourne University on the topic of Race & Identity in the Muslim Community. Her words and her delivery stunned her listeners as well as her fellow panellists (North American comics Preacher Moss and Azhar Usman).
I tried taking copious notes at the event, which I have typed out and reproduced below. If anyone who attended has any corrections or can add anything, please do.
[01] My conversion to Islam did not represent a rejection of my Aboriginal or Catholic heritage. I don't reject Catholicism as some kind of religion of oppressors. My path to Islam was more of a flowering of my innate spirituality.
[02] Some Muslims see Islam as a badge of honour. Because Islam is getting a rough time, they see being Muslim as giving them street cred.
[03] Some migrant Muslims claim that they have a more exclusive and legitimate connection with Aboriginal people, as if Muslims have a superior claim to Australia than non-indigenous followers of other faiths. This sense of ownership and superiority leads to a kind of arrogance, as if Muslims have a greater right to speak for indigenous people, which is compounded by the fact that many Muslim migrants are not white. Many Muslims don't realise that this kind of arrogance makes them complicit in the injustice perpetrated toward indigenous people.
[04] Why is the Aboriginal Muslim community growing? Are Aboriginal converts attracted by some alleged increase in freedom? Do Aboriginal Muslims feel Muslim for all the same reasons? Must it always be explained as a rejection of Christianity and/or Western culture?
[05] Many Muslims have adopted the same colonial mindset toward indigenous people as Christian missionaries. They see the purpose of dawah (preaching) to be saving Aboriginal people and getting them to leave behind their aboriginality. Aboriginal Muslims are also pressed to adopt migrant Muslim modes of dress etc. Underlying this is often the presumption that Aboriginality boils down to petrol sniffing, alcohol abuse and criminality.
[06] The notion that Muslims somehow become morally superior over other Australians simply because a growing number of indigenous people are adopting Islam must be challenged.
Many years ago, a famous Australian actor (I think it was Jack Thompson) appeared in an advertisement for a drink called Claytons. I'm not sure if it was a non-alcoholic drink, but the slogan of the advertisement was "Claytons - the drink you're having when you're not having a drink".
Since then, Australians have been referring to half-baked or fraudulent things using the adjective "Claytons". In this sense, if recent media reports are correct, it seems that Hassan Butt, darling of the UK tabloid media and ex-jihadi pinup boy, has turned out to be a complete fraud, a Claytons jihadi.
The Guardian and Reuters report that Hassan Butt was all along speaking out of his backside to various media outlets and journos about his alleged exploits in al-Qaeda. Here's what the Guardian says:
Hassan Butt received significant media attention for his claims to have helped send scores of Britons to terrorist training camps overseas and to have met Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the 7 July 2005 attacks on London.
Butt was the former spokesman for the extremist group al-Muhajiroun and was invited to meet a government minister to discuss ways to combat terrorism, as well as featuring heavily in BBC News, national newspaper and US television reports on al-Qaida.
However at a trial of another man accused of terrorist offences, Butt said he had told journalists stories "the media wanted to hear", admitting that he was "a professional liar". He also admitted faking his own injuries to make it appear that he had been attacked by extremist Muslims.
Butt was arrested in 2008 over his planned autobiography Leaving Al Qaeda: Inside The Life And Mind of a British Jihadist, in which he was planning to claim involvement in the US consulate attack in Karachi, Pakistan, in June 2002, which killed 12 people.
The book was being co-authored by freelance journalist Shiv Malik, who became a media cause celebre after counter terrorism officers demanded he hand over his notes.
But in court Butt agreed he had taken Malik for a "right patsy"
Here is how Reuters reported it:
He made the confession in December during the trial of a former friend, Habib Ahmed, who was subsequently convicted of belonging to al Qaeda. Restrictions on the reporting of the case have only now been lifted following the conclusion of another trial involving Butt's wife.
"At no point have I ever been training, have I ever been a jihadi," Butt told the court, according to a transcript of the proceedings.
Questioning Butt about his past, prosecutor Andrew Edis asked: "So, you were a professional liar then?"
Butt replied: "I would make money, yes." He had, he said, told stories that "the media wanted to hear".
The confession will come as a surprise to many as Butt was for years regarded as a leading Islamist who had subsequently turned himself into a proponent for "de-radicalising" young men in order to combat extremism.
He has been widely profiled in newspapers, magazines and in television documentaries, and even met members of the government to discuss his plans for combating radicalism.
What a bullsh*t artist this guy is. Seriously. God knows just how many people have been arrested or detained or subject to various restraining or control orders thanks to his evidence.
I wonder who will be caught out spinning crap next. Will the UK government now investigate some of the crazy claims of other alleged ex-jihadis and ex-"Islamists"? Will Ed Husain cut the nonsense and admit that so many of his claims about his HT involvement are about as real as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?
Hassan Butt ran this imbecilic line that all jihadis had the same "Islamic theology" which inspired them all to commit acts of terror. Butt, speaking out of his surname-sake, told Muslim-phobic tabloid morons exactly what they wanted to hear - that the problem wasn't with violence or terror but with religion itself. But with Butt's cover blown, fruitloops like Robert Spencer and Mad Mel Phillips won't have many native informants to assist in their misinformation campaigns.
The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
Which peers were they, Mr Butt? Were these the non-existent peers you told 60 Minutes about in 2007?
Butt's nonsense has been published by an impressive list of media outlets including Commentary Magazine based in the United States, The Times of London, NPR and BBC. Check out this interesting summary of Hassan Butt's butt-headed nonsense and his numerous supporters here. For more blog commentary, check out UmmahPulse and Indigo Jo.
I feel rather strange now. I've just finished the manuscript of my own memoir of my own teenage and young adult flirtation with Jamaat-i-Islami and Iranian literature during the years of the Afghan jihad of the 1980's. After finishing it, I wondered whether anyone would find it slightly entertaining or enlightening given the more exciting memoirs of people like Hassan Butt and Ed Husain. Well, all I can say now is that my memoir might be a little less dramatic, but at least it is honest.
Robert Spencer is absolutely fuming over my book review in The Australian. In fact, fuming is probably an understatement. And what makes him especially angry is that I refer to him by the title of ... wait for it ... a Catholic.
Poor fellow. He now gets a taste of his own medicine. This is the same Robert Spencer who regularly attributes acts of violence to the faiths and cultures of 1.2 billion people. And all disguised as "scholarship".
... at Jihad Watch I provide on a daily basis mountains of evidence, cascades of evidence, for the reality of Islamic supremacist activity around the world ... the extent of jihadist activity and sympathy in the Islamic world ...
What the ...? Evidence? All Spencer does is trawl through newspapers and websites and search for anything even resembling intolerance or violence by people with some link to Muslim communities. In fact, he doesn't do much of the trawling. His army of fellow hate-crusaders like this chap (who even thinks actor Omar Sharif is part of a grand Islamist conspiracy) do all the trawling for him.
I refuse to believe that each and every Catholic is guilty of the excesses of a few. I understand that group responsibility is a concept which went out of fashion after the Holocaust. The tabloid media that paints the stereotype of Islamic terrorists is the same media which reminds us of pedophile Catholic priests. But don't expect me to set up a blog filled with innuendo and smear or suggesting that pedophilia is supported within "the Catholic world" (if such an entity existed).
So what was it that has angered poor Robert? The answer can be found in these paragraphs ...
WE don't often associate the skin tones, exotic culture and poverty of the world's largest Catholic continent with Catholicism.
Few Australian Catholics would recognise the popular beliefs and practices of their Latin American co-religionists.
So if I were to make an ambit criticism of Christianity based on the extreme poverty and draconian politics of Latin America, Catholics would be justified in poking their fingers at me and ridiculing my simplistic reasoning. But among those pointing at me in ridicule would be the polemicists and cultural warriors with three fingers pointing back at themselves. Google jihad. Featuring prominently is JihadWatch, a blog moderated by far-right Catholic polemicist Robert Spencer.
It takes a certain degree of intellectual laziness (often combined with irrational prejudice) to attribute negative characteristics to an entire group of people, especially when members of this group rarely, if ever, regard themselves as sharing some uniform identity.
Do entities such as the Muslim community or the Muslim world really exist? Do all Muslims regard themselves as belonging to the same community of believers? Indeed, do all Muslims regard each other as Muslims? If so, how do we explain the rhetoric of Iraqi Sunni groups who attack Shia Muslim shrines with a view to destroying the infidel? And how do we explain that an elderly Lakemba-based imam who once claimed the title of mufti of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific wasn't recognised by many Australian Muslims as playing any religious role whatsoever?
Yet we still see, hear and read of the Muslim community and the Muslim world having a uniform manifestation of faith in a monolithic (usually violent and hostile) manner. We so easily lump together 1.2 billion people in the same category.
What is so contentious about claiming that it's almost impossible to generalise about 1.2 billion people? Where is the controversy in suggesting that a Muslim in Malaysia probably has more in common with a Singaporean Catholic than a Muslim in Morocco? What is so offensive about suggesting that, culturally speaking, Robert Spencer has more in common with former boxer Muhammad Ali than Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan?
I'm not sure. But I do know this: If the likes of Robert Spencer are angered by what I write, it means I must be on the right track.
Attention All Melbournians!! You seriously cannot afford to miss Maz Jobrani. This dude is one of the funniest Americans to perform this side of the equator. Not bad for an Iranian!
You can read more about Maz here. His Sydney show on Saturday night 2 February 2008 was an absolute hoot. Yes, there was a large Iranian/Persian element in the audience, but they certainly were not the majority. Maz attracted people from across the ethnic and religious spectrum with his simple message of culturally “mixing it up”. If only John and Janette Howard could have been there. They might have actually learned something!
So stop what you’re doing, siddown, shuddup, grab your laptop and purchase a ticket online for tonight, Sunday 3 February 2008 before they all sell out. It’s his only performance in Melbourne and the last gig of his current Australian tour. Don’t miss out!!
I was born some time back. I'm currently alive. No doubt one day I'll pass away or pass out, whichever comes first. Until then, I do lawyering and writing in Australia.
... I can see why Irfan Yusuf got the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger award for public affairs writing: he's slick.
(Comment on a book review I wrote for The Australian. Mate, you said it. Who am I to argue with you?)
Endorsement from Mr Daniel Pipes
Chronic sectarian bigot ...
A nasty attack by an Australian blogger named Irfan Yusuf has appeared ... Yusuf jumps on me ...
(From an update on Mr Pipes' blog dated 21 February 2008. No, Mr Pipes, I would never jump on you. I just don't find you physically attractive!)
Further Endorsement from Mr Daniel Pipes ...
Promoter of the "Obama was a Muslim" smear ...
... should send a signal to responsible media everywhere to decline his tendentious writings.
(I wonder if, by "responsible", he means that tiny fringe of newspapers and websites happy to print his claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim apostate and attended a madressa? Or that wearing a sarong is "a garment associated with Muslims"? Or that extremists make up 10-15% of the Muslim world population? Well, Mr Pipes, I wouldn't want to pollute my reputation by writing for those kinds of media. You can have them all, mate!)
