Muslim Comedians in the U.S.: A PBS Special

May 11, 2008 – 9:59 am

This week on PBS, “STAND UP: Muslim-American Comics Come of Age” premiered as part of the ongoing “America at a Crossroads” series. Five comedians are profiled in this documentary special: Ahmed Ahmed, Tissa Hami, Dean Obeidallah, Azhar Usman and Maysoon Zayid.

ahmed ahmed

Each comedian profiled has their own angle on both the entertainment business and the experiences of Muslims in the United States. Maysoon Zayid talks about being a Palestinian-American Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair, a virgin, and a disabled person aspiring to become an actress.

Dean Obeidallah shares the story of how he initially stopped using his Arab last name when performing in the aftermath of 9/11, then had a change of heart and a change of direction.

Azhar Usman, who is shown praying in his dressing room at one point, discusses going through a conservative phase before realizing that his path in life ultimately lay elsewhere.

azher usman smiles

Many viewers will relate to Ahmed Ahmed’s anxiety in regards to air travel, except that in Ahmed Ahmed’s case there is the added “bonus” of traveling while Muslim and enduring extreme suspicion. And Tissa Hami’s account of enduring prejudice both from non-Muslims and Muslims (some of whom have told her that she is “going to hell”) is not exactly a laughing matter.

Yet, staying true to its subject matter, the special manages to be light-hearted as well. The featured jokes could probably make even David Horowitz laugh, or so I’d like to believe.

Prior to the premiere, I was given an opportunity to interview several of the comedians, and here is what we talked about:

Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, entertainment, humor, islam, muslim women, religion | Comments (3)

The Arab 100: Politics Is Bad For Business

April 14, 2008 – 3:11 pm

One of the most common criticisms of the annual World’s Most Influential Arabs List is how deliberately apolitical and therefore unhelpful the exercise is.

It’s an assessment that goes to the root of modern critiques of capitalism: the idea that money is power and if you don’t have it, you don’t matter. However, I need to point out that ranking political capital in the Arab world is not particularly inspiring or exciting, if the news are to be believed.

When I was studying in the United States, I noticed that many people who criticized capitalism did not have a concrete alternative to offer, unless “let’s live in a commune, grow our own potatoes, and go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground” counts as an alternative. In the Arab world, by contrast, critics of capitalism are too ready to jump in bed with religious fundamentalists.

Suddenly, an outhouse sounds more and more appealing. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in business world, muslim women | Comments (0)

Gaza: So where is Bono anyway?

January 22, 2008 – 8:09 am

The news all over the world are blaring about the ongoing debacle in Gaza: a million people suffering collective punishment with no power in the dead of winter. There are reports of hospital patients dying preventable deaths in their beds. The latest update is that Israel will allow “some food” into the blockaded area. Hamas leadership, meanwhile, is grandstanding.

I’m not one of those people who believes that Israel out to be destroyed, “pushed out into the sea,” or whatever. But I do believe that Israel needs to take steps toward change. This has to do with the fact that I see a real problem with the way that this nation’s leaders have conducted themselves in the region. I see a further problem with most American politicians’ blind support for practically anything Israeli politicians say or do. Of course, anything other than blind support may quickly earn you the title of anti-Semite and/or terrorist supporter (now, now, I don’t think that anti-Semitism is not a serious issue, but the way in which it gets invoked in regards to the present conflict does make it seem as though some folk have decided to hijack the cause against it). Don’t like what’s happening in Gaza today, for example? Keep your trap shut, you just might get smeared.

I also see a problem with any sort of blind support of the activities of the Palestinian leadership. Palestinian leadership has not been great. At all. The violence of various factions have not gotten Palestine anywhere. And Hamas in particular doesn’t know PR (among other things they clearly don’t know). I’ve often wondered if Hamas cares about the terrible present conditions and the people affected by them as much as they care about ideas. Now, it’s easy for me to talk smack about a group of folks that have been living under severe restrictions for many years. It’s easy for me to lecture Palestinians from the relative safety of my present home. Yet, a serious conflict requires serious solutions nonetheless.

Speaking of solutions, there is a variety of them on the table. Both Jews and Muslims have been busy trying to work things out. And yet, we rarely hear about progress and the possibility of progress. As Gaza shivers in winter, all we hear about is the seeming inevitability of conflict, suffering, and destruction. Many of us resign ourselves to it. We shift the paper aside, and shrug, and pour a cup of coffee, and listen to the latest round of grotesque Britney gossip, and go on with our day.

So here is my question: where the hell is Bono? Where is that multitude of glamorously somber celebrities to draw our glitter-hungry gaze to what’s happening, right now, right in this very moment, to the Gazans? To remind us to stop being so heartless, to speak out? Where is that topical MTV music video with passionately flailing guitars? That magazine cover? Don’t tell me they’ve got no clue as to what is going on over there.

Sure, people have their pet causes. They can’t be in ten different places at the same time. Private jet fuel doesn’t come cheap. And lots and lots of people besides Gazans are also suffering as I type this piece. I get that part. And yet it strikes me as particularly telling that Gaza, and the latest crisis that has the entire world’s attention, is being virtually ignored by people who make their living from getting attention.

Are the issues just too tough? The possibility of being labeled an anti-Semite, or, better yet, “a self-loathing Jew” (can’t speak for everyone, but many of my Jewish friends who have criticized Israel’s policies have gotten that label, and pretty forcefully too) just too daunting? Or is it the more radical subset of the Left that celebrities simply don’t want to get involved with (sometimes, I can’t say I blame them)? Is there such a thing as a “trendy” cause, and does Palestine in general, and Gaza in particular, not conform to whatever requirements needed to be awarded such status?

So what’s going on here? Am I being silly in even asking such questions? Surely not. Bloggers for Palestine (and various non-profit organizations) clearly are paying attention to how media coverage and rhetoric play into the ongoing conflict.

And in today’s world, the cover of Vanity Fair can play as crucial a role as a statement from a top-level politician. So where is it?

Do most big celebrities and their handlers only really “care” about others for as long as it’s convenient to do so? Do these people just squeeze their publicist-approved activism in between the latest awards ceremony and waxing appointment, making sure it isn’t too complicated or difficult to talk about? Nothing personal against Bono and people like Bono (for the record: Bono does strike me as someone who, in fact, cares about the miserable state of our sorry little world), but you do have to wonder.

Is this the way it’s always going to go, for Gaza, for Palestine?

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, palestine | Comments (11)

The Next Great War… With the Burqa

January 9, 2008 – 9:33 am

The burqa is quickly becoming the greatest foe of the Western society. But this tussle with the ‘Muslim woman’s attire’ is not new.

Rudyard Kipling, who was born and raised in India amongst Muslims who were the last Mogul kings, describes a boorka in his short story Beyond the Pale as an ‘evil-smelling’ garment ‘which cloaks a man as well as a woman.’ The main character, Trejago, dresses in a burqa to meet his Indian lover and symbolically throws it away at the end of the story.

No matter how I personally feel about the burqa, I think it is not anyone’s right to ridicule the garment and its wearers.

Two articles against the burqa have left me speechless not because they are insensitive in tone but because of their writers’ innate lack of knowledge about the religion they seem to target with their vile words. One is by the Bangladeshi ex-Muslim Taslima Nasrin titled “Let’s Burn the Burqa” and the other is “Death Before Burkas” by Kyle-Anne Shiver.

There are two popular opinions on hijab by Muslims; one is that it is required in the Quran and the other opinion is that it is not required and only modesty is emphasized. Ms. Nasrin claims that Quran requires niqab because of “an individual’s personal reasons” and “since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it.” Nasrin suggests that women

    “should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.”

It was amusing to read Nasrin’s words because her knowledge about Islam, a religion she consciously abandoned, is extremely weak. A few examples: Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs, muslim women, religion | Comments (13)

Motorcycle Diaries Part IX

December 6, 2007 – 7:30 am

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

I always wondered whether there was a deliberate Western conspiracy for the “uglification” of Islam, or whether it was the Muslims themselves who did not need outside help in this regard. I accidentally coined the term “uglification” a little more than a year ago on these pages, and by that, I was referring to the stubborn campaign to reduce Islam into a peculiar sect of sorcery and senseless mythology.

This campaign is underway to represent Islam as devoid of beauty and good taste, despite the overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, and the slanderous attempts to turn its prophet into a prolific babbler of jumbled fairytales, instead of the magnanimous humanitarian and genius – and even revolutionary women’s rights advocate – that evidence shows he truly had been. While I’m not usually prone to believing conspiracy theories, I did encounter personal evidence proving that the elaborate plot of “uglification” was a result of a mixture between the two: our own devastating ignorance and adherence to forged texts, but also the West’s active participation in promoting and perpetuating the outright lies.

One case in point which I shall never be able to forget took place exactly twenty years ago, during my first weeks at Charterhouse, the boarding school and bastion of the British establishment in which I landed at the tender age of 16. In that pillar of the English public school system, they used to invite certain speakers to address the students on various occasions, to educate the offspring of the British elite, so to speak, about other cultures and to promote tolerance and understanding.

At one such event, we were gathered to listen to a presentation about the different world religions and their contrasting beliefs and practices, given by a person introduced to us as an expert on this subject. After giving us a tour of the basic tenets of what everyone else believed, the lecturer then turned to Islam. I vividly recall the excitement I felt at that moment as a homesick student, proudly waiting for my schoolmates to find out what this misunderstood religion was all about.

Our guest speaker stood there with his aristocratic posture and impeccable upper class accent, and confined his description of Islam to the following short sentence: “Islam is a religion from the Arabian desert that set many teachings for its followers to abide by, for example, the requirement to eat food with their right hands, the rationale being that the left hand is designated for cleaning oneself after going to the toilet”. That was it. The time he allotted for Islam was over.

I swear by the God of all the religions which I learnt about that day that this was the only example that came out of his mouth. Coming from a supposedly learned authority, this incident confirmed to me that this guy came to the auditorium with a premeditatedly devious purpose, and could not have uttered what he said to this knowledge-thirsty audience out of sheer ignorance or lack of information. So, while Jesus died on the Cross for our sins and Buddhism preached peace and tranquility, Islam was apparently all about wiping your behind using the correct hand. So much for my pride amongst my peers that day. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in entertainment, religion | Comments (2)

Misperceptions between Muslims and Non-Muslims

November 25, 2007 – 12:10 pm

The following article explains misperception between Muslims and Non-Muslims. It uses an adapted form of Robert Jervis’ 14 points on the “Hypotheses of Misperception” as published in World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Apr., 1968), pp. 454-479.

With the advent of the MySpace, Orkut, Facebook and other social networking websites onlinethe Muslim population of the world has increasingly come in contact with the outside world and vice versa. Though Western culture has been ever present in most Islamic countries in the form of movies, media and other cultural-communicative mediums, there has been a lack of actual interaction between Muslims and Non-Muslims en masse. This has changed recently. But will this change the way people actually relate to each other?

Through 3rd party mediums like Al-Jazeera, state run propagandist TV channels like Pakistan’s PTV, ultra-conservative news agencies like FoxNews and even ideologically “progressive” newspapers like the Washington Post, stereotypes as to the other side were established in the minds of the viewers. The images this sort of media creates exemplifies their differences to the degree of making the “other side” look almost alien in their basic values and beliefs. While these perceptions may hold varying degrees of authenticity, the overall impression both sides have of each other – to put it mildly – can not be called accurate. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in religion, society | Comments (5)

A Case of Polarized Discourse

February 22, 2007 – 11:29 am

I have never been a great fan of the collective “Arabs.” It assumes a level of homogeneity I as an “Arab” have not felt. Yet there are broad brushed tendencies that can safely be assumed when looking at our people. Our polarized worldview is one such proclivity which renders us immune to noting gradations and more inclined to be extremist in our views. A phenomenon, event or person must be entirely good or bad.

Words like always, never, all, terrible, excellent, good, bad, are staples of our everyday language when life mostly falls in that middle ground where outlooks, moral and otherwise, reflect the limitations of personal perspectives, at least in my opinion. A corollary of all of this is a culture of dissent characterized by the same tendency which ebbs and flows depending on the political environment. In the face of turmoil, stances are usually hardened, sentiments are heightened and the bounds of acceptable political discourse are automatically narrowed. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs | Comments (0)

A Culture of Hate and Death

November 16, 2004 – 11:37 am

(This article will be published in the December issue of Living Well magazine in Jordan)

I’m going to be very frank. Self-delusion and fear of the truth had eventually cost us too many beautiful lives on that grim Wednesday night. But unless we face the distressing facts, we should expect more terrible surprises. My patient editor always advises me that readers of Living Well magazine generally don’t expect to read about religion or politics – and to her dismay, I have since found it almost impossible to write anything not related to either facets of our lives. I think this escapist Jordanian phenomenon is symptomatic of our dangerous head-in-the-sand attitude. Very few people are actually willing to acknowledge that religion and politics are, whether we like it or not, deeply intermingled in dominating every single breath we take in every second of our existence in this plagued part of the world. Even fewer are those ready to confront the lethal outcome of mixing the two by illiterate dropouts who believe they hold, and can bestow upon others, the keys to paradise. Until our 11/9, that is. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in current affairs, jordan, terrorism | Comments (0)