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Comedy can have a serious purpose. It reminds us of the dangers of forgetting history.
None of us can honestly claim to be without prejudice. It's much easier to see people as being defined only by their race, religion or sexual preference, whether actual or presumed. It's much harder to understand people as complex individuals with numerous, often conflicting, layers of identity.
When it comes to exposing and challenging prejudice, humour is often far more effective a tool than passionate opinion articles. Three young Australian Muslims - Mohammed El-Leissy, Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman - are performing Islam-101: Don't Believe The Hype at this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival. They are following the example of Arab and Muslim comics in North America who have performed shows under such titles as Allah Made Me Funny and The Axis of Evil.
On the ABC each week The Chaser's War on Everything lampoons popular perceptions of terrorism and security. In one skit, a Chaser chap dresses up as an American tourist taking video shots of the Sydney Harbour Bridge without any security present. He then dresses as a stereotypical Arab, with long beard and chequered kuffiyeh headdress. Security was onto him within minutes.
Here's the Clip
But not all skits elicit laughter. A recent episode showed their man in the US, Charles Firth, interviewing a sample of everyday Americans. All agreed Muslims should be forced to carry ID cards and even wear special identification badges. Most suggested Muslims should be incarcerated in internment camps. Comedy can be a potent vehicle for exposing uncomfortable truths.
Here's the clip
During his recent visit to Australia, Bosnia's mufti charmed Australian audiences with wisecracks about Bosnian villagers and about his experiences of being bossed around by his wife and daughter. But Dr Mustafa Ceric also has a serious message for Westerners of all faiths.
He reminded us that Muslimphobia is reaching such endemic proportions in Europe that he fears a second Holocaust. He compared popular perceptions of Muslims in the West with popular perceptions of Jews in parts of Western Europe in the decades leading up to World War II.
Ceric used the experience of his own people to illustrate his point - more than half a million Bosnian civilians massacred and more than 20,000 women gang-raped, including girls as young as six and women as old as 80. Many atrocities were committed by people against their neighbours, teachers, students and others with whom they otherwise had daily interaction.
What kind of thinking leads to such atrocities? One Bosnian victim, a red-headed 25-year-old married woman, told a Canadian newspaper why she was raped by 15 soldiers: "Because I am a Muslim. Their aim was to humiliate me, to make me lose my honour."
Hence, one can only wonder at the sanity of those Muslims who, like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believe that defending their own necessarily involves denying the historical suffering of others. In yet another year when Ramadan and Yom Kippur coincide, what possible benefit could be gained for Jews or Muslims from Ahmadinejad's remarks?
As American Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson writes in the US Jewish magazine Tikkun: "Muslims, of all people, should be conscious of this as their religion is predicated on the same epistemological premises as many major events in history, such as the Holocaust. To deny such things is to undermine Islam as an historical event."
Instead of denying the Holocaust, Muslims - and indeed peoples of all faiths and no faith in particular - should study its causes and consequences, especially the rhetorical devices used by political leaders, columnists and commentators in the decades leading up to it.
No two faith traditions are more similar than Islam and Judaism. Both worship a strictly Unitarian God. Both have sacred laws with strict dietary codes and detailed rules governing gender relations. Both insist on their texts being learned and taught in their original languages. Both refuse to deny their Middle Eastern roots.
The reasons used by many Muslimphobes to generate hatred against those deemed Muslim are almost identical to those used to generate hatred against Jews in the decades leading up to the Holocaust. Muslimphobic columnists and bloggers poke fun at Muslim dietary laws and cast aspersions on Muslims by citing out of context verses from the Koran discussing wars.
Eighty years ago, their ideological forebears cast similar aspersions on Jews. Even a cursory study of pre-Holocaust attitudes towards Jews in Europe and the West will show that yesterday's bloodsucking Jewish lenders have been replaced by today's bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists.
In New Matilda recently, Joanna Mendelssohn reminded readers that as recently as 1940, two prominent Sydney newspapers were quite happy to publish the opinions of a notable art critic who claimed modern art was a conspiracy of "the Jew dealers" whose aim was to "corrupt criticism, originate propaganda … and undermine accepted standards so that there should be ample merchandise to handle".
As Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland wrote of the British media last year: "I try to imagine how I would feel if this rainstorm of headlines substituted the word 'Jew' for 'Muslim': Jews creating apartheid, Jews whose strange customs and costume should be banned. I wouldn't just feel frightened. I would be looking for my passport."
Perhaps Freedland is exaggerating. Perhaps Muslimphobia is nowhere near as endemic as anti-Semitism was in the West before World War II. Yet the parallels between the rhetoric and attitudes of yesterday's anti-Semitism and today's Muslimphobia are striking. More unfortunate is the fact that prominent Jewish voices can be found among the chorus of Muslimphobes. Today's targets should be the last to deny the suffering of yesterday's victims. And the survivors of yesterday's crimes should be the last to join in today's lynch mobs.
First published in The Age on October 1, 2007.
I wonder if Muslimphobia is endemic in Australia, one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, if Muslimphobia is just as or worse in other countries.
More yet, i wonder even more so if history will repeat itself? Will there be another World War? When such fears become prevalent and Muslims become scapegoats for the problems and fear within a society.
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Just A Humble Bounty Hunter
"Is there an indelible line dividing sanity from insanity? Or do they change, one into the other, at the slightest turn of events? We'll find out, soon enough, if the world itself is insane."
While comedians are amusing, sometimes they hit on the truth. The western world is islamaphobic, if such a word exists. I won't say we, because we don't have the problem here, but it is really bad in England, and seems to be in America and obviously in Australia as well.
Although I can understand the reasons for it, all the attacks and so on, racism against innocent people is very unfair. I do not know what the solution is. I like to think that there won't be another world war but unless this is brought out into the open and openly discussed, it could very well lead to serious conflict.
Ah that's because the cold war has ceased and the Ministry of Peace has got to get the population up in arms against somebody so why not Islam.Tha fact that there is as many offshoots as there is in Christianity is not known by the average Duh in the street.
well out of context or not there are Islamic extreamists in great numbers screaming for the blood of the western world.
I don't know the exact figures but the chances of the Islamic nations against the western nations in a full scale war is somewhere between 'diddly' and 'squat' in the wests favour.
If the Islamic nations stood a chance against the west, with the things they have let thier people say and do... we wouldn't be hear talking about a hypothetical war.
the war would be very real.
one last thing, the extreamists got the "people up in arms" not "the ministry of peace". remember? it was called september11.
And remember, this thing called the Iraq War? That got the people up in arms again, this time against there own government.
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Just A Humble Bounty Hunter
"Is there an indelible line dividing sanity from insanity? Or do they change, one into the other, at the slightest turn of events? We'll find out, soon enough, if the world itself is insane."
Well think about it, there not talking about full blown hatred here though but how many instances have there been when you personally felt uneasy around someone you didn't know because they were wearing a turban and had a bushy beard?
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Just A Humble Bounty Hunter
"Is there an indelible line dividing sanity from insanity? Or do they change, one into the other, at the slightest turn of events? We'll find out, soon enough, if the world itself is insane."
Well think about it, there not talking about full blown hatred here though but how many instances have there been when you personally felt uneasy around someone you didn't know because they were wearing a turban and had a bushy beard?
I rather someone in a turban or veil was sitting nearby; it makes for more interesting scenery. The middle east is an interesting place. Some good archeology can and is being done there, and therefore put on the History Channel.
Now not trusting extremism in any form is not prejudice; it is self defense. I have no prejudices, and am not afraid to say it with the risk of sounding like a perfectionist.
Prejudice:
opinion formed beforehand: a preformed opinion, usually an unfavorable one, based on insufficient knowledge, irrational feelings, or inaccurate stereotypes
irrational dislike of somebody: an unfounded hatred, fear, or mistrust of a person or group, especially one of a particular religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexual preference, or social status
OK, so you are argueing that it is the wrong word but you have to admit that you've felt it at least once in your life before becoming better informed.
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Just A Humble Bounty Hunter
"Is there an indelible line dividing sanity from insanity? Or do they change, one into the other, at the slightest turn of events? We'll find out, soon enough, if the world itself is insane."
OK, so you are argueing that it is the wrong word but you have to admit that you've felt it at least once in your life before becoming better informed.
In the past yes, but that isn’t very important to the now.
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