{"id":12282,"date":"2006-09-15T17:20:47","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T21:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=12282"},"modified":"2013-05-10T15:08:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T19:08:54","slug":"september-15-2006-muslim-comedian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2006\/09\/15\/september-15-2006-muslim-comedian\/12282\/","title":{"rendered":" Muslim Comedian"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>KIM LAWTON<\/strong>, guest anchor: American Muslims have developed a variety of strategies to combat ignorance and prejudice against their community, from grassroots political pressure to high-profile media campaigns. But Azhar Usman has chosen a more unorthodox route &#8212; stand-up comedy. The 30-year-old Muslim comedian doesn&#8217;t pick easy targets for his jokes. In fact, he often ventures into areas where most comics would fear to tread. How does he pull it off? Judy Valente reports.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post01-college.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post01-college\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-12283\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: Before an audience of college students in Illinois, Azhar Usman jokes about being a Muslim at a U.S. airport.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AZHAR USMAN<\/strong> (at performance): &#8220;&#8211; Me walking into the airport? Heads turn simultaneously. Security guys are, like, &#8220;We&#8217;ve got a Muhammad at four o&#8217;clock. Ten-four. Muhammad at four. Over and out. You get the smelly one. I got the hairy one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a fair amount of political material, and then there&#8217;s a lot of silly stuff. I mean, I&#8217;m a silly guy, and I&#8217;ve always, you know, been the class clown, and so I&#8217;m sure that comes through in my act as well.<\/p>\n<p>(At performance): &#8220;Of course everybody&#8217;s real nice to me once the plane safely lands. They just lean over and smile, and they&#8217;re like, &#8216;Ha, ha, ha, ha <em>(waves hi)<\/em>.&#8217; I&#8217;m just waiting for a real honest passenger at the end of the flight, like, &#8216;Excuse me, sir, I thought you were going to kill us. Sorry about that.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post03-interview.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post03-interview\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-12284\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There is definitely an intent to show Americans a face of Islam, a face of Muslims that they&#8217;ve just never seen. He&#8217;s, you know, a regular guy, he&#8217;s laughing, he&#8217;s telling jokes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUDY VALENTE<\/strong>: When Azhar Usman is on stage, he says he&#8217;s doing more than just telling jokes. He&#8217;s waging peace by promoting a better understanding of Muslims, using humor as his vehicle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN<\/strong>: Not knowing any Muslims personally, I&#8217;m glad to find him. I think it&#8217;s a good representation, and I think he&#8217;s funny with an open mind, and it&#8217;s a good way to represent his community &#8212; through comedy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: Like any stand-up comic, Usman knows what it&#8217;s like to lay an egg.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post07-family.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post07-family\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12285\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong>: You never want to walk into, you know, an upper-middle-class, white neighborhood at an open mike and do the following joke, which is: &#8220;People come up to me all the time and they be, like, you know, &#8216;What does the Qur&#8217;an say about terrorism?&#8217; It&#8217;s like, gee, what does the Bible say about genocide?&#8221; Dead silence, you know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: Usman&#8217;s parents emigrated from India. He grew up in a Chicago suburb, which at the time was mostly Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong>: The more I figured out I was different from people, the more I also figured out I was the same. And wherever I&#8217;ve gone in life &#8212; I lived in Minneapolis, and I lived abroad for a short time &#8212; I&#8217;ve always found that the more different we think we are, actually the more we have in common.<\/p>\n<p>(Preparing for performance): &#8212; and it will be just a list of key words to remind me of the bits that I want to do &#8212;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post04-performance.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post04-performance\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12286\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: In a St. Louis hotel room, he prepares for another night&#8217;s performance, this time before an audience of Muslims. Usman had practiced law for three years before becoming a full-time stand-up comedian.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (at performance): Thank you for that kind introduction. That I wrote.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: Here Usman is doing what he likes best, holding up a mirror to American Muslims and inviting them to laugh &#8212; at themselves. The audience, most of whom showed up late, are Indian and Pakistani.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (at performance): What&#8217;s wrong with us? We can never be on time, and especially because we speed all the time. We&#8217;re the fastest drivers out there. How can you speed everywhere and be late to everything?<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: He&#8217;s not afraid to touch on sensitive areas, like the separation of the sexes in Islamic tradition.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post05-audience.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post05-audience\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-12287\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (at performance): This weird hypocrisy that emerges among Muslim men and women &#8212; like when they&#8217;re just in their normal lives, and they go to work and to school, whatever, pretty normal, right? Okay, he&#8217;s at work all week, you know, he says, &#8220;Hey, what&#8217;s going on Jennifer &#8212; high five. Come over here and give me a hug, gimme here.&#8221; Then he walks into the mosque, he walks into the Muslim mosque, he says, &#8220;Get away from me sister, get away, get away, you stupid!!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>UNIDENTIFIED MAN<\/strong>: There&#8217;s plenty of grief around the Muslim world, and it&#8217;s kind of nice that we can sit back for awhile and laugh at some of the instances that he brought up.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (at prayer service): I try to be a practicing Muslim. I respect the tradition of Islam, but at the same time I recognize and understand and appreciate that we&#8217;ve living in an unprecedented reality, which is Islam in the modern world. If you could imagine for a moment a very vibrant, active and dynamic American Muslim community that is at once utterly Islamic, but at the same time is utterly American and is as much a part of the fabric of America as any other community &#8212; that community can make an incredible contribution toward lasting peace and hopefully bridging a divide that is becoming more and more dangerous with every passing day.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2006\/09\/muslimcomedian-post06-mosque.jpg\" alt=\"muslimcomedian-post06-mosque\" width=\"280\" height=\"210\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-12288\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (at performance): Right after 9\/11, they kept talking on the news about how Muslims around the world supposedly hate America &#8212; remember this, right? Hate us for our freedom, hate America. I bet Muslims around the world would stop hating America if American troops would just stop killing them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: How do you make a joke out of war or bloodshed?<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong>: I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re making a joke out of war or bloodshed. I think that the joke is about human imperfection and stupidity and human arrogance and, you know, the fact that we&#8217;re living in a world where people think they can create peace by killing people. That&#8217;s funny. I mean, that&#8217;s inherently ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: In spite of all that, Usman tries to keep his act inherently funny.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0<strong>USMAN<\/strong> (performing comedy): I don&#8217;t know where they find these people, especially the callers on the talk shows: &#8220;Yeah, hi, my name is Billy Bob, I&#8217;m calling from Arkansas. I just want to say that all them Muslims, and all the Islams, all them Pakistanians, and Afghanistanians, and all them Iraqistanians &#8212; they should just go back to Africa!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>VALENTE<\/strong>: For RELIGION &amp; ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Judy Valente in St. Louis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Muslims have developed a variety of strategies to combat ignorance and prejudice against their community, from grassroots political pressure to high-profile media campaigns. But Azhar Usman has chosen a more unorthodox route &mdash; stand-up comedy. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2006\/09\/15\/september-15-2006-muslim-comedian\/12282\/\" class=\"more\">More <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":17846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6569],"tags":[10718,799,17926,6024,17911,3817,4074],"class_list":["post-12282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videocast","tag-azhar-usman","tag-comedy","tag-interfaith","tag-islamic","tag-muslim","tag-race-relations","tag-stand-up","topics-faith-and-spirituality","faith-muslim"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>September 15, 2006 ~ Muslim Comedian | September 15, 2006 | Religion &amp; Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"American Muslims have developed a variety of strategies to combat ignorance and prejudice against their community, from grassroots political pressure to high-profile media campaigns. 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