Female Muslim comic tours US

[JChristin]

Female Muslim comic tours US
By Amit Roy
(Filed: 31/03/2003)


Britain's first Muslim comedienne has been invited to the United States on the seemingly impossible mission of making Americans laugh about being at war.

Shazia Mirza, from Birmingham, has been invited to present shows in San Francisco and New York in May and has begun rehearsing new material about the conflict in Iraq.


Shazia Mirza
"Anyone with a moustache is now a target," she says, poking fun at strained Anglo-Muslim relations. "My mum's been attacked."

She is also suggesting a possible hiding place for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - "He's hidden them in his wife's purdah, no one has thought of looking there."

Mirza's international reputation is spreading, with many countries intrigued by the idea of a female Muslim stand-up comic but also feeling the sharpness of her wit. In Germany recently she told an audience: "Come on, Germany, join the war - it's not the same without you."

Mirza has had to overcome many difficulties in her own community and was once punched in the face by a Bangladeshi youth in London's East End.

She admits to feeling great uncertainty about how her unconventional humour will be received in the United States.

[Sgt Sostand]

Muslim huh they all have the same views i have one live next door to me and the told me the USA got what it deserve on 911 and i almost kick his butt and i ask him why do he live in America and i got no answere.

[JChristin]

I have worked on several projects with member of the Muslim faith and have encountered just as many opinions vastly different from the other from Muslims. Right now, I am so pi$$ed off at many of them from that faith due to what I deem to be hatred directed at my brother and sister Marines and Americans in general. It would be so easy to just "hate" all of them.

However, I cannot afford to "group" or "classify" them each individually. That would be like saying all blacks look alike, all whites are racists, asians can't drive, Catholic women all have mustaches (I am & I don't), so on and so on... all those fine points of discrimination.

In the article posted is a Muslin woman, who faces hatred from members of her own faith, who is willing to stand up and share her views, in a fashion where it may make common sense, flash a ray of light on a topic clouded with darkness, especially at this turning point in history. Regardless to her personal views, I find it rather couragous that a woman Muslim is undertaking such a venture.

semper fi,
jchristin