Category Archives: Humor and Satire

The Search for Happiness

Humor and Satire

By Khalid Kishtainy
Translated by Ramsis Amun

Goodday!

My first intellectual foray as a child was an attempt to discover what happiness was and how I could find it. I was thirteen years old when I borrowed “The Story of Greek Thought”, hoping to find answers to this question from Greek philosophers. I was sorely disappointed. All I found were a few short paragraphs on the subject and I discovered that these philosophers only tasted misery in their lives and that one of them – I think his name was Socrates – ended his life by drinking a cup of hemlock. I closed the pages of the book and spent the next three months suffering from headaches. I still suffer from headaches and, of course, from that sickness called the search for happiness.

In my intellectual journey I came across many further speculations on the subject, of course. The English said that the happy man is one married to a Japanese woman, and who lives with her on the French Riviera, and employs a Chinese cook. I am still uncertain of the third stipulate. Do they mean to cook Chinese meals or to fulfill the needs of the Japanese woman? The Chinese themselves have their own view of happiness. Why not? Are we not enjoined as Muslims to “seek knowledge even in China”? The Chinese say that if you wish to be happy for an hour you need to drink a glass of fruit juice, and if you wish to be happy for three days, get married, and if you wish to be happy for eight days, slaughter a sheep and eat it, and if you wish to be happy for a lifetime, become a gardener! Continue reading The Search for Happiness →

What Makes a A Muslim Laugh?

Arabic Cartoons, Danish Cartoon Controversy, Humor and Satire, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Muhammad

Today’s BBC News has a story with the headline “Does Islam have a sense of humour?” This is the kind of question that makes me want to cry. “Islam”, like any religion, will “have” whatever people read into it. For a Christian or Hindu apologist just about everything that Muslims do is “funny” in the sense of being different and looked down upon, although it is not funny to non-Muslim fundamentalists when Muslims practice their faith in ways that are dismissed as violent or antagonistic. Muslims do not generally take their own faith as a joke, unless they are in the Enlightenment-mentored mode of rationalizing away whatever fixed dogma demands about the power of Allah. Islam is not inherently funny, especially to those who practice it, but neither is it opposed to laughter. Humor is a pan-human trait and it is highly contextual. Yes, there are Muslims who have a sense of humor and those who do not. In the real world how could it be otherwise?

The article’s hook-line teaser notes: “Muslims are often depicted as people who can’t take a joke. But as a stand-up comedy tour showcasing Islamic talent arrives in the UK, is that fair?” There is something quite different about looking for a sense of humor in an entire religious tradition compared to observing what individual Muslims do. Continue reading What Makes a A Muslim Laugh? →

A Pat on Hizzoner’s Back

Apocalypse Watch, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

The top picture on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times shows two smiling men, strange political bedfellows although not really as gay as the picture might imply. To the left (and think about what this means for a Republican race) is Rudy, the 9-11 man, the swept-the-streets-free-of-vendors hero, the divorced (“I am Henry the VIIIth, I am”) Catholic and the list goes on. To the right (of just about everyone, including former Governor Huckabee) is evangelist Pat Robertson, who once tried to tie the electoral knot himself. “In a Surprise,” runs the headline, “Pat Robertson Backs Giuliani.” An endorsement, the most sought after photo-op in poly biz.

But an endorsement from Pat Robertson? Continue reading A Pat on Hizzoner’s Back →

American Aristocracy

Humor and Satire, Poetry

Of all the notable things on earth,
The queerest one is pride of birth
Among our “fierce democracy!”
A bridge across a hundred years,
Without a prop to save it from sneers,
Not even a couple of rotten peers–
A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers,
Is American aristocracy!

English and Irish, French and Spanish,
Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish,
Crossing their veins until they vanish
In one conglomeration!
So subtle a tangle of blood, indeed,
No Heraldry Harvey will ever succeed
In finding the circulation. Continue reading American Aristocracy →

An Old Joke

Bible and Holy Land, Humor and Satire

Coming across a cache of Civil War era copies of Harper’s Weekly some time ago, several of the old (almost a century and a half) jokes caught my attention. One of them was about Egypt; well, sort of. Here goes the latest joke from Harper’s Weekly for November 9, 1861, just before a war that was anything but a joke for American history.

Why ought not the people to starve in the deserts of Egypt?

On account of the sandwiches (sand which is) there.

But how came the sandwiches there?

Because Ham was there and his descendants mustered and bred (mustard and bread).

It helps to be a bible trivia expert for that one, but the next joke (from March 15, 1862) seems right up to date, given Haliburton’s infamous drilling oil pipelines to nowhere.

Why do our soldiers need no barbers?

Because they are regularly shaved by the Government contractors.

Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry

Apocalypse Watch, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

What better place for the Republican wolf-no-longer-in-sheepish-clothing pack to have a demolition derby debate than Orlando, home of Disney’s fantasy view of America and chosen site for a dodgeball game with reporters (not deciders, of course) from Fox News? Not since the missing chads of 2000 has so much heat been generated in Florida over such an important outcome. Whatever round this is in the GOP run-up to the election, this time they all came out itchin’ for a good-old-boy fight, apparently ready to shed their “family values” political correctness if only for a night. All of the candidates took pot shots at Hillary, playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey until the audience fell on their conservatively smart asses laughing. Fred laid a few low blows on Rudy, who kicked back with his own street smarts. Mitt and McCain were able to raise a little cain. Then there were the also-theres, including the recent third-place values man, Governor and former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. Taking a page out of Rudy’s play book, he played the fear card. In one of his responses he noted that the greatest threat that has ever faced America (get ready for a history lesson) is Islamofascism. In a recent online interview he laid out his apocalyptic scenario:

“There’s almost an inevitability, not just a possibility. It will happen again. Continue reading Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry →

Right along with the Bible”: Innocents Abroad

Books You Should Read, Humor and Satire, Journalism and Media, Travel


[Mark Twain, left; early cover of ‘Innocents Abroad’, center; Hilton Obenzinger, right]

by Hilton Obenzinger, Stanford University

Innocents Abroad’s manufacture of “Mark Twain” as the surrogate for the reader’s “own eyes” was immensely popular. The travel book, whose sales reached 100,000 even before the second anniversary of its publication, launched, even more than his celebrated jumping frog, Mark Twain’s national career. “Popular as are Mark Twain’s books at home,” an unidentified correspondent for the Hartford Courant reported in 1872, Innocents Abroad is “still more so abroad.”

“It sells right along just like the Bible,” Mark Twain remarked to William Dean Howells. Indeed, half a million copies had been sold by Twain’s death in 1910, at which time Innocents Abroad, with its central organizing principle of “Mark Twain” as “one of the boys” joined Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as the titles (and two other boys) most commonly worked into political cartoons memorializing the author in the press. Today Innocents Abroad, still a pleasure to read despite the complications and vexations of history, remains durable, continuing to be hailed as “the most popular book of foreign travel ever written by any American.” Continue reading Right along with the Bible”: Innocents Abroad →

Another Debate (Debate?)

Iraq War, Islam in America, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Watching the Fox News comedy-not-so-central Republican debate last night, it seemed to me that the gentlemen (and they were, of course, only men) behind the podiums were more intent on smiling through their election-year platitudes than engaging with the messy realities of the government each seeks to head. Apart from Ron Paul, the interloping libertarian, each candidate apparently (a word that John McCain stubbornly refuses to use in his vocabulary) hoped that supporting the troop surge would lead to a surge (even a blip for those hanging on only by their televised sound bites) in their respective pre-season ratings. There was a lot of puffing and fluffing about family values, with Hizzoner begging (the question) to have his private life left private (‘fat chance’, as they say in the Big Apple) and another don’t-remember-the-name tossed out the Pottery-Barnyard we-broke-it-so-we-gotta-fix-it mantra that treats premature evacuation (Iraqis Interruptus) as one of the seven deadly sins. Mercifully, there was no gay bashing and one candidate (does it really matter who said what at this stage?) insisted that Republicans or better than Democrats because they ‘come clean’ and resign after a scandal. I wonder if Larry Craig was taking notes. Fox News should have stationed an embedded reporter in a stall in the Minneapolis airport just to be on the safe side. Continue reading Another Debate (Debate?) →