Category Archives: Humor and Satire

Who Owns the Holy Land?

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Humor and Satire, Literature, Palestine

As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two world wars and far too many atrocities since 1908 to think of our technological and commercially driven age as golden. But in it all there has been humor. Believe it or not, the American writer Mark Twain was still alive one hundred years ago. His greatest books belong to the century before, from the mother of all Holy Land travelogues, Innocents Abroad, to Huckleberry Finn and his adventurous friend Tom Sawyer. Surely one of the greatest humorists ever, Mark Twain did more than tell funny stories. His work survives in part because it uses humor to remind us of the unfairness and unwavering mundaneness of life.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad Twain offers a vivid critique of the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said rightly views as a style for dominating the Orient. Continue reading Who Owns the Holy Land? →

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 →