Category Archives: Humor and Satire

Tabsir Redux: This is not an Easter Egg

Food and Drink, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

Christians around the world celebrate Easter with thoughts of the empty tomb and resurrection of Christ. But there is more. Weather permitting, children are let loose in their Sunday best to hunt for Easter eggs, adding a secular, healthy, dietary blessing to the baskets of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans waiting at home. Even the White House lawn is set for the annual Easter Egg Roll (minus the Christian Rock) on Monday. It is as though many Christians are not content to leave the tomb empty. Apparently egged on by the spring fever of long forgotten fertility rites, the main message of Christianity gets sidetracked to a debate of anything but intellectual designing: which comes first, the Easter egg or the Easter bunny?

Eggs are not the exclusive mystical domain of Christendom (although the ludicrous lengths taken to parade a sacred holiday into outrageous bonnets and Texas-shaped eggs suggest we have entered the dispensation of Christendumb). Secular folk and agnostics eat their eggs for breakfast with bacon, toast and diner coffee. But all God’s children like eggs, including Muslims with internet savy and a taste for the miraculous. Take a gander (but do not confuse his spouse’s eggs with those shown here) at the three eggs shown below. What do you see different in the middle egg than the ones on either side (hint: the left is from the 2007 White House State of the Union Eggroll and the right is from 2006 Easter Sunday):
Continue reading Tabsir Redux: This is not an Easter Egg →

A baboon in love…

Animals, Humor and Satire, Yemen

من غرائب الطبيعة .. قرد يقع في حب دجاج
الإثنين, 27-يناير-2014
حضرموت نيوز – اليمن متابعات

وقع قرد في غرام دجاجة من النظرة الأولى، حين شاهدها في سوق محلية بجزيرة جاوا الإندونسية، بينما كان برفقة مالكه.

وقالت صحيفة «ديلي ميرور»، إن مشهد القرد والدجاجة معا صار مألوفا في سوق منطقة بانيوانغي، الواقعة في الطرف الشرقي من جزيرة جاوا.

وأضافت الصحيفة التي نشرت صورا للثنائي السعيد، أن القرد يملكه رجل يدعى، حكيم، ويقيده بالسلاسل حتى لا يتمكن من التحرك لمسافة بعيدة، ما حرمه من الاستمتاع بقضاء أوقات طويلة مع حبيبته الدجاجة.

ويأتي خبر العلاقة الغرامية بين القرد والدجاجة، بعد أن ذكرت تقارير صحافية أواخر العام الماضي، أن كلبا من فصيلة الراعي الألماني، وقع في غرام وزة تمكنت من ترويضه بسبب طبعه الشرس، والذي كان يتطلب قيام شخصين بإطعامه، واحد لإلهائه والآخر لرمي وعاء الطعام في حظيرته.

وكان الكلب (ريكس)، البالغ من العمر 11 عاما، يعيش في دار لرعاية الحيوانات الشاردة، وينبح ويتذمر من كل شيء يمر من أمامه، ويطارد الأرانب البرية لأكلها، لكنه سرعان ما هدأ حين شاهد وزة تدعى «جيرالدين» ووقع في غرامها من النظرة الأولى، وصارا يتنزهان معا وينامان في سرير واحد كل ليلة.<

Famous Yemenis

Humor and Satire, Yemen


By accident I came across a website called “countrylicious: World country facts” which has a section on Famous People in Yemen. It is telling that the first entry is for Mukesh Ambani, an Indian business magnate who is India’s richest man with personal wealth of $21.5 billion. He does not seem to have anything to do with Yemen, but he is followed by Tawakkol Karman and then Ali Abdullah Salih, who weighs in just above Abu Hureirah, the companion of the Prophet, who was indeed born in Yemen (the entry here is taken verbatim from Wikipedia). But then when you scroll down to Abd al-Majeed al-Zindani, a rather strange thing happens. The picture shown is actually of Anwar al-Awlaqi or else Zindani has had major plastic surgery. Here is where copying from Wikipedia can get you in trouble. The Wikipedia site for al-Zindani also has the picture of al-Awlaqi and no one checked to see the switch. So much for the facts on this site…

Sponge Bob in Winterland

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Arabic Cartoons, Egypt, Film and Video, Humor and Satire, YouTube Watch

The future belongs to the young, no matter how much older generations try to shape that future. Educations plays a key role, as does the whole family context, but in the past century it is the expansion of media that has establishing a seemingly hegemonic control over the curiosity of the young. Disney launched the careers of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, not to mention the lily white Snow White or comfortably brown Bambi. In my day there was Woody Woodpecker, but my son’s generation was mesmerized by the Ninja Turtles. I have not kept up with cartoon evolution, but I had heard something about a cheesy character named Sponge Bob. It seems that there are many episodes of Sponge Bob available in Arabic on Youtube. The image above is from an adventure in a hibernating-bear-in-an-igloo winterland.

I have seen Arabic translations of Western and Japanese cartoon shows before, and anthropologist Mark Peterson has written a fascinating ethnography (Connected in Cairo: Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East, Indiana University Press 2011) about the Pokemon phenomenon and other comic characters in Cairo. It is important to remember that the urban generation that has taken to the streets in the Arab Spring and lives and dies through the social media has also been brought up in a steady diet of cartoons, both comic books and videos. While academics have been arguing over the impact of erudite Orientalism, there is a far more potent source influencing the thought of the young: I call this “cartoonality,” the shaping of opinion through fictional non-human or ultra-human cartoon characters. Continue reading Sponge Bob in Winterland →

Birthers, chew on this …

Humor and Satire, Luke R. E. Publican, Obama Administration, Yemen

President Obama has been stalked by birthers ever since his first run for the White House. But forget about placing his birth in Kenya, even though Kenya is a country where qat (Catha edulis) is chewed. A friend in Yemen sent me this photograph which should confuse the birther issue even more. If Obama can chew like a Yemeni, who knows where he was really born. Just think, how much qat is there in Hawaii?