Is humour the way to dis-arm fundamentalism?
In a Guardian article, (21.08.03) Fiachra Gibbons took stock of Shazia Mirza;
Shazia Mirza is a good girl. She doesn't drink alcohol, she doesn't smoke, she doesn't go out with men. She attends the mosque regularly. And not since Quentin Crisp has anyone had the nerve to stand in front of a roomful of drunks and declare their virginity.
"I don't do jokes about sex because I have never had it," she says, in her deadpan nasal Brummie accent. Only if George Clooney converted in the morning and threw himself at her feet would she even consider changing that. It's marriage or nothing. "I'm serious!" she says.
I don't doubt it. Mirza is the unlikely trailblazer for what, until she started appearing in small clubs three years ago in a hijab, was an oxymoron - devout Muslim comedy.
I would like to think that humour from within, like compassion from within, might turn fundamentalists into balanced human beings but you don't have to dig very far to find that devout or not, virgin or not Shazia has attracted masses of male hatred.
Should I be hoping for transformation from elsewhere?
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