It is with regret that I feel I must publicly object to a certain subset of jokes about Islam on the grounds that they are tasteless.

Where I’m coming from: ex-Muslim with a complicated relationship to the faith, but this means I’ve had real-world training in how to spot a problematic Islamophobia and how to differentiate between good-natured fun, fair criticisms, and just gross behavior.  My opinion should be taken as my personal opinion on the matter and not speaking for anyone else.

The format of the joke and specific examples:
  • “Alhamdulillah, Dick Cheney said the Shahada and embraced the Light of Islam on his deathbed!”

or as I just saw and which inspired me to write this,

  • “[these Israelis whoremovedd Palestinian hostages] need to seek the light of Allah!”

BTW I’m definitely not saying “thou art cancelled” if you’ve made this joke, it’s just a little course correction and community education as we all teach each other things

The Problems With This Joke:

  1.  Accepting the premise, the idea people who are responsible for torturing and murdering thousands to millions of Muslims get to suddenly escape punishment for all the misery they’ve wrought is disgusting.  Celebrating that they would escape that is disgusting.

Now maybe some Muslims are so devout and peace-loving that they would celebrate such a converion and deathbed redemption.  But I never was even when I was religious.  My childhood prayers would be fedposts if I wrote them out.  I don’t want to imagine Dick Cheney going to Heaven, I want him to suffer in Hell.  The torment he inflicted upon his (surviving) victims will not end as long as they live.  The scars of torture last a lifetime, as do the emotional scars of seeing your family and friends be murdered over some imperialist nonsense.  If you want to dunk on Dick Cheney religiously, a simple crab-party and “burn in Hell” is way more solidaristic than pretending Dick Cheney got to co-opt the religion of most of his victims and escape justice for all the evil he did in life.

If you’re struggling with this concept, it may help to practice the reasoning in a different context.  You may ask yourself this: would you find it funny to joke about and celebrate the idea of Hitler converting to Judaism and coming out as gay and discovering he was part Roma and deciding that actually he supported Communism right before ridding the world of himself?

  1.  It’s treating Islam as a punchline, something that’s inherently silly and funny, rather than something that is important to a quarter of the world’s population and a source of solace and strength for people resisting an active genocide.  A tool to be used to dunk on the conservatives, nothing more.  It feels like a more clever version of the liberalism of democrats saying shit like “lololol, D®umpf is gay for Putler” where the joke is just that they’re gay, because being gay is bad and worthy of ridicule.  What’s funny, that these bastards did something which their communities would view as heretical? No, then it wouldn’t be so specific.  The joke here is just that being Muslim is embarrassing, and that encodes Islamophobic thought.

People often use humor to cope with the uncomfortable.  I’ve done it too.  But I think this particular format, in light of SO MUCH horrific bloodshed specifically of people in this religious group, sometimes (often) even using their religion as the excuse to target them, has problems and we should be more aware of how we approach the topic.

That’s all.  There could be more to write, but I’ve got things to do and have covered everything that was easy to articulate.  Basically all the other jokes and seriousness that I’ve seen here — alhamdulillahs, mashallahs, inshallahs, others I haven’t written down — all seem supportive and inclusive.  There’s a bit of “trigger the War on Terror racists who freak out whenever they hear a bit of Arabic” coupled with “heartfelt solidarity with the victims of imperialism” to those that makes them wholesome in a way that the joke format I’m criticizing is not.

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    Well given that it’s generally directed against reactionaries and xenophobes, my take is I love it, it feels solidaristic.  Even more so when it’s about people who’ve been murdering and oppressing colonized peoples.  I say it too.

    longer musings, collapsed for space

    I can totally see someone finding it offensive.  Islam is not a monolith and there are so many different interpretations I know nothing about, and on top of that I didn’t have an orthodox upbringing in the faith, (there are multiple different orthodoxies anyway).  So I can’t give you an answer about how to deal with it if a practicing Muslim gets offended or expresses discomfort with that, you just need to take these things on a case by case contextual basis.  I’d probably disagree and talk about it, maybe have a gentle argument, and I’d feel insecure and have imposter syndrome the whole time because I’ve probably set foot in a mosque under 5 times in my life

    I don’t know who said it was offensive or what their perspective was.  idk if it was some theological point they were making, a matter of cultural appropriation, or something else.  I could easily see some more respectability-politics-minded Muslims I know being offended or upset because it clashes with their more peacable interpretations or stances.  Traumatized by the mischaracterizations about how “Islam is a religion of peace” was a rallying cry by Islamophobes to juxtapose against “radical islamic terrorism”, and seeking acceptance and safety by playing up how not-scary the religion is.  I’ve had some tussles about that in my family actually.  To them I’ve said “There can be no peace while the warmongers still shed the blood of the innocent.  There can be no peace without justice, and it is not just for mass murderers to enjoy their freedom and lavish lifestyles while their victims cannot.”  Their objections are that who am I to say what is just and not, I’m not Allah, and I say I don’t need to be, any 4-year-old can tell right from wrong!  With no resolution; they can’t emotionally stomach my position, because my position is one that acknowledges there is no safety in compliance and obsequity, while I can’t emotionally stomach their position because I burn with hatred for these butchers, hatred fueled by sorrow and horror about what they’ve done to people in the name of Empire.

    And on Justice, anyway:  I was talking with a Jewish friend and he said his read on the Torah is that many prophets protested against YHWH for not adhering to Justice, and were tested in turn about whether they would comply with his unjust orders or refuse.  To him, the story of Abraham is one of failing such a test, because Abraham was going to kill his son just because he was ordered to, and what followed in his life after was his punishment for following orders instead of refusing and standing by what he knew must be right.   That’s not a very orthodox interpretation, but I love it.  Because at the end of the day, what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong, and not even the creator of the universe can make it otherwise.