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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Who's Afraid of the Muslim Joke? |
| 2007-03-06 |
| The question was simple, the answer, direct: You joke about Islam, we will kill you. So was the pronouncement of a man calling himself "Kabli," a former board member of Amsterdam's Assoenna Mosque, who acted as an interpreter for the imam during an interview with a Dutch student newspaper, Folia. And the response? Furor in the press. Silence from the comedians. The fear has grown so tall. The catalyst for the entire event was the comedy act of Ewout Jansen, a 24-year-old law student, and his comic partner, Etienne Kemerink, though it is Jansen who has been at the center of the tale – and of the fury. Ewout and Etienne, as the duo is known, perform regularly throughout the country, basing their act largely – as many comedians do – on current news and trends. In Holland, where stories about multiculturalism, Islam, and Dutch-Muslim relations blacken the country's eighty-odd newspapers, Jansen finds the topic unavoidable; and so for five minutes of his 100-minute act, he addresses it. Among his jokes is a reference to the killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was assassinated in 2004 after creating a documentary about the treatment of Muslim women. In the past, Jansen acknowledges, occasional performances at schools produced tense moments – but nothing he ever found particularly threatening. "A kid would say something like, 'stop that, or I'll beat you up,'" he says, "but I never took it seriously (although I did sometimes think, 'well, okay, I'm prepared to take a beating.')" |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 Ease back on the caffeine Kabli. Your underwear's a little bunched up. Get rid of the asshat, it is giving you and me a headache. Get a sense of humor and a friggin life asshole. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-03-06 17:36 |
| #2 Seeking to mend fences and to better understand the issue, Jansen then invited the imam of Assoenna and others – including the Vice-Chairman of the Dutch Union of Moroccan Mosques, Driss el-Boujoufi – to join him in a televised discussion over tea. The conversation was friendly and polite, but Ewout had one particular request. "Could you look into the camera," he asked the imam, "and say that people can make jokes about Islam without getting into trouble, and Ewout doesn't have to die?" He could not. "They said, 'we have to go to a mufti, to know the answer," Ewout recalls. (A mufti is an expert who interprets sharia law.) "They could never say that I'm allowed to make jokes about Islam, because Islam itself is very clear on the matter." The imam denied, however, previous reports that a fatwa had been declared on Jansen's head, the comedian says. "He basically said, 'I'm just the imam. I don't have the authority to give a fatwa.' But he didn't say he wouldn't." Well, *I* don't need to ask the Pope to give an authoritatve answer to that question. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2007-03-06 15:49 |
| #1 The hypocrites are afraid lest a sura should be sent down against them telling thee what is in their hearts Say: Mock on Prophet pumped the car-scar Deeper only sweeter Loves everyone Mock on Yeah yeah yeah |
| Posted by: Tyrannosaurus Rex 2007-03-06 08:57 |