In light of recent events in Afghanastan in particular and throughout the Muslim world in general, I thought we might revisit a post from several weeks back regarding Albert Brooks’s In Search of Comedy in the Muslim World. I’m worried that against the background of protests over cartoons published in the Danish press, the natural response to Brooks’s film will be “see? there is no sense of humor in the Muslim world.”
My fear is that recent events will be used to either misconstrue and misunderstand Islam (even more), or to misconstrue and misunderstand comedy (as always hostile, antagonistic) and define it strictly from a sociological point of view (the social function of humor is to indentify, differentiate, control). Continue reading In Search of…