The London bombings have thrust relations between Britain's Muslims and their home country firmly centre stage, but the nation's top Muslim stand-up comic seems deeply worried about the spotlight. Shazia Mirza, whose TV shows have included "Ten things you always wanted to know about Islam (But were afraid to ask)" and who regularly performs in Europe and America, says there is little to laugh about in the July 7 and 21 attacks.
"There's nothing funny about what happened. I don't think the Muslim community would appreciate me (commenting on it) as a comedian. It's just not right," she told AFP in an interview.
Mirza, 29, is the daughter of a Pakistani family from Birmingham. Her father is a businessman and her mother teaches in a Muslim school. While not describing herself as devout, she does go to prayers on Fridays. But her provocative stand-up comedy routines and writing regularly attract attention, and she has admitted, albeit perhaps jokingly, that her private life has suffered.
Typical of her material is a piece describing being pestered by men so many times that she said "it seemed to me that I must have had 'Please fuck me' scrawled all over my face," or jokes about 9/11. "No Muslim man wants to marry me because I do stand-up comedy and they think I'm lewd. I get a lot of abusive emails and my parents got a lot of criticism," she told one interviewer.
Such criticism can be seen on Internet chatrooms discussing her shows. "A Muslim is a person who submits to the will of Allah, not going around telling jokes about Islam," said one. "Allah punishes the unfunny," said another, more bluntly.
Last month's attacks, which left 56 people dead and have left Britain on high alert for fear of further bombings, have certainly changed the atmosphere for the country's Muslim communities.
Religious hate crime has rocketed by almost 600 percent in London, and the government has launched a campaign of dialogue with Muslim leaders, starting in the north of England, from where three of the July 7 bombers came.
Mirza, who says that most people who come to her shows are white and middle-class, denies that she has a duty to underline that the suicide bombers have nothing to do with true Islam. "Everybody knows that, its obvious... it's like not all black people are thieves," said the comic, who is debuting a new show at the Edinburgh Festival this month. "If you don't know it, there's something wrong with you."
In a new experience, Mirza's tour schedule for 2005 also includes dates in her family's Islamic homeland Pakistan, as well as Australia, the United States, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
She insists that her work is not driven by Islamic issues, even though she clearly is exploding stereotypes about how a young Muslim women is supposed to behave.
Above all she refuses to be a spokeswoman for Islam. "I'm not going to go down that stereotypical route of just because I'm Muslim therefore I must explain suicide bombers, Muslim men, Muslim women, Palestine, etc."
"I make jokes. I don't work at Finsbury Park mosque," she said, referring to the London mosque once known as a centre for Islamist radicals. "I don't think people want to hear it either ... People want me to make them laugh, not cry. She also denies that she is worried about British Muslims protesting at her routines: "They've got other things to complain about rather than me making jokes. I'm the least of their problems, I think."
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