My Funny Islam

"If you want special illumination, look upon the human face: See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth."
Rumi

In the Ideas section of this Sunday's Boston Globe, Jefferson Chase asks ("Critique of Pure Comedy") if a lack of a sense of humor is a root cause of terror. He covers a lot of ground very quickly in this brief article, beginning to suggest the outlines of a critique of the humorless, starting with the hoary Left. However, he strays away from this towards a criticism of Islam through an elegant and bitingly funny piece of irony when he asks, "But can fun really be the crux of a clash of civilizations? Is it worth thinking about humor as the largely metaphoric war on terrorism threatens to prompt a decidedly literal one in the Middle East?"

Failing to provide balance through his selection of quotes and citations, in fact quite clearly suggesting that Islam does not have much of a sense of humor, Chase in fact misses his--and humor's--target. He mentions the critical use of humor to puncture puffed up authority and express dissent, again suggesting that Islam fails to self-criticize, failing to acknowledge that the Islamic tradition offers the world a rich legacy of critical humor, being, in fact, the source of one of the greatest collections of jokes and stories. Mullah Nasrudin, and the stories told about his homely adventures against pretension, are a treasure for the world. (Nasrudin is something of a holy fool, acting outside convention, demonstrating just how arbitrary convention and the authority that sustains it can be. His stories are often compared to koans, offering many interpretations of increasing spiritual depth. There are several sites on the web where you can follow the Mullah's winding path.)

The true focus of critical humor is sober authority, authority that makes a demand of seriousness, that insists that its legitimacy cannot be questioned, even in jest. The serious consider themselves essential and their concerns vital. Any question, any quip, is equivalent to the denial of legitimacy, either of the person or of the message. The humorless insist upon a certain gravity in order to confirm that they should be taken seriously. The humorless confuse their legitimacy with the sound of all of us not laughing. This is why the humorless are dangerous. This is why laughter must be encouraged.

Chase comes full circle in his article, coming back around to the Left, offering advice on using humor to focus their dissent rather than allowing themselves to be the butt. But his true target once again goes unnamed. Chase wants there to be a challenge--a humorous one, at least in part--to the current US Administration and its policy of pursuing war.

The fact that the current US Administration feels the need to puff itself up, to insist upon seriousness, to use the word 'gravitas', tells us everything we need to know about how they view their own legitimacy.

"Humor cannot be prevented from spreading; it has a way of slipping through the patterns of thought which are imposed upon mankind by habit and design."
Idries Shah, The Sufis

Posted by Martial