Danish satirist, a Muslim, sees laughs ebbing away

Omar Marzouk, a Danish comedian, used to joke that he should have been born a poodle, not a Muslim.

"Dogs in this nation have their own burial grounds, and Muslims don't," he would say. "So I either have to be sent out of this country in a box or change my name to Fluffy."

Like most satire, there is truth in jest: Denmark's Muslims have not been granted land for Islamic cemeteries and have had to conduct traditional burial rights in other countries.

But while the Fluffy joke used to get laughs, Marzouk said, now he is heckled with "Paki go home" and has omitted it from his act.

"It's getting hard to be a Muslim comic in this country," said the 32-year-old Dane, who is as in demand at leftist cocktail parties in Copenhagen as he is at Middle Eastern weddings. He says the country's assimilation policies have failed because "the Danish government's idea of better integration is, 'Let's have a Turkish night and watch a belly dancer."'

Marzouk calls the Muhammad cartoons, which have spawned protests across the Islamic world, a cowardly provocation calculated to infuriate Muslims. But he says he supports the right of newspapers to publish them since the same free-speech rules that allowed their appearance in print also permit his hard-edged comedy.

"The cartoons have polarized Denmark so that both Muslims and non-Muslims are saying, 'You are either with us or against us,"' Marzouk says. "But surely a cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb-shaped hat is less damaging to the Muslim community than a photograph of a Muslim cutting off someone's head."

Anticipating his critics, Marzouk has a special death threat section on his Web site where he invites readers to choose between killing him by beheading, by blowing up his car or by firing squad. At last count, he said, 500 people had responded, with beheading the leading choice of execution.

But he adds that he will emerge alive since he has no intention of staying on in Denmark. "I am moving to London because I'm tired," he said. "Things are too tense here, and it is no longer as fun to try and be funny."

Source: International Herald Tribune (English)