An old woman comes to the prophet and asks if she's going to heaven. "No," says Mohammed, "old people don't go to heaven." The old woman is dismayed. But then the prophet says, "If you go to heaven, you won't be old anymore, then you'll be young and beautiful!"
This is humor according to Aiman Mazyek, of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, in an interview on WeltOnline, the site of newspaper Die Welt. In order to encourage the according to many difficult combination of Islam and humor, Mayzak launched a Muslim Comedy Contest on the Islamic youth site waymo. [ed: in cooperation with StyleIslam]
"Can people as Muslims really laught, or even laugh about Muslims?" asks the jury on the site. Of course, is the answer, and they point to a statement by the prophet: "A smile is a sadaqa, a charity." And for his female coreligionists Mohammed always had a smile on his lips. Or, as Mazyek says: God wants humor.
Thus, make your own Muslim joke, the jury asks, be one of the first Islamic entertainers, or draw a cartoon. But than, not in a disrespectful way, explains Mazyek. The image that Muslim can't take jokes was strengthened in recent years by the cartoon affair in the Danish press, with an image of the prophet with a smoking bomb as a turban.
People were out to insult with it, say some Muslims, and that has nothing to do with humor. Mazyek doesn't want laughing to come at the expense of others. Whoever will touch on taboos of other religions or atheists in the comedy contests for young German Muslims will certainly not win, he says.
A typical Muslim joke doesn't really exist, he says: a Turkish tailor, an Indonesian housewife and an Arab shepherd laugh about different things. "but if people orient themselves on the prophet, people can say that it's humor in good taste.
Sources: Trouw (Dutch); Welt , Waymo Muslim Comedy Contest (German)
See also: Denmark: Terrorists, the sitcom, Danish satirist, a Muslim, sees laughs ebbing away, Little Mosque to come to Europe, Joking and Islam, Germany: T-shirt designer spreads Islam
This is humor according to Aiman Mazyek, of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, in an interview on WeltOnline, the site of newspaper Die Welt. In order to encourage the according to many difficult combination of Islam and humor, Mayzak launched a Muslim Comedy Contest on the Islamic youth site waymo. [ed: in cooperation with StyleIslam]
"Can people as Muslims really laught, or even laugh about Muslims?" asks the jury on the site. Of course, is the answer, and they point to a statement by the prophet: "A smile is a sadaqa, a charity." And for his female coreligionists Mohammed always had a smile on his lips. Or, as Mazyek says: God wants humor.
Thus, make your own Muslim joke, the jury asks, be one of the first Islamic entertainers, or draw a cartoon. But than, not in a disrespectful way, explains Mazyek. The image that Muslim can't take jokes was strengthened in recent years by the cartoon affair in the Danish press, with an image of the prophet with a smoking bomb as a turban.
People were out to insult with it, say some Muslims, and that has nothing to do with humor. Mazyek doesn't want laughing to come at the expense of others. Whoever will touch on taboos of other religions or atheists in the comedy contests for young German Muslims will certainly not win, he says.
A typical Muslim joke doesn't really exist, he says: a Turkish tailor, an Indonesian housewife and an Arab shepherd laugh about different things. "but if people orient themselves on the prophet, people can say that it's humor in good taste.
Sources: Trouw (Dutch); Welt , Waymo Muslim Comedy Contest (German)
See also: Denmark: Terrorists, the sitcom, Danish satirist, a Muslim, sees laughs ebbing away, Little Mosque to come to Europe, Joking and Islam, Germany: T-shirt designer spreads Islam
