How to Make White People Laugh by Negin Farsad

Author:Negin Farsad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

My Own People Don’t Like Me Very Much

As I mentioned before, Muslims don’t necessarily have the greatest icons here in the United States. The ones we do have are on the crap spectrum—that’s the end of the spectrum that’s loaded with bigotry, essentializing, infantilizing, theologocentrism,1 and dog poop. Oh yes, I did just casually use the word theologocentrism like it was no big deal. Dropping ten-dollar words has the subtextual weight of saying, “I read a book once.”

Pretentious ten-dollarness aside, here’s the deal with theologocentrism: Scholars have had a tendency to explain all observable phenomenon in a majority Muslim country by saying, basically, “they’re like that because of Islam.” In some major corners of academia, Islam is a catchall for anything a researcher doesn’t understand. Of course it’s not limited to academia. The world of infotainment has also grabbed hold of Islam to explain things they can’t fully comprehend, by which I mean everything. It’s easier to say, “Post-9/11 terrorism exists because of Islam” than it is to say, “Post-9/11 terrorism exists because the western response to that act of terrorism has been addled by inconsistent policy processes that focused more on war than on nation building, and those shortcomings have in turn created an environment in which antiwestern sentiment might thrive.”2 See! That shit can’t fit on a poster, much less in Don Lemon’s mouth.

Because everything spins on Islam’s wheels, it’s easy to fall into the trap where we take the icons we’re given—like gun-toting terrorists or burka-clad ladies—and fight them on their own merits. We end up saying stuff like, “You can’t say that Muslims are terrorists because Islam is peaceful!” I’ve personally gone on rants trying to explain to people: “Hold up! Muslims exists on a spectrum; some are very conservative, and others are as secular as your best Christian friend who only goes to church once a year and/or never but still call themselves Christian. What’s the diff, guys!?”

We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn’t even explain half of your behaviors! Islam can be peaceful all it wants. It’s not the only relevant detail about a group of people. Islam is a hot-button word in the United States, but what if it doesn’t explain anything about us? What if it doesn’t explain terrorism at all?

It’s not in the scope of this book for me to explain terrorism—there’s plenty of smart people to do that who are not comedians by trade. But I mention it because the need to shoehorn Islam as the major reason for everything in post-9/11 America defines so much of how we see mainstream American Muslims. We’ve created an arsenal of icons based on this shoehorning, and those icons do not represent me or fit my worldview.

Okay, so if you’re like me, you might think there must be cultural touchstones from the mother country to hold on to. Iranians certainly don’t define themselves as Islamic terrorists.

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