Maybe one day, the state will ban comedy

 

“Saya juga mengharapkan pihak berwajib menyelidik adakah kejadian ini dirancang oleh pihak tertentu yang dengan sengaja ingin memburukkan imej agama Islam.”

- Penang mufti Wan Salim Wan Mohd Noor

As reported in the press, Kavin Jay, a collaborator with Crackhouse Comedy Club, said that participants of the club’s open mic night were warned beforehand that “they should not make jokes that are insulting to any group of people”.

This is a rather strange warning for a comedy club.

Maybe things have changed but during the raucous atmosphere of the club circuit back in the noughties, all manner of groups of people were the target of good-natured ribbing by comedians, and more often than not, people were laughing with and not at, these groups of people.

Indeed, online you will find a diverse group of comedians who regularly make fun of the eccentricities of race and religion in this country.

So this woman and her partner have been arrested and charged in court. The shock value of this performance was her removing her headscarf and baju kurung and not really from anything she said, beyond claiming that she had memorised lines from the Quran. That is it.

Someone said to me that this woman obviously has some mental issues going by the uploads she made on various social network platforms about her life choices, which again, misses the whole point of this fiasco but does point to the attention-seeking nature of her performance and the voyeuristic nature of society at the moment.

Obviously, her tudung and baju kurung are important symbols, important enough for the club’s co-founder Rizal Van Geyzel to be happy that a Malay woman in a headscarf wanted to have a go at the club’s open mic session.

I guess seeing a tudung-clad Malay woman making jokes that everybody found funny is in keeping with the muhibbah spirit of this country.

Even arresting this woman for public indecency is hypocritical considering the dearth of pornographic uploads passed around on social media, in which citizens of this country film sexual acts and spread it around.

You know how some comedians say that comedians are just holding a mirror up to society, well I guess in Malaysia it is a blacked-out mirror.

This is not really about what people find funny or not funny. This is really about what the state tells us what we should find funny. This is about how we as citizens practice self-censorship because the state will come down on us if we step out of line.

No laughing matter

Keep in mind that we live in a country where certain states – sanctioned by the federal government – have banned certain citizens from using certain words because to do so would be an affront to the religious and racial sensitivities of a certain group of people.

If this is not funny I do not know what is, but it is no laughing matter.

The Penang mufti wondered if this was a coordinated attempt at insulting Islam. The extremist forces in this country will grasp at any incident to justify a crackdown because they understand that everyone would be too afraid to do anything else but genuflect to their outrage.

Meanwhile, the club’s founders and supporters are claiming that her act is some sort of sabotage and are questioning her motives for doing her show.

There are various conspiracy theories floating around out there attempting to exonerate the comedy club when in reality they really did nothing wrong.

All this does is feed into the cycle of outrage and recrimination that further whittles down freedom of speech in our public spaces.

Do not get me wrong, I understand why the club was so terrified that they lodged a police report against the woman, but what I do not get is, didn’t they realise they would be tarred with the same brush?

Rizal said that his club would be more vigilant and on the lookout for deviant aspiring comics who insult religion, where their mics would either be turned off or they would be escorted off the stage.

And this would be fine if these deviants comics were busy taking off their clothes but it gets much more complicated when they are merely riffing on current events and making people laugh.

What would have happened if this headscarf-wearing Malay woman played it straight and made jokes about the absurdities of a certain religion without even naming the religion but it was obvious to everyone which religion she was referring to.

Would that have made the performance acceptable or worthy of defence?

Or maybe we should just refer to Jakim’s guidelines on excessive laughter. - Mkini

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Mkini