Two Ex-Lawyers Among Flourishing Group of Arab-Muslim Comedians
Two former lawyers are among a flourishing group of Arab American and Muslim comedians.
One of them, Dean Obeidallah, made his name on the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, the Associated Press reports, The other, Amer Zahr, got his start when Obeidallah and the comedy tour came to the University of Michigan in 2002.
Obeidallah started in comedy a few years before the Sept. 11 attacks while working as a lawyer. While his act includes jokes about his Arabic heritage or the Muslim faith, it also includes references to the presidential race and Jeremy Lin. His take on airport scanners is a joke about male anatomy rather than Arab-American prejudice.
“They’re looking at my image on the monitor,” he says in his routine. “All I can think of is, ‘please don’t laugh, please don’t laugh.’”
Zahr was a 1L when the comedy tour came to his school. Zahr volunteered when there was a call for people to come up on the stage and fill time. The audience laughed, and Zahr realized he liked performing.
At first, Zahr says, his jokes were “very vanilla” with references to smelling like garlic and his father’s funny remarks. Later on, he began talking about surveillance of Muslims and his encounters with Israeli soldiers. “I was getting into really making people think twice … about how they feel about us,” he says.
