Can any Muslims in the house please stand-up - Comedy - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Can any Muslims in the house please stand-up

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Can Muslims be funny? If there was ever any doubt, this American package tour confirms that they can. They can also be as derivative and predictable as secular stand-ups but maybe that is the point - Muslims, apart from occasional extremists, are just like everybody else.

Bearded compere Azhar Usman could certainly cut it on the London circuit. He immediately won over the largely partisan crowd with relaxed, quickfire gags about Islamic email etiquette, the difference between Pakistanis and Indians and his Bollywood dance moves.

By contrast, the more experienced Preacher Moss was slightly too serious at times but he still had some fetching moments. Like Usman, he wondered if Muslims are feared because they do not publicise themselves enough. Maybe, he suggested, they should do infomercials and wittily acted one out.

Closing act Mohammed Amer is a Houston-reared Palestinian refugee, which sounds niche, but his universal material about over-anxious mums quickly tickled everyone. And his theory that women invented chess, hence the king's restricted moves, was a rousing finish, albeit one that Jim Bowen might have delivered.

Allah Made Me Funny hardly breaks new ground but extra points for not doing jokes about airport security. If anyone could have justified that tired comedy cliché it was this trio.

Until 21 Nov (020 8237 1111, www.allahmademefunny.com).

Allah Made Me Funny
Riverside Studios
Crisp Road, Hammersmith, W6 9RL

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