Some American Muslims, buoyed by their increasing numbers from immigration and a high conversion rate, used to daydream that, some day, America would become a Muslim nation. And, lo and behold, it did right after 9/11. People were being picked up in the middle of the night without warrants, locked up in secret cells without charge, without a lawyer, without bail, without access to family and friends, and they were subjected to verbal, psychological and physical abuse. America had become a Muslim nation, all right!

Azhar Usman of Chicago, known as the ayatollah of comedy, says, “There’s obviously a very strong stereotype that Muslims are a terrorist people; so my act focuses on breaking down those stereotypes.”

Here’s Usman:

“Everyone is very nice to me once the plane lands.”

“To non-Muslims, our mosque minarets look like missiles.”

“The black man is always complaining that he can’t get a fair trial in America. The Muslim says, ‘We can’t even get a trial!’”

Usman, who with his beard and skullcap looks like a member of the Taliban, and says so, bounds up on stage with the traditional Muslim greeting of Assalam-u-alaikum (peace be with you). “For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means, ‘We are gonna kill you!’”

Others have their own security-related jokes.

Ahmed Ahmed, an Egyptian American: “I went to the airport. The man behind the check-in counter asked if I packed my bags myself. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. They arrested me.”

“My name is Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s license,” cracks the most well-known female Muslim comic. The Briton is, like Usman, an observant Muslim who eschews drinking and premarital sex. “I never joke about sex — because I’ve never had it.”

Other female comics are also doing well. Tissa Hami of Boston: “Why are there so few female Muslim comics? I didn’t want competition, so I stoned them.”

Maysoon Zayid, Palestinian American activist, aims this barb at George W. Bush: “It should be the goal of every Arab man to marry one of the Bush twins. And if you are Muslim and Arab, try to marry both.”

Chapter 2

European Muslims

A DEN OF DISCRIMINATION

We are confronted with the crisis of national identity in Europe because of globalization and the European Union, and we tend to blame Islam to avoid discussing it.

—French author Olivier Roy1

Islam is Europe’s second-biggest religion. The most common name conferred in the maternity wards of the three largest cities in the Netherlands is Muhammad, which is also the second most common name given to new babies in Britain and projected to be number one soon.2 Yet the continent’s 20 million Muslims remain doubly condemned — as immigrants and as Muslims.