The Funny Side of Faith.(Shazia Mirza, world's only Muslim woman comedian)(Brief Article)(Interview)

In the year since September 11, the profile of Islam has been raised in the West, to be sure--but also stereotyped, denigrated and demonized. All too often the religion's most extreme voices have spoken loudest, and the diversity of the faith has been obscured. Someone like Shazia Mirza, 26, turns that cartoon image inside out. A former East London science teacher, Mirza is also Britain's only Muslim woman stand-up comic--and likely the world's only Muslim woman comedian to wear a head scarf in performance while poking fun at her own culture. She burst onto the scene two years ago, winning "best new act" at the London Comedy Festival. Recently she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, where she performed "The Vagina Monologues" with a host of other famous women including Isabella Rossellini and Christiane Amanpour--"They wanted a Muslim vagina," she says. She spoke recently with NEWSWEEK's Liat Radcliffe. Excerpts:

Your comedy takes stereotypes of Islam head-on. What message are you trying to get across?

I want people to know that Muslim women are not all oppressed, repressed or depressed. And I think that even before I spoke, just standing on stage doing stand-up, that in itself broke all those stereotypes that white working-class men in Britain probably had of Muslim women. When you see [images of] women in Afghanistan, and then you see a woman in Britain doing stand-up comedy dressed in exactly what they wear, it breaks down all the stereotypes about what Muslim women are all about. I was saying, "I choose to be onstage and I choose to wear the head scarf; nobody is forcing me to do this." And I'm funny and people are laughing, and I'm entertaining and I'm making money off of it. So I win.

How have British audiences reacted?

They just about know how to deal with the word Muslim. I mean, I do jokes like, "People say to me, why does your mother walk five steps behind your father?" And they listen, like, "Damn, why does she walk five steps behind?" And I joke, "Well, you know, he looks better from behind." And they listen seriously because they really want to know.

How has the British Muslim community reacted?

I did a gig recently where they were horrible--the men were. The women were really laughing, but the men had such a problem with it. At one point I said, "I'm going to talk about Mecca"--because I do a bit about when I went on ...