(National-UAE) Most comedians have to put up with a fair degree of heckling in their careers, but British comedian Eshaan Akbar has received violent threats for his new stand-up routine at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
In Prophet Like It’s Hot, the 34-year-old attempts to show the funny side of the Quran to educate a western audience about Islam. “With Islam, people have such a lack of knowledge about it — and they are scared of it. I want to soften the blow for people. When we make jokes about this, we break down the barriers,” Akbar says.
The dangers of joking about religion
In the hour-long show, Akbar, who was born to Muslim parents in London’s diverse East End, reads passages from the Quran and discusses the five pillars of the faith, examining how extremists have hijacked the religion. While Christianity and Judaism are frequently satirised in British comedy, Islam is generally considered to be a no-go area for most comics, fearful of reprisals or appearing racist.
