‘It’s too raw’: comedians feel conflicted over using their routines to criticise Israel’s war on Gaza

On a hot Friday night in July, 120 people are gathered in the dark basement of a central London hotel, laughing raucously. They are watching six standups performing at the latest edition of Halal Fried Comics, a night founded in April 2024 to provide spaces for Muslim acts to showcase their material to a largely South Asian audience. 

The jokes come thick and fast, riffing through tales of family trauma, racism and politics, yet one topic that has been central to this community’s identity over the past year is conspicuously absent: Israel’s war on Gaza. Where comedy has previously been a form of speaking truth to power, with everyone from Dave Chappelle addressing the invasion of Iraq to standups from Russia and Ukraine taking the stage in Berlin to share their disdain for Putin’s invasion, it has been harder to find comics recently addressing the horrors of the conflict in Gaza or using comedy as a form of protest during their routines. 

Read the feature in Hyphen Online.

[This piece was published on 13/08/24]