Two demonstrators wearing masks at a rally in Martyrs Square as part of the popular uprising in Lebanon. 2019. (Credit: Matthieu Karam/L'Orient Today)
In medieval times, a funny anecdote was famously retold in many Muslim communities: People asked a “Bedouin” if he practiced Qiyam al-Layl at night, the nightly prayer, usually performed before dawn.
“Yes,” he’d reply.
“And what do you do?”
“I go to pee and then go back to sleep!"
This type of humor, popular then, would not be appreciated by Dar el-Fatwa today. The highest Sunni religious authority in Lebanon seems to have forgotten that Islam and humor have never been incompatible. This is evident in the latest controversy launched by the institution where in May last year, it called for a judicial inquiry against comedian Shaden Fakih, accusing her of "blasphemy against God and the Prophet Muhammad, attacking religion and its symbols, inciting religious and sectarian conflicts, and harming national unity." The following day, the Supreme Shia Council filed a similar complaint against the comedian. The cause of this outrage? A secretly filmed excerpt from a show in Beirut where she mocked, among other things, a Sheikh’s loud “cries” during the Friday prayer sermon.
The controversy may seem laughable but in reality is alarming. It's not the first time that Fakih has faced religious justice over a joke but now, the reactions have reached dangerous proportions. Dozens of accounts on X shared the incriminating clip to insult Fakih, denounce her political positions and attack her sexual orientation. A protest was even organized in Tripoli about the subject. More importantly, she received death threats and had to leave the country urgently.
"We live in a country where the shabbiha (thugs) have authority over you. There is no state to protect you, and if it does take action, it's to harm you," Fakih said, who has become one of the leading figures in stand-up comedy in Lebanon, a field almost entirely dominated by men. A feminist, the first openly queer comedian in the Middle East — in a context of increasing violence against the LGBTQ+ community — and a child of a left-leaning Shia family, Fakih irreverently addresses particularly sensitive topics.
Backslide
For a long time, Lebanon was perceived as a refuge for freedom of expression in a strict Arab region. While it is true that, compared to most Arab countries, Lebanon does allow more liberties in that area, for many years, this freedom has been severely attacked by political and religious institutions as well as militia violence.
Last year, several cases shook society, including that of comedian Nour Hajjar, who was interrogated for 11 hours by the military police after posting a video of himself performing a joke mentioning the army. Dar el-Fatwa also filed a request for a judicial inquiry against him over a different five-year-old joke in which he mocked his parents' behavior during religious occasions like funerals and weddings.
"Between 2011 and the 2019 intifada, the Lebanese streets experienced a revolutionary fervor through several protest movements. But, at the same time, the regime itself developed its means of repression," Jad Shahrour, spokesperson for the Samir Kassir Foundation, said. "Today, the equation is clear. Anything that disturbs the authorities can be prosecuted."
According to Amnesty International, thousands of people have been investigated or prosecuted since the 2015 street movement for accusations such as defamation, insult, or slander, all criminalized under Lebanese law, including the penal code and the publications law.
This crackdown on humor raises important questions. While journalists investigate and challenge those in power and political opponents propose alternatives, why are authorities so threatened by comedians, who make a living providing moments of respite in a country ravaged by its active forces? In other words, why are those in power choosing to be threatened by a joke?
"I don't like to measure humor by the degree of change it can create. The main goal is to make people laugh," said Dany Abou Jaoudeh, one of the founders of awk.word, a platform founded in 2018 that brings together a community of comedians, including Shaden Fakih and Nour Hajjar. "But stand-up, in general, can indeed break taboos and push certain boundaries," he continued.
According to him, the increase in threats against comedians is explained by the growing audience they have been attracting. "The more important we become, the greater the threat. Today, we have nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram. This doesn't please the authorities and their defenders," he says. "They think we have an agenda. But we don't. We don't intervene in the texts. It’s just that we live in a repressed society, so when someone gets on stage for the first time, they want to tackle prohibited topics."
It's not just any humor that provokes the outcry of the guardians of morality, but only the type that disturbs the established order. Lebanese television is full of talk shows where sexist, racist and homophobic jokes are commonplace, but these programs aim to elicit a laugh that conforms with the system.
Meaning to conform with the system of a country where mothers cannot pass on nationality to their children and where all personal status laws discriminate against women. Where extremist Christian groups can conduct raids on gay bars and events and where the country's strongest man, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, declares that under Islamic law homosexuals "should be killed."
"After the Egyptian revolution in 2011, the Lebanese regime noticed the proliferation of satirical humor in programs, YouTube content and Facebook pages," Shahrour noted. "Since then, in their eyes, humor has become a threat."
Fakih's case is particularly symbolic because the joke in question was not made in public but in a specific setting. And its publication on social media out of context was neither her doing nor that of the awk.word platform. "A joke is never meant for three million Lebanese people. Jokes posted online are public. But most of the ones performed in the shows are not published because they are not meant for everyone," Abou Jaoudeh sighed. "That's why filming is prohibited inside the venue."
While stand-up has established itself for over five years as the most popular form of critical humor, Lebanon has a history of being home to several satirical projects aimed at deconstructing societal taboos and exposing elite corruption.
This was notably the case with the programs CHINN (aired between 2008 and 2016 on al-Jadeed) and BBCHI (aired between October 2016 and May 2017 on LBCI) which sought to present an alternative secular perspective to the public while private channels often echoed local political and community identities.
Presented by Fouad Yammine and Salam al-Zaatari, CHINN introduced field correspondents based in all regions of the country, including the most marginalized, and from all religious backgrounds. "Many people from the new generation followed this show and were exposed to topics presented from a different angle. We tried to show that there were other choices than those we were offered, like the separation of religion and state," explained Yammine.
While some may have criticized the program for sometimes reproducing stereotypes associated with characters in the collective psyche, it nonetheless provided a breath of fresh air in a media landscape largely aligned with partisan interests. "Of course, there were threats, whether on social media or through certain phone calls where we were told we were going too far and needed to stop," Yammine said. "But our theory was that the barking dog doesn't bite. We decided not to respond and on the ground, nothing happened to us. Fundamentally, someone like [Speaker of the Parliament] Nabih Berri knows we are not threatening," he continued, conceding, however, that the situation has worsened.
"Before we dealt with the mukhabarat (intelligence services) but, today, it's people who monitor each other. With the absence of the state, everyone feels responsible for the country's moral values. But who are you to decide what is moral and what is not?"
In Lebanon, laughter and politics have a complex relationship that predates recent times. Consider, for example, the magazine ad-Dabbour, Lebanon's oldest satirical magazine, known for its crude humor. Although the print version had to be abandoned in 2019, it continues to mock the political class online. Created in 1922 by Youssef Moukarzel, the French-speaking journal advocated for independence while denouncing "clientelism, monopolies, and religions," as the Middle East Eye noted in 2021.
"Moukarzel was assaulted and imprisoned several times. The journal was even suspended multiple times," Moukarzel’s grandnephew Joseph Moukarzel told the same media.
It's also impossible to talk about protest humor in Lebanon without mentioning the dynamic duo of Ziad Rahbani and Jean Chamoun. In the summer of 1976, amid the civil war, the two men launched a radio show: Ba’dna tayybin … oul Allah. They recreated stories in the news through scathing sketches, fiercely criticizing the right-wing camp and the Syrian regime, and became a hit, despite the bombs and power outages.
Throughout its tumultuous history, the country has gone through periods of openness and closure. And when neighboring powers and their local proxies limited freedom of expression, humor tried to find its way, even indirectly. "Under Syrian occupation, there was, for example, the show SLCHI. The actors never mentioned politicians individually. But we could imagine that certain characters navigated a labyrinth to criticize the president," recalls Abou Jaoudeh.
Snowman
Engaged as a cartoonist at al-Nahar in 1994, Armand Homsi continues to work with the daily today. "At the very beginning, [then-Editor-in-Chief] Gebran Tueni told me 'You have a carte blanche.' I was never prevented from publishing a drawing. Criticism always came after publication. I learned that the most important thing is not what you say but how you say it. With that, I can convey any message I want. I believe the reader is very intelligent and can decipher the cartoon if there is a hidden meaning," he said. However, the cartoonist acknowledges that some topics are more sensitive than others. "There is no point in addressing religion in a press cartoon. In the Lebanese context, it leads nowhere."
The sectarian system makes religious criticism even more complicated since sectarian divides are so deeply rooted in Lebanese society. Essentially, one must always criticize their own community first before satirizing others. Fakih, a fierce critic of Hezbollah, emphasizes the need to balance the critiques of different communities she brings up in her performances. "Otherwise, people laugh for the wrong reasons. They don't laugh because you're criticizing your own community but because they are racist."
The question of humor and its power to contest is obviously not unique to Lebanon. In recent times, the Arab Spring led to an explosion of humor targeting authoritarian regimes and sometimes religious dogmatism. This includes the work of Bassem Youssef, the most famous Egyptian comedian, who was even arrested and released on bail during the Morsi era.
Others are less fortunate. Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, for example, was arrested by the Syrian government in August 2011. Armed and masked, men working for the state broke both his hands as a warning: mocking Assad comes with consequences.
With the rise of social media, many anonymous individuals have found these new tools practical for ironically contesting police repression or religious bigotry. One recalls the 2015 campaign against snowmen — deemed "haram" — by one of Saudi Arabia's most influential preachers. Many Saudi Twitter users quickly mocked the absurdity of the statement. "Is a snowman illicit? What if it wears a niqab?" joked one user.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
