Review of “Joking About Jihad: Comedy and Terror in the Arab World”

Joking About Jihad, as the authors suggest on the first page, does not refer to making fun of the concept in the general Islamic sense. Rather, it deals with jokes about jihadi groups and the ideologies they represent. In this book the authors aim to examine the emergence of ‘jokes about jihad’ in Arabic-language comedy and situate this within the broader theoretical context of humour. They are concerned with how comedies and informal jokes can be used to uncover the underlying fears and tensions experienced by the people living through these situations. The book is divided into eight chapters that explore two main questions: a) Which ways of joking about jihadis are effective? and b) How are the subjects of jihadism and Islamism treated humorously in the Arab world, including by jihadists and Islamists themselves?