The French news agency AFP has published a very nice quite odd article on its website about the Baha’i World Centre in Israel, under the title “Israel haven for new Baha’i world order”.

HAIFA, Israel (AFP) — Dominating a holy mountain in Israel is the nerve centre of the world’s fastest growing major religion, preaching global unity and world peace from one of the most troubled countries on earth.
Founded less than 170 years ago, the Bahai faith believes that Persian-born prophet Bahuallah, who died in Israel, brought a message of unity, equality and world federation to save mankind from the plagues of the modern world.

The article also has some attractive photos of the Baha’i shrines and gardens.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Haifa, shrines, Israel, Baha’i World Centre, Mount Carmel, AFP

Iranians, said Omid Djalili, as he opened the first episode of his new TV show on BBC One, just don’t get British humour:

For you, an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman is a joke. For us, it’s a hostage situation.

Or the Middle Eastern equivalent of the “knock knock” joke: the “floomph floomph” joke. “Floomph floomph”? It’s the sound of someone “knocking” on a tent. No? You’d have to hear Omid tell the joke.

Omid always makes me laugh, even when he recycles some of his favourite gags. Like the one about the middle easterner who wants to show his girlfriend how passionate he is about her. He cuts his wrist and writes a poem for her in his own blood and then forces her to take it.

The show’s format has Omid performing stand-up in front of an enthusiastic live audience; sketches and longer pieces are shown in video inserts. There was a lot of good stuff on the show. My favourite was the sketch about his ethnic bit parts in films and on TV. This is done like one of those serious retrospective arts shows about recently deceased actors, completely deadpan, and showing extracts from various thing Omid’s appeared in as the “general purpose Arab scumbag”.

There was a nicely observed take-off of the Ray Mears-type survival programme. But the jewel in this particular crown was the sketch in which Omid, playing a camp Scottish film director newly out of film school, directs Osama bin Laden in his latest video.

James Rampton interviewed Omid in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago:

Welcome to The Omid Djalili Show, a mixture of sketches and stand-up, and a brave piece of commissioning by the BBC. When it starts on BBC1 tonight, its eponymous star will become the first British-Iranian performer ever to get his own mainstream TV show anywhere in the world.

A brave piece of commissioning by the BBC? Rampton quotes Omid:

“I know I tick a lot of boxes for BBC1,” he says. “I’m aware that it’s very rare to have my voice on a mainstream channel, so I want to make the most of it. Why not give people a different perspective on the Middle East?

“In a way, it’s a political statement just to be a funny person from Iran because people’s expectations in this country are so low. But you can’t be too earnest about it. In the show, I say, ‘All I’ve ever wanted to do is bring world peace through my stand-up’ - at which point, the audience bursts into applause - ’so now that I’ve done that, I’m happy to do other things!’”

Baha’is who watched Omid’s show on BBC 1 may have been as anxious as Steve McClaren watching Israel giving England the ghost of a hope of qualifying for Euro 2008 by beating Russia. Omid’s “our lad on prime-time TV” and there are those amongst us who don’t wholly approve of Omid’s comedy. It’s not quite “Baha’i” enough; it’s “political”; it doesn’t give “the Baha’i message”; it’s too darned rude!

Well, I’ve always taken the view that it’s Omid’s business what he puts into his routines. He may not conform to what some people imagine the “ideal” Baha’i to be, but he knows what makes him tick. It’s not for the Baha’i community to “censor” him either overtly or by covert social pressure.

Of course, I understand the anxiety. Omid is a high profile member of a very small religious minority in the UK. We hope he will choose whatever we think Baha’i moral standards to be, and we want him to make us look good.

But not only does he deal well with sensitive subjects in his comedy, he is also opening doors for Baha’is. Before Omid came to prominence, there can have been very few young Baha’is who would have considered stand-up comedy as a possible choice of profession. There’s a standing joke amongst Baha’is that all Iranian parents in their hearts really want their offspring to be doctors or engineers, or possibly architects. (Yes, I know, you’ve seen that joke applied to people from the Indian Sub-Continent in Goodness Gracious Me. And, yes, I know it’s a stereotype, but there is often some truth in some stereotypes.)

Actually, despite this desire for respectability, there’s a strong tradition of Iranian Baha’is in the arts - and that goes back to the early days of our faith. But stand-up as the new rock’n'roll is very much a late 20th century/early 21st century phenomenon - and Omid pioneered a route into this profession for Baha’is, a route along which one or two other young Baha’is (such as Inder Manocha) are travelling.

I’m looking forward to the next episode of Omid’s show.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Omid Djalili, comedy, stand-up, BBC

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite