Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Shazia Mirza makes me wish I was Muslim so I…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Shazia Mirza makes me wish I was Muslim so I could be cutting-edge.
She has had several death threats. Recently, on tour in Odense, Denmark, Mirza was told that fundamentalists had let it be known that if she set foot onstage, they would kill her. ''I was given two armed guards,'' she recalls. ''It was the first time I ever saw a gun that big. I thought, Bloody hell, I'm telling jokes, and that is a gun. But I thought the most important time to do the comedy was there and then. If these people think it's a sin to tell jokes, what will they think when Americans take their oil?..."
