On Friday, Feb. 26 the Pakistani Student Association at NEIU sponsored Muslim Comedy Night. The doors were set to open at 6 p.m. and the show was supposed to start at 7:30. p.m. Despite a ten minute delay, it started very smoothly.
A girls’ group named SoundRight opened the show with some very smooth rhythms played on different kinds of drums. While the music was entertaining, it had many wondering why a band was opening for the comedy group they were there to see.
Two mediocre comedians, Amar Ali and Saad Ahmed followed SoundRight. While each had a few good jokes, the audience laughed more often at the awkward pauses that followed each joke rather than the jokes themselves. Ahmed’s jokes would have gone over better had he not adopted a monotone form of delivery.
In contrast, the first comedian of the main act, Aman Ali, took control of the stage from the moment he ran on. Aman Ali was the first of three comedians who make up the group “The Muslim Funnymentalists” based out of New York. Aman drew on his family for most of his jokes and there was not a line he delivered which did not draw huge laughs from the audience.
By the time Aman Ali left the stage, the audience’s eyes were already teary from laughter and the show just kept getting better. Asif Ali was the second comedian in the group and he drew mostly on growing up with two cultures, American and Indian. “Some people refer to their parents as FOBs, or fresh-off-the-boat, my parents never got off the boat. When they walked through the airport they dragged India with them,” Asif joked, dragging a stool across the stage. Asif’s jokes were hilarious because most of the audience could relate to the incidents he described, even the non-Muslim attendees. By the time he was done the audience was gasping for breath.
The last comedian to take the stage, Baba Ali, joked most about the difference in languages. While Baba Ali was funny and got lots of laughs, he did not have us clutching at our sides like Asif Ali. “The Muslim Funnymentalists” concluded the night by taking the stage together and doing some improvisation. This segment was not quite as funny as the rest of the show, mostly due to the actions of the randomly chosen participants from the audience rather than the material itself. Overall, however, Muslim Comedy Night was a huge success. In the words of Diana Musa, a NEIU sophomore, “It was an amazing, hilarious, and fun show, worth every penny.”