Table Of ContentTurkish German Muslims and Comedy Entertainment
CURRENT ISSUES IN ISLAM
Editiorial Board
Baderin, Mashood, SOAS, University of London
Fadil, Nadia, KU Leuven
Goddeeris, Idesbald, KU Leuven
Hashemi, Nader, University of Denver
Leman, Johan, GCIS, emeritus, KU Leuven
Nicaise, Ides, KU Leuven
Pang, Ching Lin, University of Antwerp and KU Leuven
Platti, Emilio, emeritus, KU Leuven
Tayob, Abdulkader, University of Cape Town
Stallaert, Christiane, University of Antwerp and KU Leuven
Toğuşlu, Erkan, GCIS, KU Leuven
Zemni, Sami, Universiteit Gent
Turkish German
Muslims and Comedy
Entertainment
Settling into Mainstream
Culture in the 21st Century
Benjamin Nickl
Leuven University Press
Published with the support of the
Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand
University of Sydney
and
KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access
Published in 2020 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire
Pers Leuven. Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium).
© Benjamin Nickl, 2020
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative
4.0 Licence.
The licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-
commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should
include the following information:
B. Nickl. 2019. Turkish German Muslims and Comedy Entertainment: Settling into Mainstream
Culture in the 21st Century. Leuven, Leuven University Press. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/
ISBN 978 94 6270 238 7 (Paperback)
ISBN 978 94 6166 341 2 (ePDF)
ISBN 978 94 6166 342 9 (ePUB)
https://doi.org/10.11116/9789461663412
D / 2020 / 1869 / 57
NUR: 717, 732
Layout: Coco Bookmedia
Cover design: Paul Verrept
Contents
Preface 7
introduction 13
Finding a Voice of Their Own
chapter i
Germanness, Othering and Ethnic Comedy 41
chapter ii
Clash Films 61
chapter iii
Television Narratives of Ottoman Invasion and Cohabitation 93
chapter iv
Bridget Jones’s Halal Diary 119
chapter v
Funny Online Kanakism 149
chapter vi
Settling into “Post-Migrant” Mainstream Culture 173
conclusion 183
European Muslims’ Issues: Turkish German Comedy in a Global
Entertainment and Identity Politics Framework
Notes 191
References 201
Preface
My sincere gratitude goes to Leuven University Press for making this book
available through their Open Access scheme. I also thank Dr Erkan Toğuşlu
and the Current Issues in Islam series editors for including this discussion of
Turkish German comedy in their series of scholarly, peer-reviewed publications
initiated by the Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies (GCIS). Thanks go to the
Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (POPCAANZ) for
supporting this book with a publication grant. I am grateful to the School of
Languages and Cultures (SLC), located in The University of Sydney’s Faculty
of Arts and Social Sciences, for providing financial support for the Open Access
publication of Turkish German Muslims and Comedy Entertainment: Settling
into Mainstream Culture in the 21st Century.
This book is the result of many conversations with colleagues and friends,
and students, about what funny means in the face of a resurgence of racism
and ethnic, anti-Muslim bias in German society and across the globe. And how
Turkish Germans can use cultural comedy practices to counter this bias.1
There has been an ongoing series of events causing majority societies in non-
Muslim countries to question the place of Muslim minority communities in their
nation states.2 After 9/11 and the rise of ISIS, and fundamentalist terror attacks on
European capital cities, the discourses of Islamist fanatism and militant Jihadism
have surged. This has been playing out in newspapers, books, on television and in
online contexts. The negative stereotyping of Muslimness was highly effective in
its influence on public opinion.
8
In the 21st century in Germany, right-wing movements like the German
PEGIDA have formed around the idea of Muslimness as a global threat.
Supporters of this movement have argued that the Muslim threat would never
go away. They have said that Muslims could not possibly be integrated into the
Western model of democratic liberalism. How could they, if those Muslims
cannot even laugh at Danish cartoons and French caricatures of the Prophet
or acts of brownfaced comedy sketches? Even Muslim majority communities
who had lived in their host countries for generations, as is the case with Turkish
Germans in Germany, were suddenly suspicious if they did not find humour in
the derision of certain cultural values or community lifestyles.
This meant that humour associated with an ethnic community and jokes
about its origins, beliefs and community characteristics turned into a pop
cultural litmus test. Being on one or the other side of ethnicity-themed humour,
so held majority opinion, became a clear indicator for liberal attitudes in liberal
societies. Even with its Holocaust history and working through its separation of
East and West, German society was not exempt from this reductive thinking.
Allegedly, laughing at certain jokes or rejecting them measured one’s stance
on the relationship between Islam and the cultural tolerance discourse of
modern nation states. Socially speaking, having to laugh at one’s derision to be
accepted as part of the in-group is problematic. It is an essentialist practice to
regulate expression of identity. It demands conformity. Most importantly, it is
undemocratic where it others and excludes members of an ethnic group from
fully participating as themselves in daily life in their own homeland and country
of legal and permanent residence with or without German passports.
I have written this book to engage with this discriminatory practice and add
a new depth and new dimensions to our understanding of the social function
of comedy entertainment in German culture. I deliver a case study of Turkish
German Muslims and how some of their funniest, wittiest and somewhat
provocative community members use comedy entertainment to settle into
German mainstream culture in the 21st century as who they are, not who they
should be. These creative minds use comedy in different mass media types to
entertain all of Germany with a popular culture viewpoint on the issue of
Turkish Germans’ ability ever truly to belong—while several generations of the
community have already lived for decades in the country and made it their home
regardless of their nationality. I acknowledge here the achievement of a diverse
community in laughing about a mindset that wants to keep Turkish Germans
and Islam out of Germany, or at least keep Muslimness and Germanness separate.
9
Professor Alison Lewis has guided my thinking along the way, and I thank her
for that. I also extend my gratitude to the reviewers of my manuscript. I owe them
a great deal of appreciation for their insightful suggestions.
Most of all, I would like to thank my family and friends for their continuous
support. And here is to Oma Lennerl, who undoubtedly has the best sense of
humour one could hope for. It truly makes the world go round.
