Salma Hindy & Danielle Deluty find liberation in comedy

In theory, comedy allows subversion of powerful people and institutions, like religion.

Mocking religion can be risky business, and historically the loudest funny voices poking fun at religion have been men. American stand-up George Carlin comes to mind.

We're two women from distinct, opposing patriarchal faith traditions: Danielle from Judaism and Salma from Islam. We’re less interested in what men have to say about religion. Not because we think men are bad, or that their opinions lack value #notallmen. It’s just that our religious traditions are undeniably made for men; designed to seat men at the top of a social hierarchy, but apply to and restrict the rights of everyone else.

A (straight) male is our religions’ ideal version of a person. His critique may certainly be on point, but he usually has fewer obstacles to making his voice heard in the first place. We want comedic subversion from the perspectives of the women, or anyone sidelined yet controlled by religion. 

The stakes are higher, and the laughs are bigger when the jokes come from voices that religion has never bothered to consider. Look, there are stories about religious experience that you’ll never hear from a male perspective. Salma wore the hijab for 22 years before deciding to take it off. She was told her whole life that she had to cover up her ‘beauty’. But when she told her dad she’d be taking it off, he said ‘you’re not even pretty.’ Hmmmm OK.What beauty must she cover then?!

Danielle grew up in schools where girls were bound by strict dress and behavioural codes. At 12 years old she wasn’t allowed to sing a solo at her school choir’s Holocaust Memorial Service because the voice of females 12 and older is considered ‘naked’. Yeah, didn’t you know? A child’s voice memorialising the dead is just too sexy for the rabbis at school. 

Religious female sexual shame has its own flavour. Aside from the fact that we had to gain most of our sex education solely from whispers on the streets and from TV, religion stunts women sexually in ways it doesn’t do to men. Both of us were raised on religious rules and practices around how to treat the ‘impurity’ of menstruation.

In Islam, a girl on her period is prohibited from prayer, which some girls exploited. Islamic schoolteachers would literally check the pads of Salma’s classmates to confirm their exemption from prayer. In Judaism, physical touch between spouses is prohibited while someone is on their period. At 15 Danielle was taught that married menstruating women must dunk naked in a ritual bath house (a Mikvah) before they’re permitted to touch their husbands again. Essential reproductive health education! 

Our faith communities validate the sexuality of men, but present us women as sexual objects, denying the existence of our own sexuality. Girls are horny too? Blasphemy!

Vaginismus – a condition where vaginal muscles tighten in an automatic reaction to the fear of any penetration – is most commonly reported among Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women. We’ve been shamed so intensely for existing with sexual capacity that some of us develop physiological resistance to penetrative sex!  Some of our religious Muslim and Jewish female friends spend years unable to consummate their marriages.

We want to tell you the cringey ways we’ve tried to be loved by men in ways permissible by ‘God’.  Stories men could never tell you this because they’re too busy fucking their multiple wives and not having their hymens inspected.

We’re bringing our show Parallel to the Fringe because we’re eager to reveal and laugh at the darker realities of religion. We use comedy to normalise religious oppression, but not to blanketly endorse it. We have no stake in religion's institutional power, and never have.

Through jokes, we obliterate the legitimacy of our religions’ choking grip on us. The ability to make crowds of people see things from our side, and join us in laughter at absurd extremes is exactly the kind of liberation that was impossible for us from within religion.

The Fringe is such a gift to comedic artists. It gives us a place to speak our radical truths, and laugh at the systems that tried to stifle our shrill silly little girl brains. We’re smart as shit, and funny as hell, and you better come see this show unless you, like, hate women or something.

Salma Hindy & Danielle Deluty’s comedy show Parallel will be at Just The Tonic @ The Caves at 3:20pm from August 3 to 27.

Published: 29 Jul 2023