I saw a poster today which transfixed me.

It had a large cross, red, white and blue with stars and stripes. Above it was written, "Kill in the name of Jesus." And to the lower side, in smaller letters, "Our god is better than their god."

The whole thing was labelled, "fundamental hatred."

Wow.

Whoever designed that one had succeeded in being almost blasphemously funny, mordantly ironic, and deeply Christian all at the same time. 

On one level, the poster makes fun of certain right-wing, pro-war interpretations of Christianity which seem to be gaining a lot of traction nowadays in the US.

On another, it calls to mind General Boykin's infamous attempt at interfaith comparison, when he said that while in Christianity, "God sends his son to die for us", in Islam, Muslims send their sons to die for God.  Yeah, right. Nowadays, American Christians hardly lag behind anyone else in sending their sons (and daughters) to die. Nor do Muslims have a monopoly on using God as a pretext for unleashing murder and mayhem. This poster skewers such double-talk for the hypocrisy it is.

But at the same time, it's an appeal to recognizably Christian values.

Looking at that poster, I wondered why it is that Muslims, even progressive ones, often seem to have such a hard time creating humour, and why, when they try, at least some people will get offended. Yes, I agree that the fatwa on cell phones piece was not the funniest of the funny. It was too bitter, for one thing. Good humour has a lighter touch. A lot of progressive attempts at humour are too strained to be truly funny.

But I think that humour tends to improve with practice. I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible to be funny, even bitingly satirical, and yet deeply Islamic. Do Muslims tend to take themselves too seriously?  Isn't Islam about recognizing and seeing through "idols"—-things, concepts, dearly held conventional "values" which end up being stand-ins for God? Isn't humour a good way to do that?

Why shouldn't we satirize fatwas? And why isn't the obsessive focus on women's sexuality, reproductive role, and access to the trappings of modernity which tends to leave men free to do pretty much as they like seen as an appropriate topic for humour?