Imran Yusuf - a muslim comic on how to ease racial tension

“As I have grown up and seen what’s going on in the world, especially with what I look like and what I represent, there are things that I’ve needed to say to empower myself and empower a community that feels that they are under attack at the moment.”

 

Twenty-eight-year-old Imran Yusuf comes from an East-African Muslim family. Born in Mombassa, Kenya, he was brought up in Hackney Downs, London. Like so many young British Muslims, he has had to deal with the prejudices, stereotypes and social unease that have come with 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 7/7 London bombings. But, as a stand-up comedian, he feels he is in a unique position to defuse some of that tension.

 

Imran has just come off stage after his 20-minute set in the basement of the Jekyll and Hyde pub on Hanover Street, Edinburgh. Wearing a black long-sleeved t-shirt, grey jeans and brown loafers, he walks over to the bar where I am waiting to be served.

 

He’s tall and lean with dark, slicked-back hair and a short dark beard. I ask him if he wants a pint. “No thanks man. I don’t drink”, he answers. “I’m not really a pub-going sort of person. I only found out stand-up comics perform in pubs once I started doing it.”

 

The way he talks in person is markedly different from the way he speaks on stage. During his routine, he mostly talks in street-slang, although his verbal dexterity means he can adopt accents at the drop of a punch line.

 

“It’s just me turned up a notch,” he says. “It’s fun performing like that. It’s also quite unique – no one else is doing it and I do it with an authenticity I think. I grew up around the kind of kids who are always talking in slang.”

 

Comedians get into stand-up for different reasons, but did Imran always want to challenge people’s racial and religious preconceptions? “Comedy is a great platform from which to address issues, ridicule the things that are destroying us, and launch empowering sentiments,” he says.

 

“I try to do that now but I didn’t intend to become that kind of comedian when I started.”

 

Imran began doing stand-up comedy in 2003 on the London open mic circuit. But it is only in the last year that he feels he has truly begun to find his comic voice: “I never set out to be who I am now. I just wanted to have fun,” he says. “I used to do random stuff. I did not have much of an angle or direction, except that I was always very energetic.”

 

In 2006, Imran took a break from comedy. “I needed time out to think about what I wanted to do,” he says. After a year-and-a-half away from stand-up, he gave up his full-time job in the video games industry. Having “hit rock bottom”, he chose to return to what he loved best. “I decided: ‘Right, I’m gonna become a stand-up comedian!’” he says gruffly.

 

Since then his impressive combination of high energy, cartoon-like physicality, rap-influenced patter and thoughtful satire have earned him a place in the finals of the Hackney Empire and Laughing Horse ‘New Act of the Year’ competitions earlier this year.

 

It has also brought him some influential fans, such as Stephen K Amos, who compèred one of his several gigs at The Comedy Store in the past year. Coming onto the stage after Imran’s 10-minute set, he told the audience he had never seen a new act at the Store do so brilliantly before.

 

“Stephen made me feel fantastic. I grew up watching The Comedy Store on TV. It’s such a big deal, so when I go there I give it everything, I don’t hold back. I’ve got a good rapport with the Store, and I’m hoping that as I grow I’ll be able to make it my home one day.”

 

Imran says he has realised his calling. He believes his rich cultural experience provides him with a unique perspective on modern Britain, and an important opportunity to give the Muslim community a much-needed voice.

 

“During my year-and-a-half away from comedy, I paid attention to the world and how I felt about how I was being perceived,” he says. “I’m trying to find a balance between being light-hearted and fun and saying important things.

 

“When you look at my set, in the first 10 minutes you see a lot of playful stuff like the dinosaur, the Kung Fu impression, making stupid faces. In my last 10 minutes I talk about myself – where my family has come from, stereotypes, expectations and prejudices in society.”

 

Imran feels a sense of responsibility. “I’m working really hard because I want to do this professionally and I am in a position from which I can empower the Muslim community. I am going to do that. I need to do that,” he says.

 

A sense of self-awareness comes through in his routine. After telling his first gag, he says: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to be your ‘topical ethnic act’ for this evening,” before moving on to mock Islamic fundamentalism and quips: “They love that one down the mosque.”

 

He pokes fun at the anxiety created by the July 2005 London bombings, joking about how he easy he finds it to get a seat on public transport these days. As a young Muslim in London, does he feel particularly under attack? “Many of my jokes came from the pain of realising: ‘God, when I look around, so many people, especially the tabloid media, are hell-bent on making me out to look like the enemy’.”

 

The failed bombings in London two weeks after the 7/7 attack had a profound effect on him. “That happened close to where a white, English friend of mine lived. He is a single father and he felt: ‘These people want to kill me – I hate them’. But he looked and he realised that his friends looked like ‘the enemy’.

 

"I sat down and talked to him and I realised that he was reacting in that way because he was scared and felt he had to protect himself and his son…it’s not easy being a single dad.

 

"That experience gave me the idea that people are thinking this – I need to talk about it and empower them so that fear doesn’t lead to hatred,” he says.

 

“There are a lot of people [in the Muslim community] who feel like we’re under attack and that they can’t even say anything. But, at the same time, there are people on the other side of the coin [non-Muslims] who feel they’re under attack.”

 

He says he gets the occasional terrorism-related heckle, such as “What’s in your shoes?” But he believes people often seem relieved to hear him talking about terrorism because it makes them 'feel safer' – “Finally they might feel like ‘You know what, not all them Muslims are bad – that funny one, he’s all right’,” he says.

 

I ask if he aims to help bring Britain’s diverse ethnic community together. “Oh, absolutely!” he quickly responds. “I don’t know if I’m trying to do it in a sense of ‘Right, it’s my goal today to bring people together’ but that’s what I believe in. We’ve got too many divisions in the world now and everyone’s up in each other’s faces and we just can’t have that. We are all human beings but, through these contrived ideas, of our colour, race, culture, religion, whatever, we’ve been separated and controlled,” he says.

 

“I believe in inclusivity. But you’ll never see a Muslim guy saying that on TV because that’s not gonna sell – peace doesn’t sell – only war and horror and terror sell.”

 

Has he experienced any criticism from Muslims who may have misunderstood his intentions? “No, the few Muslim people I’ve had in the audience have loved it. If there’s anybody empowering Muslims in comedy, I think I’m one of the people who might be, especially as I’m talking about it from personal experience.”

 

Imran is well placed to take an informed perspective. Not only has he had an East-London, East-African, Muslim upbringing but he has visited the Middle East. “I’ve been to Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – I’ve been to these places,” he says. He also spent a year living with family in America when he was 13.

 

“I lived the American life. I had the accent, the clothes, the lifestyle. I had it all…I used to pledge allegiance to the American flag,” he says chuckling. “I had to do it every morning as part of the school routine.”

 

There are a few other comedians, such as Omid Djalili, Shazia Mirza and Shappi Khosandi, who also use their first-hand experience of current ethnic tensions to challenge people’s stereotypes and who make informed jokes about terror, Islam and the Middle-East.

 

But Imran says there are too many other comedians making lazy jokes about Islamic fundamentalism. “There are lots of comics who always have something to say about the Taliban, ‘72 virgins’ and all these other things that they pick up from the tabloid media that are really based on the lowest level of understanding – it’s unbelievable,” he says. “It’s quite an easy thing in comedy to mock Muslims or Islam, because all people understand about it is what they see on TV – Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq – that’s all they know about it.”

 

“I think especially if you are a comic and you’re going out in public and saying something we’ve all got a social responsibility to fulfil…I’m not a super-hero but through good comedy at least people can come to a show, laugh and then feel that perhaps the world isn’t as bad a place as the tabloid media might tell you it is.”

 

Imran sees his stint in last year's Edinburgh Fringe as an important 'investment' because he has been able to do his 20-minute set 'day in, day out', something he’s been unable to achieve on the London circuit, where he usually does 10-minute gigs, rarely for a fee.

 

“But now I’m gonna go back to London and people will book me for 20-minute spots and I can start moving up the comedy ladder.”

 

So watch out London. This young comic is armed with some killer punch lines