Dean Obeidallah: The Father of All House Arabs By Tammy Obeidallah

May 16, 2011

Ikhras friend and Palestine solidarity activist Tammy Obeidallah* responds to “the dean of comedy” Dean Obeidallah’s May 7, 2011 appearance on CNN.  Obeidallah is one of the better known members of that pathetic group of lame and very unfunny Arab and Muslim American comedians.

The self-proclaimed “Dean of Comedy” is at it again, taking his lame attempt at humor to CNN where he gave Osama Bin Laden the title “The Father of Islamophobia.” According to Obeidallah (no relation to me), Muslims in America were not stigmatized until after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Well, Mr. Obeidallah (again, no relation to me), if you had actually bothered to hang out with some of us  at demonstrations in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, you would have known Palestinians and their sympathizers have endured the “terrorist” label long before the 9-11 attack brought down the Twin Towers. Oh, excuse me Mr. Obeidallah (let me reiterate, NO RELATION), I don’t expect you to demonstrate in support of any Intifadah against the Zionist entity and risk your career, how utterly obtuse of me.

After several minutes of ridiculous Just For Men cracks aimed at Bin Laden’s change of beard color and a disgusting quip about being relieved there was no “sex tape” found in the plethora of videos allegedly recovered from the Abbottabad compound, Obeidallah (no &@#$!!! relation) then presumes to speak for the entire Muslim community. Funny thing is, he does not even profess the Muslim faith; otherwise he might know that cheap sex jokes to a mixed audience are unacceptable.

Obeidallah (I swear, he’s no kin) launched into a defensive diatribe in response to a quote read by the CNN host, containing hackneyed accusations that Muslims are terrorists, violent and not accepting of other religions and cultures. Instead of going on the attack, perhaps citing real-world examples of how tolerant Muslim societies truly are, the Dean of Comedy begs everyone to “keep an open mind” because “we’re all Americans—Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist…we’re Americans first.” Instead of using the opportunity to take a jab at America’s foreign policy, he whines about his fears over the upcoming tenth anniversary of 9/11 but now believes the death of Bin Laden will give us all the chance to “work together” and take a stand against Al-Qaeda and terrorism. And perhaps his most outrageous and offensive statement:  his father left Palestine for America to find a “better life.”

Hey Dean, your father left Palestine because it fell under one of the most brutal military occupations the world has ever known. I’ve seen the videos and heard the stories of pre-1948 Palestine, and it looks and sounds like a veritable Eden. No one would have ever needed to leave there for a better life—in America or anywhere else—had it not been for Zionist thugs destroying lives, land, mosques and churches. So if your pathetic career demands that you not help Palestine, at least don’t hurt.

And Dean, I have another idea for you: if you’re so ashamed about being thought of as Arab first, American second, why don’t you change your name to Dean O’Baydell and pass yourself off as Irish? That would save me the trouble of changing my name because everyone thinks I’m related to you and frankly, it’s embarrassing as hell.

Finally, unlike you, I can safely say I speak for the vast majority of the Arab and Muslim community when I tell you “Dean Obeidallah (no relation), IKHRAS!”

*Tammy Obeidallah was born and raised in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio. She graduated from Eastern New Mexico University, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. She has traveled to 45 countries including Palestine, Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Pakistan and lived for over a year in Amman, Jordan.

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  • Sarakenos

    “Islam or the new orientalist vernacular du
    jour “Islamism” has roots in Muslim socieities because it is the ethos
    which underpins the culture, beliefs, and values which people believe in
    and always have had for hundreds of years.”

    Islam is not the same as Islamism (and Islamism is not a foreign word. It was coined by Muslims themselves who formed political parties that were particularly of religious ideology, e.g. hezb al-tahreer al-ISLAMI). In Arabic we refer to political parties that proclaim “Islam” as their political ideology as “Islamiyyeen” as opposed to “Muslimeen.”

    And now that the difference has been clarified, you are absolutely WRONG in saying that Islamism has roots in culture, beliefs, values for hundreds of years. Islamism only began post-WW1. It is a new phenomenon, and I am blatantly accusing it of being a western product, a mutation of the true Islam. As a Muslim who believes in the true message of Islam, I find Islamism to be in direct conflict with Islam and the true message of the prophets peace be upon them, for the tons of reasons I have mentioned before, and will mention after.

    “It was secular, foreign
    imposed ideologies — ba’athism, secularism, nationalism, communism,
    etc. — from puppets imported or controlled from the outside which are
    like a foreign body on the body politic of the entire region.”

    Those are not foreign ideologies. Look up “the father of Secularism” and you will find it was started by a Muslim scholar, and was promoted by many Muslims scholars throughout the centuries, well-before the British showed up to Arab shores. As for nationalism, it is the natural evolution of human society and it has proven to be the most effective form of society today (examples are too many to ignore). Communism is an idea, adopted by millions of people around the world. I cannot find anything in the Communist Manifesto that would contradict the core teachings of Islam (in fact many of it sound very similar — equality, fairness, value and reward of labor, etc).

    “It has
    caused regression and could only be enforced under the point of the
    gun.  All the while the Mubareks, Assads, Saddams, and Arafats presided
    over people, the people and these societies regressed while western
    colonialists and corporations made a fortune.”

    They regressed because they ere puppet regimes, not because they were secular or nationalist. Look at Japan, look at Turkey, look at South Korea, look at HongKong, look at Singapore, look at China … they adopted secular national ideologies and western colonialists could not impede their progress. The Arab World, in particular, was not allowed to progress because of its possession of the world’s most crucial energy source, as war criminal “Kissinger” said once: Oil is too valuable to be left under Arab control.

    It was countries that fortified Islamism that have been the most docile and submissive to colonial powers. Saddam, Abdul-Nasser, and Assad (as criminal as they are, they have been viewed as obstacles by the West, and they also happened to be mostly anti-Islamist (not anti-Islam). In countries that were staunch allies of the US, Islamism had flourished.

    “the Muslim Brotherhood is just as irrelevant as the salafis/wahabbis,
    possibly even more so.  Their activities and methods of political action
    have NEVER been a threat to the regimes but rather a pillar reinforcing
    their oppression.  The fact that they did not lead events anywhere be
    it in Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya, but rather only endorsed protests after
    they saw the momentum they had already gathered, speaks to their
    irrelevance.”

    Agreed.

    As for the best system, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We already have living examples that have proven for the past 80 years that they work. They can be found in Scandinavian nations, as well as some countries in East Asia: Democracy, with a Socialist economic system. Islam (not Islamism) would approve.

    For more on this system, read my essay:

    http://www.kabobfest.com/2011/03/why-democratic-socialism-is-the-answer-1.html

    • Sarakenos

      Forgot to mention: this was in reply to Khaled

  • Sammoora

    Now this jackass is causing havoc on Maysoon’s kids page? How low can one go? This is a page dedicated to helping the disabled children in Palestine YA HUMAR. Apparantly you were raised with ghanem, my apologies to the ghanam.  

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