David Baddiel interview: Comedian on mixing Islamophobia and Antisemitism in his new stage version of The Infidel

Using comedy to increase awareness:

Having spent two years turning his 2010 low-budget Brit-flick into a musical, David Baddiel sure knows how to pick his moment. In it, a middle-aged Muslim man, Mahmud Nasir Omid Djalili, discovers that he was actually born to Jewish parents and adopted shortly after birth, triggering an enormous identity crisis. Of course, this being an upbeat comedy, he comes to realise that the two aren’t so incompatible after all.

“Look, I’m not trying to fix the world with this,” Baddiel starts, shrugging off any sniff of worthiness before we’ve even got going. “I’m just trying to create an entertainment, albeit around a subject that has become very, very serious and dominant in the cultural discourse.”

…. For all its feel-good flippancy, though, Baddiel knows its message needs repeating. “It’s unbelievable how much polarisation on both sides has happened,” he continues. “More and more, it seems to me, people in the Jewish community have got an entrenched idea of what it is to be Muslim and vice versa. There’s lots of anti-Semitism in parts of the Muslim community. There’s no point denying this.”

David Baddiel interview: Comedian on mixing Islamophobia and Anti-semitism in his new stage version of The Infidel – People – News – The Independent.