Is Dave Chappelle the Most Famous Muslim in America?

There's no democracy without comedy

Dave Chappelle was on Saturday Night Live; his commentary on the Palisades and Palestine, on our humanity and our democracy, has gone viral—in fact, my wife shared it with me the same time the algorithm did. He makes a profound and poignant appeal, connecting the late Pres. Carter, the California wildfires, and the genocide in Gaza, closing with a call to Donald Trump, who is almost our President.

You can watch the whole thing here (note: I haven’t yet).

You can watch the specific bit on Palestine and the Palisades here.

Photo credit.

Chappelle might be one of the most famous Muslims in the world and possibly the single most famous American Muslim, though a lot of people don’t know he’s Muslim. They do know he’s a comedian, occasionally controversial, and more than frequently family-unfriendly. How famous is Dave Chappelle?

I was in Oslo, Norway, speaking at a conference about western Muslims; before we kicked off, I was chatting with one of the staff at the venue who was fascinated by our entire get-together. In the progress of our conversation, he asked me where I was from. (He didn’t mean this in a racial way; calm down and watch the Chappelle Show.)

When I said I lived in Ohio, he drew a blank.

For point of reference, this guy was a tall, young Norwegian man, his name actually Thor, and he was sized such that he may actually have been Thor. Thor didn’t know much about Muslims but wanted to. He also didn’t know much about America. Until seconds later his eyes lit up.

“Ohio… That’s where Dave Chappelle is from!”

Yeah, that kind of famous.

In the above monologue, Chappelle explains that Presidents can’t or at least shouldn’t be petty, a vital point that hits me especially. When I look at the arc of my life, the fragility that turns some people petty was the source of one of my greatest weaknesses and failures. For those who don’t know me before this Substack, well, many years back, I was a very minor kind of American Muslim celebrity.

I’m not saying this to brag at all.

In my twenties and early thirties, I achieved a prominent public position—not like Thor-in-Oslo-knows-me-famous, of course, but I was nevertheless on CNN, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, and traveling the world, quite regularly, writing books, pitching shows to major streaming platforms, those kinds of things. I got to know and hang out with some very prominent people. Not Dave Chapelle though.

But I didn’t develop the inner strength, calmness and confidence required of leadership, prominence or even reasonable adulthood; I was known by others before I was known by myself. When I took positions that incited controversy, and got critiqued, I sometimes responded in juvenile ways, not realizing that as a person in a position of any kind of prominence, my conduct was unbecoming.

Now I was hardly President, but Chappelle’s point speaks to us collectively and individually. That is incidentally one reason I appreciate his comedy—sometimes he makes these incredibly deep points in the form of a skit, or a passing aside, and you’ll find yourself thinking about these days, or weeks, later, even if you don’t agree. Presidents should carry themselves with confidence.

Because how Presidents carry themselves reflects the countries they lead, or should lead. Confidence, it turns out, is contagious, part of the reasons why powerful countries exert such incredible impacts the world over.

Why a man in Norway would know where Ohio is.

How should we Muslims carry ourselves?

Making Fun of Muslims

One of the most remarkable things about America has been our system of government. The idea that the most powerful person in the world will go through a grueling, mocking, even angry campaign, get critiqued and assailed from all sides, and potentially lose, and have to hand over power, and then sit there, at the next guy’s inauguration (so far, yeah, it’s been all guys), and present as magnanimous…

This isn’t to overlook or ignore the many mistakes we’ve made along the way (indeed, the fact of stand-up indicates we admit to those—Chappelle is calling out our government for some very heinous policies).

No one is above critique. That we have comics, who make fun of very powerful people, who bring everyone down, is a way of establishing and restoring an egalitarian ethos. We know how there’s religious rituals. There’s democratic rituals, too. Stand-up comedy is one of the best of them. We laugh at each other, and we laugh at ourselves, and in so doing, we show we’re all game.

We’re all up for the challenge of a messy, egalitarian democracy.

Now, religion isn’t quite like that—but religious communities, or at least my religious community, should be open, candid, frank, and secure. If you think about a moment, we don’t have a fixed clergy. No living person is above reproach. If you are sure in your faith, you’d act magnanimous and decent.

The habit of so many Muslim governments of practically deifying leaders, and holding them up above all reproach, is so fundamentally contrary to our monotheism that it’s practically unbelievable.

On the one hand, we’ve got a religion that says the most important ritual of all, prayer, the first thing we’ll be asked about on the Day of Judgment, has no designated or fixed leader. At least one of my halaqa students is a hafiz. He’s also too young to drive a car. But when the time comes for prayer, he leads. He has the adab to ask me to lead; I know enough that he should.

On the other hand, many of our communities are rigid and insular. If we’re actually a universal faith, shouldn’t we be a little more open to going out and getting to know the wider world?

Chappelle is one of the most famous people in the world. He used one of the most prestigious platforms in America — an SNL monologue, really — to call out our government, to appeal to a common sense of humanity, to say what it’s uncomfortable to say; there’s how we lead and there’s what we do with our leadership. It’s one thing to ask who can give a khutbah (and we should ask that).

But if you are giving a khutbah, what should you say?

And how can you develop that courage if you never have that opportunity?

I told you in my last post that in our halaqas we talk about the same thing, over and over again. Specifically: The moment when the blessed Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, passes away. I’m trying to get my students to understand the moment when the Muslim community has to make sense of itself in his absence; one of the consequences, of course, will be our great sectarian divide.

But I want my students to first think about what underlying values operated in that moment, what drove the decisions that were made, and how the consequences of those decisions reveal what we take of and make of our religion. Last week, I left the students with a question: Should there have been a leader at all? Why not just let the community go back to how it was before Islam?

Why not say, okay, there is no more Prophet (pbuh), therefore there is no office of successor to him?

Today, I’ll get their answers. I’ll press them on these. I might turn the whole class into a discussion about their answers. They should have the chance to speak. They should also learn, very slowly, that when an opinion is formed, it should be ready for critique. They should learn that generations of critique, reflection and iterative learning produced the forms their religion takes today.

These aren’t above analysis, of course, but they’re also not arbitrary and impulsive.

And then I’ll leave them with an even harder question. But I can’t tell you yet, because what if some of them are reading this Substack? I hope to get them to a point… an inflection point. A tipping point. The likelihood that a people can make impacts and change outcomes is, in this Substacker’s humble opinion, closely connected to the confidence and calm they carry in and with the world.

We’re not afraid to stand up for what we believe. We’re also secure enough to know that others will stand up, too, and the task of adulthood, of maturity, citizenship, of ummah, of humanity, is carrying forward from there.

P.S. Who is Mo Amer?

Dear Mo Amer: My wife and I have greatly enjoyed your Netflix show and are eagerly awaiting your second season. However, we are shattered to learn that your upcoming tour will skip Ohio. This is hard to believe. Indeed, Ohio has many people who will enjoy your comedy, and many comedians as well. We would appreciate anything you can do to change this state of affairs.