It is Friday night at the O2 arena in London and the crowd is hearing a confession from Preacher Moss, a black American convert to Islam: “I’m not going to lie about the things I did before I became a Muslim,” he tells the audience. “Like have fun.” Amid appreciative guffaws he continues in the same vein. When he gave up boozing and womanising, he confides, his mother thought he was gay.

Comedians like Mr Moss have a difficult job. Islam and humour seem an unlikely combination. Unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have led to death threats, riots, and most recently the firebombing this month of a satirical French weekly after it published an issue featuring Islam’s founder as “guest editor” with the promise: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!” To many, that chimes all too well with Ayatollah Khomeini’s apocryphal statement that “there are no jokes in Islam”. Even the most daring Islamic comedians rarely if ever joke about the faith itself. Some countries ban jokes about religious leaders.

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