If you ask me, you can joke about religion

This is my point of view and if I lose friends and alienate people, I'll live with it.

Since the Crackhouse news broke, many of my friends have been asking me if I am worried about getting into trouble for what I say on stage. My short answer is - "Don't worry, I don't joke about those things."

The longer answer is, I absolutely would write a joke about religion. I just haven't thought of one good enough to be worth the consequences in this country. Because I know that someone will get offended on the Internet, the whole thing will be taken out of context, some professional police report lodger will rile up an angry mob, the director of Mat Kilau will come and plug his movie, and I'll be spending the next few months explaining a joke. I just don't have a joke worth all that at the moment.

I think people should be allowed to joke about any topic, just as I think people should be allowed to talk about any topic, BUT they have to be sensitive to the context. It has nothing to do with topics. We're not going to be a developed nation if we disallow large swaths of conversations.

If you really look into it, many of the jokes that allegedly insulted religion aren't even insulting to the religion. Many of them are just anecdotes about how the writer practices their religion in their family and how the situation surrounding that is funny. It's a very specific context. In Indonesia, the people understand that the joke is about the situation and the video goes viral on social media and nobody makes a police report. In Malaysia, people will hear those words followed by some laughter and feel like their religion has been insulted, because in their experience, laughter follows insults, therefore laughter means insults. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Well, what about cases when the joke is actually critical of a religion? Should it then have been written and performed? You're not going to like this, but my answer is still yes. Some of the best comedy bits ever written have been critical of authority, and in some cases, of religious institutions. George Carlin's Invisible Man and Ten Commandments bits are critical of core beliefs within Christianity and are nothing short of the stuff of legend. As a writer, I think the world would be a bleaker place without those bits. I'm not a Christian but I believe a discussion on Christianity would be incomplete without addressing the questions raised in those jokes.

And yet, have those jokes destroyed Christianity? Is it no longer the biggest religion in the world? I think you will find that the answer is far from it.

People who have faith are going to have faith. Relax. What you believe in will hold up to scrutiny. Ask your religious leaders how to answer questions instead of how to shut down discussion. That way, you'll be better informed, your religion will grow, and you will be happier and make fewer police reports.