Presuming you’re familiar with Ramy Youssef, which the comedian himself doesn’t take for granted, you may have recognized his eight-minute “Saturday Night Live” monologue’s consistency with his other work.
It held a specific tether to his latest stand-up special “More Feelings,” for one. The bulk of his gentle material is lifted directly from that hour, albeit with a few tweaks and edits, like his anecdote about a visit to upstate New York when he found himself in MAGA country.
His mother called him on the phone, and instead of replying to her greeting of “As-salaam alaykum” with the standard, “Wa alaikum assalam,” he says, “I was like, ‘Mother, peace be upon you, you know – and the prophet. You know which prophet. The best one. The last one.’”
But the leavening agent that made space for his tension-dissolving jokes offered a wider embrace encircling both the religious and the secular. “This is an incredibly spiritual weekend,” Youssef points out, listing a trinity relatable to the broadest possible audience. “We’re in the holy month of Ramadan. Tomorrow is Easter. And yesterday, Beyoncé released a new album.”
America’s rifts are raw and frightening, but Youssef, a devout Muslim, knows that many of its people are praying folk like he is. His faith fortifies his material, especially his bits covering his efforts to merge his beliefs into his busy life as a comic and a guy raised in New Jersey.
His March 30 "SNL" appearance capitalized on our understanding of prayer as a force of good to voice his public support for Gazans besieged by Israel’s military strikes.
Youssef says he’s one of the few among his friends that prays. “Like, I'm friends with a lot of sinners. Disgusting people. And they call me when they're in trouble,” he jokes. One he calls Brian asked him to pray that he’ll get his dog back from his ex-girlfriend. He assures him he will. Not long after, another worried friend named Ahmed begged him to pray for his suffering family in Gaza who are missing and endangered.
In a nation that claims to be guided by prayer, who can find fault with an honestly expressed entreaty to God?
“So that night, I go to pray. And my prayers are complicated. I’ve got a lot to fit in,” he says. “I’m like, ‘God, please, please help Ahmed’s family. Please stop the suffering. Stop the violence.”
Then comes the line that made the audience erupt in raucous applause. “Please free the people of Palestine. Please,” he says, pausing to let the cheers subside before adding, “And please free the hostages. All the hostages. Please.”
“Saturday Night Live” has a fraught, lengthy history with stars making political statements, making Youssef’s plea significant both in its directness and its overwhelmingly positive reception.
As Salon contributor Dean Obeidallah notes in a CNN column from Monday,
Hearing someone on national network television say the words “Free Palestine” — and having the audience spontaneously burst into applause — is not something I’ve seen before. It’s something I wish my late father, a Palestinian immigrant to the US, had been alive to see.
Obeidallah goes on to posit that wrapping that statement in a joke rooted in honesty helped it land solidly — and on a pad softened by the punchline, “And while you’re at it, you know, free Mr. Bojangles. I mean he is, he’s a beautiful dog. I’m praying for that dog.”
Youssef may have been kidding about Mr. Bojangles. Not the prayers. He means that part, which may be why his statement resounded. In a nation that claims to be guided by prayer, who can find fault with an honestly expressed entreaty to God?
Youssef’s moment ever so loosely bookends Pete Davidson’s season opener, which aired seven days after Hamas militants crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed nearly 1,200 people, taking around 250 hostages. An estimated 96 people are still being held in Gaza, including some Americans, according to Israeli government data shared in The Washington Post.
Davidson’s cold open was saturated in humility, confessing that he recognized he wasn’t necessarily the best person for a most difficult job.
Then he demurred. “In a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So I know something about what that's like,” Davidson says, citing the images of suffering Israeli children and Palestinian children shown on the news.
“No one in this world should be forced to suffer like that, you know,” he says, “especially not kids.”
Six months later nearly 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s asymmetrical retaliation, with women and children comprising around two-thirds of the dead, according to Gaza Health Ministry statistics reported by the AP.
The American public’s support for Israel spiked as bombs began falling. Anyone calling out the atrocity of targeting unarmed civilians trapped in a small area of land risked being branded an antisemite. That remained true even for people calling for a ceasefire.
Youssef was unafraid to use that term on the Oscars red carpet, where he appeared with the rest of the “Poor Things” cast.
“We’re calling for [an] immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. We’re calling for peace and lasting justice for the people of Palestine,” he told to Variety. “It’s a universal message of, ‘Let’s stop killing kids. Let’s not be part of more war.’ No one has ever looked back at war and thought a bombing campaign was a good idea.”
The sad truth is that America has long numbed to the obscenity of children dying by gun violence. If that weren’t the case, this country would have gone in a very different direction in the gun control debate following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Instead, politicians have gotten comfortable with absolving themselves in the wake of atrocities with empty offerings of “thoughts and prayers.”
In contrast, Youssef’s divine plea is unquestionably legitimate, recognizing the power of where many are situated emotionally and ethically. He wasn't afraid to be awkward and kind while exercising an expert’s timing, a critical mastery for any comedian.
Do not misinterpret what that means. Youssef’s “SNL” statement moved us, but to deem it to be the "correct" approach would be morally incorrect. That implies there are right and wrong ways to stand up for the oppressed on a major broadcast platform, which is akin to demanding of suffering people that their non-violent protest be undertaken "the right way."
The difference rests in how uncomfortable and inconvenienced those who aren’t protesting are made by those demonstrations, along with whether the people doing the marching are serving the dominant power structure.
Director Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Awards acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest” went toe-to-toe with such a giant. In the weeks following Hamas' attack, a number of stars were dropped from projects or fired by their agencies for publicly voicing their support for the Palestinians.
Glazer took a bolder leap, taking fire based on a selective interpretation of this Oscar night statement: “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all are victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”
Although this was an awkward way of rejecting a government’s weaponization of his religion and identity to justify waging war on a noncombatant population, many were horrified. Some 450 stars and executives signed an open letter condemning Glazer, including Debra Messing and Eli Roth.
More recently, fellow director Ken Loach and screenwriter Tony Kushner stepped forward to support him, perhaps emboldened by knowing the public’s support for Israel’s aggression in Gaza is plummeting.
Youssef never swayed in his call for a ceasefire or supporting Palestinians, having donated all the proceeds from the latter months of his recent tour to American Near East Refugee Aid’s assistance efforts in Gaza.
Tuesday’s Israeli military strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers underlines what dangerous, necessary work that is. Other organizations paused their aid efforts following that tragedy, leaving Gazans to fend for themselves in a humanitarian catastrophe.
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In “More Feelings” Youssef half-seriously admits that he doesn’t like performing for charity, because as soon as he picks one he gets “cooked” by other Muslims for failing to support the “right” causes in the “right” way. One man blasted him for neglecting to contribute to relief efforts after the 2023 floods in Pakistan.
“He really got to me. I started thinking, like, where was I when the floods happened in Pakistan? I was dry,” he says, which got a laugh.
Then he changes this insight into metaphor. “Like, I think that everyone here was,” he tells his audience, “and that’s the problem. It’s hard to care about a flood when you’re dry, right? The whole world is wet . . . and we’re dry.”
At the end of “More Feelings,” he reaffirms how serious he is about praying in dark times, no matter what religion you are. “Just pray however you pray . . . you don’t understand how much I don’t care,” he says. “Last week I was on a Zoom with three witches. I was just like, ‘Ladies, let’s go, we need some spells, like . . . potions for Palestine, whatever you’ve got, we need it.’”
On a “Saturday Night Live” scheduled during a uniquely holy weekend Youssef decided to walk out into that storm armed with his faith, a sense of humor, and a wholeheartedly American prayer for the freedom of those in dire need.
It did not fall on uncaring ears. Nor was it shouted down. For those feeling helpless and lost on dry land in that moment, that was a sufficiently spiritual answer.
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