Share this story!            

Shots fired at Pakistani-born comic’s Oslo restaurant

OSLO: Unidentified assailants on Wednesday fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comediene who has achieved prominence for lampooning conservative Islam.

Shabana Rehman, the 28-year-old comediene whose sister owns the restaurant, described the incident as “an appalling act of terror” and said it would not deter her from continuing her work.

The shots, fired at around 4:00 am, struck the windows of the restaurant of Fahrina Rehman, the sister of Shabana Rehman. A police spokesman said the establishment was closed, and nobody was hurt.

Rehman has made a career of joking about the cultural divide between Norway’s people and its 76,000-strong Muslim community.

She notably made headlines in the popular press last week by dropping her pants and baring her buttocks at a film festival in Haugesund, in southwest Norway.

“I want to show that in Norway, you can do such things without being lynched or arrested,” she said. “I get really angry when I see cultural conflicts, suicide bombers, all these kinds of threats. You can’t do a stunt like this in Karachi or Kabul.”

Rehman then went on to kiss vigorously Norway’s female Culture Minister Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, seeking to make a point about a debate raging in the country’s Pakistani community over a film scene showing a young Pakistani girl kissing a Norwegian boy. Oslo police said it was too soon to make a link between the shots at the restaurant and the comedian’s film festival antics, but Rehman herself clearly saw one. “I’m going to continue doing my job despite what has happened,” she told Norway’s NTB news agency. Police said she was being protected, although they did not give details.

The young woman, who was one when her parents moved to Norway with their seven children in 1977, has often courted controversy since 1999 when she went from writing jokes for a comedian friend to doing her own show.

She typically begins her act wearing a burqa, which she then strips away to reveal a tight, red cocktail dress. afp

Home | National

Share this story!