If there ever was an unlikely combination of movies as a form of social expression laden with symbolism, 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World' by Albert Brooks, couldn’t be more timely or relevant.

Taking a breather from all the clamor and chaos of nightly news and endless parade of experts opining endlessly, I finally succumbed to a inner sense of curiosity and fairness. An unlikely pairing of sensibilities if ever combined, but compelling nevertheless to square a deep rooted personal need to obviate an unnatural fear of homosexuality and affirming a sense of fundamental fairness at the same time. Fairness, because I cannot square with any rhyme or reason an inherent and pervasive discrimination against gay folks now increasingly being codified into law in the United States. To do so, I summoned enough courage to go see 'Brokeback Mountain' last week, but more on this later.

What then, if any, is the connection from gay cowboys to comedy amongst Muslims? Not any at the first blush. But upon a closer look, revealing but uncommon strains emerge and converge. Gay folks falling in love, being in love or, heaven forbid, wanting loving relationships or families are an anathema and an affront to sensibilities of the largely indifferent or uniformed ‘normal’ majority. Assuming this indifference extends to high rates of divorce, broken-up, abused and abusive families amongst the ‘normal’ folks, this hostility towards gays, then, is quite revealing in its ignorance and stupidity.

Now, over to the movie 'Comedy in the Muslim World', this is a great title with a great premise that begs a delicate but unasked question; is there any comedy in the Muslim world? Or more indelicately, are Muslims even capable of humor or hilarity? What a stupid question, one would think. Because I, as countless other Muslims, enjoy Bart Simpson and the hilarious rendition of the stereotypical Quickie Mart owner’s accent at our expense as much as enjoying humor at others expense.

But are these questions really that stupid? Not unless you are a cave dweller by choice, Mr. Bin Laden. Images of violent protests over incredibly asinine cartoons, fanned and flamed feverishly by hypocrites on all sides; endless footage of angry mobs and angrier Iraqi people weary from war and rapine inflicted upon them for no fault of their own. A constant drumbeat of fear and war mongering hysteria increasing by the day, is it any wonder if well meaning Americans were to question Muslim worlds’ need for sanity, much less an appetite for hilarity?

Albert Brooks’ 'Looking For Comedy in Muslim World' is delicate stuff - self-deprecating one-liners that need the perfect context to generate laughter. It asks how universal is comedy? Do Muslims in India laugh at the same things as longshoreman in New York City or Farmer in Kansas? The movie’s message is while humor is universal, jokes may not be. Here, I found a cathartic value to this movie that compares well with my all-time favorite director, Stanley Kubrick’s 'Dr. Strangelove'. His audience in the height of the Cold War was so terrified that the Soviet bombs would start falling and they would all die. So Kubrick told a ridiculous story that culminated with the bombs falling.

Today, Americans are so conditioned to footage of suicide bombings, violent protests and endless terror alerts that the comedy America needs for this de-conditioning or catharsis has to start here, and make everything that flows from that place even more farcical than it is. Albert Brooks begins to acknowledge that Muslims world can have fun with the fear Americans have of terror, for they bear its brunt far more than others.

It may not be possible to make 21st-century America’s Dr. Strangelove for five or ten more years. Until it is, Americans will be on the edge of their seats. . There’s another, more important, lesson too. No comedy can catalyze a 9/11 catharsis unless it begins by confronting exactly what Americans are afraid of.

'Brokeback Mountain', then, as a movie is certainly groundbreaking as well; there is not a more venerated figure in the American Machismo than a cowboy as a raffish outlaw, yet likeable and heroic. To see this last remaining iconoclast recast as ‘gay’, is simply put, shocking; a yet another liberal affront and insult to ‘conventional’ sensibilities. I mean these are not atypical Hollywood gays like Liberace or Nathan Lane in 'Bird Cage' that comport to our stereotypes, but manly and rugged cowboys falling in love with each other. I left the theater wondering if my primal aversion to homosexuals had more to do with fears of my masculinity than any real antipathy towards gay folks. How stupid, I had to conclude.

By the portrayal of gay cowboys, 'Brokeback Mountain' commits a heresy, but it is a deliberate and a matter-of-fact heresy; the fact is this movie dares you to deny these men their humanity and love. For me, it was a frightening and a liberating experience at once, for it forced me to confront my own prejudices.

To perpetuate bigotry or hatred as a means to an extremist’s power grab, propaganda is a very effective tool; first you have to demonize the enemy or more correctly a perceived enemy, then you dehumanize him and whitewash the accompanying lies. This way it relieves the duty to see the ‘others’ as people with needs, wants and desires similar to our own, for seeing the ‘other’ in less than human terms is essential to prevent empathy from forming and to create a void in place of sympathy.

To be sure much of the same is practiced with gusto in so-called Islamic countries when they characterize the West as the Great Satan among other epithets. Sadly, an examination of the images and iconography of war reveals an almost universal language of stereotypes and prejudices to tap into viewer’s most visceral emotions. One that extremists on all sides are getting very much adept in conveying.