“Saaniya Abbas is taking her show to the Edinburgh Fringe – but she won’t be able to rehearse it at home in front of a live audience (Picture: Saaniya Abbas) Saaniya Abbas is a staple on Dubai’s comedy scene and has called the capital home for 13 years. UAE comedians are banned from two topics:”, — write: metro.co.uk
Saaniya Abbas is taking her show to the Edinburgh Fringe – but she won’t be able to rehearse it at home in front of a live audience (Picture: Saaniya Abbas) Saaniya Abbas is a staple on Dubai’s comedy scene and has called the capital home for 13 years. UAE comedians are banned from two topics: religion and politics.
Unfortunately, her whole hour-long stand-up set is about Islamic hell. Oopsies.
‘I’ve had moments where five minutes before I’m about to go on stage, the producer comes and tells me, “You can’t do any religion jokes”,’ Saaniya reveals over Zoom to Metro ahead of her show, Hellarious, making its way to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.
Off stage, the 36-year-old is also a bit name on TikTok after her American accent efforts went viral and amassed her over 100,000 followers within a month.
‘It can get a bit tricky… we’ve been threatened with fines,’ Saaniya adds of refusing to toe the line. ‘One of the comedians went to jail, but only for a few hours.’
‘Because I’m a Muslim, but I’m a non practicing Muslim, I have this one joke that I knew I cannot do here, so I waited till I went to America and to the UK. I didn’t know if they would laugh, but luckily they did.’
Recently, Saaniya’s Edinburgh preview in Abu Dhabi was cancelled over the religious content in her show.
The preview of her Edinburgh show got cancelled in Dubai (Picture: Saaniya Abbas) ‘There’s no point in me doing my Edinburgh set, which is mainly about Islamic hell. I had to cancel that. That’s been quite difficult for me,’ she says.
Saaniya can’t try out her material like everyone else, which makes Edinburgh all the more exciting – but nerve-wracking.
‘I have all these changes I’m making, but I can’t try them out here, so I’m just gonna have to try them in Edinburgh on stage,’ she says.
Saaniya reckons there are only about 25 comedians working regularly in whole UAE, mostly men and all performing in English. There are probably just five who have comedy shows in Arabic.
‘There wasn’t really any cultural scene for a long time because they were just building the buildings,’ she says.
Saaniya is excited to try out her material in a country where comedy isn’t restricted (Picture: Saaniya Abbas) ‘It actually works in my favour, because I got so much stage time when I started comedy here, which I wouldn’t get in a very saturated market like New York or London as a new comic.
‘I would have never gotten spots. But over here, they just so starved of entertainment that I was able to try.’
For over a decade, Saaniya has called UEA home, but she grew up in New Delhi, India, to a conservative practising Muslim mother and an athiest father.
Saaniya also went to a Catholic school in the Himalayas where she was ‘surrounded by nuns’ – which she says was far more sheltered than her conservative mother’s upbringing.
While Saaniya leans towards her dad’s beliefs, she’s still culturally very much Muslim in her traditions and celebrations. To a point, though, as she’s the first generation of her family not to be forced into an arranged marriage.
‘Everyone’s marriages were arranged, except for one uncle who had a love marriage and then he got divorced. But that’s everyone’s example. Like, “See, that’s what happens when you don’t have the arranged marriage,”‘ she says.
While Saaniya’s cousins had the choice, many still opted for an arranged marriage. Saaniya on the other hand met an English man from Hampshire and fell in love.
Saaniya identifies as a ‘Haram Muslim’ (Picture: Saaniya Abbas) Unfortunately, they divorced in 2020 after eight years of marriage.
‘I kind of became the “example” for conservatives, which is not a nice feeling,’ Saaniya says.
‘As cool as my parents were with me marrying a white guy, divorce is still something that was very hard for them to deal with. It caused a lot of issues between me and my parents. But now we’re kind of in a much better place,’ she says.
It was through her divorce that Saaniya started doing comedy as a distraction.
‘Usually if something terrible happens to me I like to joke about it, because then it feels like there was a purpose behind it,’ she says.
As for Saayina’s hell: she’s a Haram Muslim.
‘Halal means God’s into it. God approves. Haram means this God does not approve,’ she says. ‘Like pork, alcohol, women… That’s one of my jokes that I’m going to try [at Edinburgh], which I’m not allowed to try here.’
Despite being censored, Saaniya is making a difference.
‘I have had many moments where after my shows a Muslim girl will come up to me and say, “That’s the first time I felt like someone represented me on stage”.’
Saaniya Abbas is performing Hellarious at the Edinburgh Fringe in the Guilded Balloon Patter House- Bothie at 8pm every night from August 1 to 25. Get tickets here.
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