Pakistani-Norwegian stand-up comic Shabana Rehman is a burqa provocateur (thanks, Srinath):
Rehman… was born in Karachi but raised in Norway… [Link]She typically begins her act wearing a burqa, which she then strips away to reveal a tight, red cocktail dress… 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… You can’t do a stunt like this in Karachi or Kabul.” [Link]
She’s pulled both a Madonna and a Demi Moore:
Rehman then went on to kiss vigorously Norway’s female Culture Minister… 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… [Link]‘In Norway there are approximately 70,000 Muslims out of a total population of 4 million [1.75% of the population]… My answer to their reactions was to paint my body with the Norwegian flag and pose in the nude.’ [Link]
The 5’4” woman pulled an old Jewish and Punjabi wedding trick upon a fundie with suspected Al Qaeda links who took asylum in Norway. If only he were Jewish, he’d have known what was coming 
Rehman came on stage and said she wanted to carry out a “satiric test” to find out if Mullah Krekar was as strongly fundamentalist as some of his critics believe. When he approached her, she grabbed him and lifted him up in the air.
Krekar… became furious, grabbed the microphone and began speaking in Norwegian for the first time that evening. “… she has no right to carry or touch me… ” Krekar said, and promised to lodge a complaint via his lawyer. Rehman… told newspaper VG she also wanted to show that if she could lift him, he could hardly be a danger to national security. [Link]
Punk’d! A Scandinavian hippie complained:
The woman gathered in the audience laughed at the stunt but panel member Lar Gule, secretary general of Norway’s Humanist Ethic League protested. “The audience does not understand what an insult Krekar has been exposed to…” Gule said. [Link]
What she gets for her apostasy: the usual.
Unidentified assailants on Wednesday fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comediene… The shots, fired at around 4:00 am, struck the windows of the restaurant of Fahrina Rehman, the sister of Shabana Rehman. [Link]
But seriously, ign’ant jokes make me cringe:
So I told jokes about what Norwegian guys ask me when I date them, like: “Hi, if I get hot on you, would your family burn you up then? And I answer, “Shut up, just screw me, I`ve got a fire extinguisher in my kitchen!” [Link]
Would it be too much to call it Punjabi or Urdu?
… once I told the audience that I am gonna tell them a really dirty joke, and then I do so: in Pakistani! Norwegians always love that one. [Link]
Publicity-monger though she may be, I salute this reckless temptress.
See also: Shazia Mirza, Deeyah, Azhar Usman
Update: Don’t stare too long at the Karachi full moon (NSFW, and thanks, Scandinavian hippie!)
Update 2: Rehman in Time (thanks, Theresa).
She reflects on the Norwegian climate, joking that her family “ran around in the snow with sandals on.” She pillories cross-cultural dating, dispensing sardonic tips on “how to pick up a Pakistani chick,” and addresses her girlhood fear that the light mustache that appeared on her upper lip would scare off potential suitors. She was reassured by the fact that her mom had found a husband despite similar wisps of down, “but that was before I knew that Dad had been forced to marry her…” She also satirizes the Norwegians themselves, with their “booze-and-pork” culture and “progressive” family structures in which a single child can have multiple sets of parents…… the Oslo daily Dagbladet listed Rehman and her Norwegian husband, author Dagfinn Norbø, among the country’s most influential opinion shapers… “I’m not out to stimulate dialogue but to satirize people’s attitudes,” she says. “That’s why I make fun of religion, nationalism and Norwegian smugness.” [Link]
