Indonesia’s Sakdiyah Ma’ruf to appear at Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf is making waves in the stand-up scene, smashing stereotypes with a unique brand of comedy.

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf entertains the crowd

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf started her career­ by sneaking behind her parents’ back. These days, the 38-year-old is making waves in the stand-up scene, smashing stereotypes with a unique brand of comedy­ derived from personal experienc­es as a Muslim woman from a conservative Hadrami-Arabic­ descent community in Indones­ia.

But when Ma’ruf first returned home from college, she found hersel­f unable to leave the house after 6pm. Violating curfews was how she launched a career for hersel­f in the male-dominated stand-up scene in Indonesia.

Years of keeping her family in the dark made her realise hiding from them was stopping her from thriving as Indonesia’s first female Muslim stand-up comedian. After breaking the news to her parents, she was relieved to find they were supportive.

“Deep down, I know my parent­s are proud of me, they are just worried,” she says. “They were not happy with the idea of me being in the spotlight and talking about sensitive issues. We are a minority, we’re accustomed to lying low, and so every time I have a gig there is an endless investigation into what I’m going to talk about.”

Ma’ruf’s work has been celebrated around the world. She has been recognised in the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women, appeared on the broadcaster’s podcast Cultural Frontline, has twice been a TEDx speaker and was the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2015.

Later this month she will be performing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, promising “something quite rare: a night of fun with hijabi Indon­esian Muslim women” discussing the complexity of being a Muslim woman living in a world where women are often invisible.

Comedian Sakdiyah Ma’ruf on stage

Ma’ruf, who has a younger ­sister, and who was born in Pekalongan, Central Java, says there have been times her family has asked her to tone down material that deals with extremism.

“My family warns me that I’m talking about Islam and I have to remind them I’m not talking about Islam, I’m talking about the ­Muslim community,” she says. “It’s still very difficult when you’re meant to avoid talking about polit­ics and social issues, which leads me to ask: what am I supposed to talk about?’’

Ma’ruf has spoken openly about living with a strict and violent­ father, a topic she has even used in her comedy. In one joke, she recalled her father “practising badminton with my mother”, an attempt to encourage conversa­tion on the impact of domestic violence­ in her culture.

After her father’s death in 2017, however, she deals with the topic differently. “It’s getting difficult for myself and my family because we firmly believe in not speaking about the dead,” she says.

“I still joke about domestic violence because I think it’s important to raise those issues and I hope this may be his good deed of reminding other people not to be violent.”

Speaking to The Australian from Jakarta ahead of her Aust­ralian tour, Ma’ruf reflected on the experience of growing up in ­Indonesia, where many young girls are expected to simply find a husband.

For Ma’ruf, the idea of being married at 15 was something she knew she was never going to ­subscribe to.

“When I was in high school, I said to my mum I would never marry and, looking back, that was when I first realised that there was something terribly wrong with the community,” she says.

“Women suffer because of the role they have in the community, which is to produce and reproduce tradition.

“Often, they’re not allowed to continue their education because of the fear they might meet someone from outside of the community, which will stop them from continuing its traditions.”

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf makes comedy from contemporary Indonesian life

Ma’ruf struck a deal with her parents so she didn’t have to surrender her education to tradition. “I wasn’t going to leave the commun­ity, but I wasn’t going to marry someone from it either. That was the deal with my parents,” she says.

Ma’ruf married someone from outside her small conservative community in Central Java when she was 34. When she’s on stage she jokes about “getting married at a mature age, my husband being a feminist and I’m just desperate”.

“Marrying Muhammad was like winning the lottery because I have the full support to be who I am and to share my own voice, without my family being able to say anything about it,” she says. They share a 20-month-old daughter called Fatimah.

Ma’ruf says there are heavy burdens in being one of Indonesia’s few femal­e stand-ups.

“I still carry my own struggle of proving myself in the community and ensuring what I’m doing is accepte­d at home. But at the same time I have to prove myself in the comedy scene and to the public that women are worthy of their space in this profession­.”

There’s one experience Ma’ruf regrets the most in her career, which occurred during a TEDx talk in Ubud. Speaking about the difficult issues occurring in ­Muslim communities, particularly the ones putting women at risk, Ma’ruf made the very group she was trying to defend the punchline of her joke.

“Comedy allows me to help others amplify their message and their advocacy, but joking about the victims is off-limits,” she says.

“I don’t joke about those who aren’t able to speak for themselves­. You can’t talk about the victims in a way that is degrading to them.”

Ma’ruf says it isn’t a struggle felt only by Muslim women, but a struggle of all women starting their career in the industry. “In ­Indonesia, people aren’t accustomed to an individual standing up and telling people what they think on certain issues, let alone a woman speaking her mind.”

Criticism is something Ma’ruf says comes with the job. Having people question her devotion to her religion is something she faces regularly.

“I’ve been told I’m not following the path of wife of the prophet, but I’ve never read anywhere in the history of Islam that the prophet explicitly mentions that his wife wasn’t funny,” she says.

“Comedy clubs could have ­existed back then, so how would they know?”

Sakdiyah Ma’ruf will appear at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as part of Comedy Zone Asia from March 26 to April 19.