The Syrian comedy troupe that isn’t afraid to poke fun at ISIL

The villager riding his tractor past a small farm near the outskirts of the Turkish city of Gaziantep on an afternoon in late March had every reason to break out in a cold sweat. The sight to his right — that of a man sporting a black robe, a beard and a machine gun — would have made anyone nervous, particularly as they were just north of the border with Syria. The villager would not have been comforted to learn that the armed man, Sabri al Hereh, had once been a member of the Syrian chapter of Hizb ut Tahrir, a radical group committed to building a global caliphate. It would have helped, though, to know that the gun was plastic, the beard a fake, and Hereh, improbably, was in the middle of his comedy debut.

by Piotr Zalewski   @p_zalewski

May 16, 2015 5:00AM ET

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