Five comedy shows to look out for at the Edinburgh fringe
A selection of the top comics at this year’s festival, bringing fresh takes on dating, daddy issues and divine intervention
There’s something faintly ridiculous about trying to distil the Edinburgh festival fringe — the annual lineup of 3,000-odd shows spanning theatre, standup, dance and drag — into any coherent theme. But if you were to try, you might notice that this year Muslim comedians are not just present, but setting the pace for the festival.
From Soho Theatre alums to first-timers Instagramming their way to an audience, 2025’s comics are here to complicate expectations of Muslim identity through laughter. With deep dives into British foreign policy alongside fresh takes on dating, daddy issues and divine intervention, these performers are offering perspectives that are sharp, unexpected and unapologetically their own.
Here are some highlights to watch out for.
Ismael Loutfi: Heavenly Baba
Some men dream of winning the lottery. Ismael Loutfi’s father wanted to convert the entire state of Florida to Islam. Not metaphorically, but literally with flyers and sermons. Loutfi’s first hour-long solo show and his Edinburgh fringe debut, Heavenly Baba is the result. It’s a standup memoir stitched together with family photos, multimedia and a tribute to his late father’s stubborn faith.
Loutfi is a US TV writer (#1 Happy Family USA, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj), and tells Hyphen that his show is “not about Muslims in America writ large. It’s about a deeply bizarre guy and his slightly less bizarre son.” That son, now on stage, is trying to make sense of a man who drove a car with “Worship Creator Or No Heaven” scrawled across the boot in red paint and turned weddings into religious recruitment drives.
What elevates Heavenly Baba above the usual dead-dad show isn’t just Loutfi’s delivery, which is aloof and darkly funny, but the structural ambition of the piece. It’s comedy with a heartfelt reckoning of faith, obsession and the strange ways family shapes us.
“My goal was to tell one long story with as many laughs sewn into the narrative as possible, without compromising emotion,” says Loutfi. Heavenly Baba is exactly that: a slow reveal, delivered with wit, intellect and the soft, surprising ache of someone finally saying what they never could to a parent.
Heavenly Baba is on at 6pm daily until 24 August at Assembly George Square Studios — Studio Five.
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Hasan Al-Habib — Death to the West (Midlands)
Hasan Al-Habib was the only Muslim, Arab and Iraqi in a Worcestershire primary school in September 2001. It’s the sort of lonely distinction that sticks with you, especially when your classmates (and occasionally your teachers) see you as the embodiment of a dictator they’ve heard about on the news. This is where Al-Habib’s show Death to the West (Midlands) takes root.
After a successful run at the fringe in 2024 as one half of 2 Muslim 2 Furious, Al-Habib returns with a performance that’s part memoir, part political primer, part family album.
The hour swings between Drayton Manor and the big Tesco near Bromsgrove, telling stories that trace Al-Habib’s life — from queueing for a Thomas the Tank Engine ride while his dad recalls Iraqi life under Saddam Hussein, to navigating the awkwardness of being the only Muslim at pub comedy gigs.
While the flyer reads “Arab. Muslim. Brummie.”, Al-Habib’s ambitions are more generous than those categories allow. He’s passed for Italian more times than he can count, used dark Iraqi humour to survive school and now uses comedy to reverse-engineer a life that was never meant to fit neatly on stage.
“You don’t need to be Iraqi or from Birmingham to enjoy the jokes,” he says. “If you speak English, I’m convinced it will make you laugh.”
This is a show for anyone who’s ever been mislabelled, misheard — or even mistaken for Italian.
Death to the West (Midlands) is on until 24 August, running daily (except 12 August) at 4.30pm in Below at Pleasance Courtyard.
Zainab Johnson: Toxically Optimistic
Raised in Harlem, New York, as one of 13 siblings in a Black Muslim household, Zainab Johnson’s Toxically Optimistic, is a show about the absurdity of staying upbeat when you know exactly how bad things can get. Johnson calls it “a fun show that explores personal experiences I’d never imagined myself in and my desire to extract the most favourable outcome”.
Johnson doesn’t sell joy, she interrogates it. “I’ve been through very trying moments in my life,” she says, “but I’m still able to say: Alhamdulillah, it’s been a pretty good ride so far.”
Fresh off a sold-out Soho Theatre run in November 2024 and her Amazon special Hijabs Off, this is Johnson’s first fringe festival. And while plenty of comics arrive armed with identity and trauma, she jokes about ill-timed generosity on dates, friendships with wild animals and optimism as a muscle, not a gift.
“I used to see the world as black and white,” she says. “Now it’s more fun to explore the grey areas.” If other comedians are at the fringe this year to explain their pain, Johnson is here to make hers look suspiciously like your own, only better dressed and funnier.
Zainab Johnson’s Toxically Optimistic runs until 24 August, with performances each night at 6.40pm in Above at Pleasance Courtyard.
Harun Musho’d: A History of the Last Conservative Government
It takes a certain kind of masochism to read six Conservative memoirs in a single summer. Comedian Harun Musho’d has done so voluntarily, and for our benefit. A History of the Last Conservative Government, In Their Own Stupid Words, does exactly what it says on the tin: he reads from the collected egos of David Cameron, Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries. All fact-checked, annotated and shredded in front of a live audience. Musho’d used to be an HR manager in the House of Commons, so he’s well-versed in how government operates.
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It’s the more political of his two fringe shows this year, though he’s quick to add: “They’re foremost comedy shows, not serious-themed ones, so I won’t be winning any prizes, but I do make a profit.” The memoirs are, he admits, “the worst idea I’ve ever had.”
The second show, Why I Don’t Talk to People About Terrorism, returns to the fringe for its fourth year. “Terrorism and my family are the two main themes,” he says. “But they’re unconnected outside the show — as far as I know.”
Though he doesn’t identify as Muslim himself, Musho’d’s background — Swiss, British, Sri Lankan, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish — gives him latitude to needle, prod and disarm both assumptions and audiences. Where A History of the Last Conservative Government draws on his political work, Why I Don’t Talk to People About Terrorism is where he gets personal, though always in service of the joke. “My primary concern is how to extract humour from the more serious issues,” he says.
He’ll settle for laughter, though ideally, he says, “maybe generous donations at the end of the show” too.
A History of the Last Conservative Government, In Their Own Stupid Words by Harun Musho’d runs until Sunday 24 August, daily (excluding Tuesdays), at 12pm at Pilgrim Bar as part of PBH’s Free Fringe. Why I Don’t Talk to People About Terrorism is at 4.20pm at Pilgrim Bar.
Saaniya Abbas: Hellarious
Saaniya Abbas is the first Dubai-based comedian to bring a solo hour to the fringe, and she’s doing it with jokes she can’t tell back home. Abbas — a rising comic with credits on The Emily Atack Show and BBC’s New Comedian of the Year — was raised, in her own words, “wrapped in bubble wrap made of good intentions”, encouraged to think independently, but protected to the point of helplessness. This show is her escape route.
From India to Dubai to accidental adulthood, Hellarious is a loose, scathing coming-of-age show about divorce, dating, Muslim guilt (or the lack of it) and why turbulence on a flight still makes her recite prayers she doesn’t fully understand. “That’s cultural faith. It’s in me. I don’t even know what it means. But I trust it,” she says.
Expect sharp observations on modern life, internet culture, relationships and faith, peeling back the assumptions of both east and west with wit and bite. “I don’t really do ‘representation’ comedy,” Abbas says. “I just talk about my life.”
Hellarious is on until 25 August at 8pm in Bothie at Gilded Balloon Patter House.
