HAVE you heard the one about the Muslim who wakes up one day to discover he is a Jew? Some of Britain's best-known comedy writers risk causing offence by lampooning radical Islam on the big screen.
David Baddiel, the Jewish-born comedian, and Chris Morris, the humorist behind Brass Eye, Channel 4's controversial satire, are both launching films that mock suicide bombers and extremists.
The plot of Baddiel's film, The Infidel, which will be released in April, revolves around a Muslim family man, played by Omid Djalili, the comedian, who suffers an identity crisis when he finds out that he was adopted after being born to Jewish parents.
Much of the humour stems from his strained dealings with a bigoted fundamentalist relative called Arshad al-Masri who becomes the film's "cartoon villain".
In one scene, Djalili's character refers to him as "Arshad al-f****** Stalin", while his four-year-old daughter interrupts dinner in another scene by shouting: "We are all members of Hezbollah now."
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Baddiel, who wrote the script, admits the subject matter is "explosive" but insists he has not deliberately set out to provoke controversy.
"I think this whole area is one that has been left barren comically because people are frightened of giving offence. They are frightened of talking about Islam, about religion and about offending people. My instinct is, if something is not being talked about, then I want to examine it."
The Infidel has been sold to 40 overseas territories and its backers have applied for lottery funding from the UK Film Council to ensure it gets the widest possible cinema release in Britain.
Haras Rafiq, director of Centri, an anti-extremist consultancy, said: "The majority of Muslims will laugh and see the film for what it is. But it is likely that some fundamentalist groups will raise a campaign against it - they will see it as a personal attack on their faith."
Morris's movie, Four Lions, will be screened for the first time on Saturday at the Sundance film festival in Utah. Backed by Channel 4, it follows the exploits of a hapless gang of terrorists from the north of England whose plan to launch a suicide attack on the eve of the millennium is foiled at the 11th hour.
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Its plot has echoes of the four suicide bombers, three of them from Leeds, who killed 52 commuters in London in July 2005.
Earlier this month, Jihad! the Musical, a satire on the war on terror, opened in London's West End. The show, which includes the songs Building a Bomb Today and Jihad Jive, involves a terrorist plot to blow up a UK target known as the "unidentified, very prestigious landmark".