Hit comedy on Iraqi TV depicts ISIS as child of Satan and a Jewish woman

This is Iraq under a future Islamic state, as imagined in “State of Superstition,” a hit comedy on state-run Al Iraqiya TV. The half-hour show turns a deadly serious subject — the reign of terror imposed by the extremist group Islamic State in parts of Iraq and Syria — into fodder for spoof and satire.

The Beheader character is a comic takedown of Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph and Islamic State leader. An actor in a preposterously long and tangled fake beard — one of a couple of dozen fake beards glued on to characters each episode by an overworked makeup artist — plays him as a slogan-spewing buffoon.

The show takes enormous risks in the name of satire in a country where Islamic State has tortured and killed Iraqis and set off car bombs that have killed hundreds of people.

“Making a comedy about Islamic State is like trying to defuse a bomb,” said Thair Chiad, the show’s urbane writer and creator. “One mistake and you die.”