"Sadly for everyone involved, Abu Abdullah's career as a drug dealer-turned-Muslim-turned ISIS fighter didn't prepare him for the complexities of a theological discussion with visiting aliens. Then he remembers his copy of Islam for Dummies …"

There are few sacred cows in the robust, rollicking world of Arab satire and certainly no one – no sect, no dictator and no country – escapes the sharp eye of blogger Karl Sharro, author of the above passage about a foreign ISIS fighter who's not sure about the difference between the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam.

Sharro, or @KarlreMarks as he is known to his 60,000 Twitter followers, is a London-based Lebanese architect whose biting satirical blog takes on some of the Middle East's – and Western journalism's – most well-worn cliches.

From tribal and religious tensions to the predictable brutality of Arab dictators, Sharro shines a light on the absurdity of the West's enduring misunderstanding of the Middle East amidst the Arab revolutions and their aftermath.

Like many other satirists, he has also turned his attention to the Islamic State – the violent, self-declared "caliphate" that now holds vast swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq.

"I look at what is particularly problematic about [IS]," Sharro says. "There are a lot of Western jihadists who cannot speak Arabic and suddenly throw themselves in this situation that they do not understand … this is a very specific thing about [IS], not excluding its irrationality and contradictions."

For Sharro, it's not enough just to be funny. "I also want to make people think and to be subversive … yes I am mocking ISIS or a dictator ... but it all depends how it is done and how you build the narrative, because it can easily get lost in the sea of banality."

Despite common misconceptions, it's not all religion, wars and tribal conflicts in the Middle East, Sharro says. Humour and satire are as much a part of Arab life as living and breathing.

Everyday discussions have traditionally "not been respectful of social mores or religious sensibilities, and even looking back to the spoken language in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, blasphemy is just a normal thing that is used on a daily basis," he says.

This has changed in the last 10 to 15 years as a new wave of conservatism puts pressure on people to be more respectful, but that does not mean the language has not remained critical and challenging of these new social norms, he says.

To many in the West it appears that the birth of Arab satire coincided with the birth of the Islamic State, but this could not be further from reality, says Jonathan Guyer, a Cairo-based fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs.

"As anyone who has spent time in Egypt knows, humour is just a part of daily life … jokes are currency here in Egypt," he says.

"The one thing I find really singular in Egypt is this kind of black humour … in any of the myriad of tragedies that occur there is often a punchline that quickly follows, there's never an 'is this too soon?' moment."

So are there any red lines?

"Religion is not a red line, which goes to contradict the so-called logic of Western analysts," Guyer says. "Religion is joked about constantly, although there are certain parts of religion that no one is going to do a satire about, perhaps no one would satirise a call to prayer in public, but in private … maybe," he says.

IS attracts its share of sustained attention – in cartoons, on YouTube and on satirical sketch shows made for television across the Arab world.

"There are quite a lot of political cartoons lampooning ISIS and their interpretation of Islamic texts, their self-proclaimed righteousness and most of all their wanton violence," Guyer says.

"It is absolutely a trend in cartooning across the region and … I do see cartoons and satire as performing a kind of symbolic violence, a way of dismantling the legitimacy of ISIS and other groups like al-Qaeda."

In one sketch, Sharro imagines the self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is confiding in his psychiatrist about his declaration of a caliphate that stretches from Syria into Iraq.

"Caliph Ibrahim: I am wondering if I rushed into this.

Psychiatrist: Take it step by step, remember the exercises that we did. Break problems into smaller pieces that you can manage.

Caliph Ibrahim: I keep wondering if I should get a turban. One of those big ones in mauve or pistachio, with a silver clip. Would I look ridiculous in that?"

The movement of satirists – cartoonists, bloggers, comedians and actors – who are mocking IS is, Sharro says, "part of the struggle of modernisation [across the Middle East] that has never stopped".

But conditions for satirists are tougher today than they were in, say, the 1960s, when "in a perverse way there was way much more freedom to do these things".

In the besieged Gaza Strip – with its borders mostly locked down by Israel and Egypt, ravaged by three wars with Israel and a debilitating political impasse between Hamas and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority – five young performers are making their mark in the world of Arab satire.

Mahmoud Zuaiter, Thaer Moneer, Hisham Adnan, Ibrahim Khalil and Ahmad Abu Assi have been working together since 2009 and broadcast their first video in 2011.

Known as Bas Ya Zalma – slang in Gaza for "stop it, man" – one of the group's best-known skits features Mahmoud Zuaiter standing between two cars, where he performs the epic "Jean Claude Van Damme split".

As the camera pans out, the punchline is revealed – his co-comedians are pushing both cars because there is always an extreme shortage of petrol in Gaza.

"It is very important to have comedy in any society and it is more significant in the societies that are struggling and suffering," says Adnan.

"Comedy has a power that can change any community," he says. "If we look at Egypt, [talk show host] Bassem Youssef was one of the reasons that led to the downfall of the [Mubarak] regime [in 2011]."

People in Gaza are lost in a sea of problems, Adnan says, facing hours each day without electricity and critical shortages of gas and fuel.

"In this life, comedy can be as big as tragedy … and we in the Gaza Strip are in bad need of it – we succeed despite a lack of resources, because people need to laugh."

Beyond the contemporary inspiration of Bassem Youssef, the five also admire the British silent film star Charlie Chaplin: "He made people laugh without saying a word, silent comedy is the hardest and the model we hope to use to reach the same popularity".

Adnan says the group mostly addresses social topics and avoids politics wherever possible – "people are fed up with it" – while they treat the issue of religion with sensitivity. They have not, so far, had any problems with Hamas, the Islamist group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.

For now the five are creating their new television series amid the devastation of last year's war in Gaza, in which 2205 Palestinians and 73 Israelis died and at least 18,000 homes were destroyed and critical infrastructure across Gaza was irreparably damaged.

In Gaza, comedy is drawn, as it is the world over, from a deep reservoir of personal and often traumatic experiences.

Cartoonist Amro Selim is famous for his gift with a punchline and was one of the first caricaturists to draw the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The 52-year-old has been drawing since 1988, and in 2004 he broke new ground when he created the caricature section for al-Dustour newspaper.

"It was the new era of caricature in Egypt, it was the first time we could openly attack and use satire on the government," he remembers.

Cartooning in Egypt had fallen stagnant after the Camp David Accords – signed by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in 1978 – when the country's newspapers succumbed to rampant nationalism, Selim says.

"Eventually some private newspapers started appearing – they were very strong and well received by the people, they were openly against corruption and against Islamism, so I started caricature there [at al-Dustour] with around 10 artists who were drawing in Egyptian newspapers for the first time."

The nationalist newspapers were forced to retaliate with their own caricaturists, Selim says. "We were attacking the regime – Egypt had dubbed itself as democratic, so it had to have freedom of speech."

As Egyptians gathered in their tens of thousands in Tahrir Square to call for the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in January 2011, it was Selim's caricatures people enlarged and made into huge posters for the protests. "The caricatures played a very big role in the revolution," he recalls.

But in Egypt today, it is difficult to know where the red line is between caricature and crime. Just this week an Egyptian was sentenced to three years in jail for drawing Mickey Mouse ears on a photograph of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and posting it on Facebook. The charge: "Attempting to overthrow the regime."

Or as Karl Sharro put it last year: "In a radical move aimed at stopping the misuse of language to tarnish the country's image abroad, Egyptian authorities today announced a radical new initiative to cut down the number of letters in the alphabet.

"The National Linguistic Transition Program is the first initiative of its kind anywhere in the world, and will see the alphabet gradually reduced to the letters S and I only."

with Hazem Balousha