For years Sakdiyah Ma'ruf snuck around behind her parents' backs.

Her conservative Indonesian Muslim family would never have condoned her choice of career: comedian.

But her religion and her family's conservativism have helped shape Ma'ruf's unique brand of humour as Indonesia's first female Muslim stand-up.

"I was not allowed to go out of the house after school, I was not allowed to participate in any extra-curricular activities, let alone student organisations. I was not supposed to get to know members of the opposite sex," she told Lateline.

"I thought at one point, 'wow my Dad is such a great supporter of lesbianism'."

As Ma'ruf was making a name for herself doing stand-up shows and media interviews, she was also going to great lengths to hide her budding career from her father.

"My first appearance on national television my parents did not know about it. I was very lucky that my dad was abroad at that time," she said.

She said she was almost found out when the Sunday newspaper ran an interview with her and her photograph on their front page.

"They did not tell me they were going to run the story on the front page and so I freaked out when I saw my face on the front page of the Sunday newspaper and I just I was panicking," she said.

"I ran to the nearest newsstand and several other local stores to buy all the newspapers that they had to prevent my father from seeing that news."

Combining religion and humour

She has since broken the news to her parents and while they were disappointed she was not going to continue in her job at a university, they have accepted the decision.

Although she pokes fun at religious conservativism in her country, Ma'ruf says comedy actually helps her spiritual side — a fact she pointed out to one of her university lecturers.

"One of my supervisors quoted the Koran and said 'how can a Muslim do comedy? Because laughing can distract you from your focus, can distract you from worshipping god'," she said.

"I answer him by quoting another verse from the Koran that the one that knows him or herself the best is the one who will know his or her creator and that is the reason I do stand-up comedy.

"It helps me to get to know myself better, to get to know my society better and it helps me eventually to get to know God."

Ma'ruf's popularity has grown in Indonesia and on the international stage after she received last year's Oslo Freedom Forum's Vaclav Havel International prize for creative dissent.

Next month she is the star speaker at the Chaser Lecture in Sydney.