Taqwacore

This article is about the music movement. For other uses, see Taqwacore (disambiguation).

Taqwacore is a subgenre of punk music dealing with Islam and its culture, originally conceived in Michael Muhammad Knight's 2003 novel, The Taqwacores. The name is a portmanteau of hardcore and the Arabic word Taqwa, which is usually translated as "piety" or the quality of being "God-fearing", and thus roughly denotes fear and love of the divine. The scene is composed mainly of young Muslim artists living in the US and other western countries, many of whom openly reject traditionalist interpretations of Islam.

History

Although Muslim punk music dates at least to the 1979 founding of British band Alien Kulture,^[1], Fearless Iranians from Hell are one of the earliest Muslim Punk bands from the United States, hailing from San Antonio Texas.^[2] In the 90's, Nation Records act Fun-Da-Mental and Asian Dub Foundation emerged solidifying the first examples of US Muslim generated punk. In an interview, Aki Nawaz, founder of Nation Records, stated that "Islam for me was more punk than punk" ^[3] Knight's novel was instrumental in encouraging the growth of a contemporary North American Muslim punk movement ^[4]

The first bands to use the term taqwacore are The Kominas, Vote Hezbollah and the Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate.^[5] Other bands on the scene include Diacritical, Secret Trial Five, Noble Drew and Fedayeen.

• A group of self identified taqwacore bands traveled in a caravan style tour around the United States as a sort of self re-creation of Michael Muhammad Knights original novel in 2007. This was the basis of the documentary on the movement. Bands that appeared in the film are:

• The Kominas members. The Kominas is a Pakistani punk band from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Members:
  • Basim Usmani (bass and vocals)
  • Shahjehan Khan (guitar and vocals)
  • Arjun Ray (guitar and vocals)
  • Imran Malik (drums)
• Al-Thawra, heavy metal Arab band from Chicago featuring Marwan
• Diacritical
• Vote Hezbollah, fronted by Kourosh, an Iranian from San Antonio
• Secret Trial Five an all-female Canadian punk rock band fronted by Sena, a Pakistani lesbian from Vancouver

Secret Trial Five, however, recently stated that they do not associate with being taqwacore:

"the band has been identified as being part of a genre called “taqwacore”, but they now actively reject that association, as it not : only limits them, but also, taqwacore has caused a racist, islamophobic and sensationalist media frenzy. it has also been wrongly : reported that the inspiration behind secret trial five are the writings of michael muhammad knight: which is false…" ^[6]

There is not a definitive "taqwacore sound", and the scene is much more diverse now (2010) than the fictional one portrayed in Knight's novel, with artists incorporating various styles, ranging from punk to hip-hop, and musical traditions from the Muslim world; the Kominas describe their sound as "Bollywood punk", Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate are rap and techno inspired music while Al-Thawra uses the term "raicore", based on North African Arabic Raï music.^{[citation needed]}

In Popular Culture

• The Taqwacore genre was popularized through different forms of media, starting with Michael Muhammad Nights novel The Taqwacores

• Michael Muhammad Knight continued his penmanship through his other novels including Blue Eyed Devil, The Five Percenters, Osama Van Halen, Impossible Man, Journey to the End of Islam, Why I am a Five Percenter, and his future book titled William S. Burroughs vs. the Qur'an.

• After gaining international popularity, a Documentary was produced by Omar Majeed following Michael Muhammad Knight and a group of taqwacore bands on their tour across the United State, and eventually Pakistan.

• A film by Eyad Zahra was released in 2010 under the same title. The film stared famous actress Noureen DeWulf.

The Kominas appeared in the film Slackistan, which was later banned in Pakistan.

Links to the Novels

The Taqwacores is about punk Islam where Michael Muhammad Knight imagined a community of Muslim radicals: mohawked Sufis, riot grrrls in burqas with band patches, skinhead Shi’as, but didn't limit the term taqwacore to only these groups.

The concept of an individual's Islam is historically popular with Sufism and was solidified in a new American style with the publication of Michael Muhammad Knight's novel. The novel focus's on a household of individual "punk" characters who live their lives according to their own interpretation of Islam.

"I stopped trying to define Punk around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren't so far removed as

you'd think. Both begain in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality but seem to have lost something along the way--the

energy, perhaps, that comes with knowing the world has never seen such positive force and fury and never would again.

Both have suffered from sell-outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion had crippled their

creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing can be further from the

truth." ^[7]

One fictitious character in the novel named Fasiq, an Indonesian Muslim, openly smokes cannabis while reading the Quran. His personal interpretation of Surat Al-Hijr is that the smoking of cannabis is permissible in Islam. Ayats 19 and 20 state:

"And the earth - We have spread it and cast therein firmly set mountains and caused to grow therein [something] of every

well-balanced thing.

And We have made for you therein means of living and [for] those for whom you are not providers." ^[8]

In the novel, Fasiq determines that since Allah sent down everything that is well ballanced, and that humans can use them, cannabis is well balanced and permissible. ^[9]

Many band members in the recent documentary "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam" can be seen smoking hashish while in Pakistan. ^[10]

Disenchantment

With bands reporting disenchantment with the role of taqwacore in their lives, the author himself wrote of confusion and self disenchantment in his book titled "Osama Van Halen" where he writes himself as a fictional character.

"Michael Muhammad Knight then looked at Amazing Ayyub and immediately, clearly, understood him to be the last lonely survivor of an extinct race"

"Amazing Ayyub made his niyya, read Ya Sin, and vanished. Beyond its function as an invisibility spell, Ya Sin doubled as a prayer for the dead and dying." ^[11]

"Our relationship with the taqwacore thing has been fairly unsteady. While we did participate in a lot of the media surrounding it, we didn't start out as a "taqwacore" band, because the project was already underway before I even had any idea that such a thing existed. We were hesitant to use the term, and reluctantly accepted it later on, only to be disillusioned again."

-Marwan from Athawra in an email conversation.

The Kominas, while still labeled taqwacore, have expressed discontent with their reviews focusing on the Muslim aspect of their music instead of aesthetics or politics ^[12]

Messages

Taqwacore as coined had a definite bond with Islam, Progressive Islam and Islam and Anarchism. Many of the members of Taqwacore bands are Muslims, through their own interpretations of the religion. Some members, however, are not Muslim. The overarching theme of individual interpretation, as well as a break from Imams, Mainstream Islam, and Classical interpretations of the Qur'an are very prevalent in the music.

Some bands have bent or broken this initial tie with the overarching theme of Taqwacore, as their music deals with more issues than simply Islamic interpretation. Much of Taqwacore is rooted in the spirit of Punk: that of rebellion, political commentary, activism, and more.

• One of the most famous taqwacore bands, they have reached the digital ears of people all over the world^[13], and have become interests of many academic articles and press.

• Wendy Hsu writes that "Over-emphasizing the band members as “Muslim”, the press has overlooked the non-Islamic sides of the band’s music, image, and membership." ^[14]
• She also writes that taqwacore is not limited to music but is "forming a network of friends, artists, bloggers, filmmakers, and other enthusiasts around the self-identified label of taqwacore."^[15]

"Anyway, initially, "raicore" was a term that I came up with for Al-Thawra's music and put on our first Myspace page back in 2006, because I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. Rai seemed like a natural place for this music to exist, because it was born from similar social phenomena. Our music is something that is of diaspora, with a mentality, identity crisis/allegiance, and musical texture that is caught somewhere between East and West and really belonging to neither. In some ways, Rai and early Chaabi, folk music from Wahran was very influential to me, because it was true people's music. It came from the ports, from the marginalized elements of society in a multicultural city, it spoke of socially taboo subjects. In a sense it was real rebel music. I was very influenced by that and, as delusional as this may sound, is something that I hope to speak to when I started out on this project."

-Marwan from Athawra in an email conversation.

See also

• Taqwa
• Punk Rock

References

1. ^ Manzoor, Sarfraz (10 January 2010), "Whatever happened to that Asian punk band?", The Guardian (London), http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/10/alien-kulture-asian-punk-band, retrieved 10 January 2010 
2. ^ http://taqwacore.wordpress.com/
3. ^ Saini, Angela (2004), "“Islam for me was more punk than punk”: Aki Nawaz interviewed", openDemocracy (www.openDemocracy.net) 
4. ^ Knight, Michael Muhammad (2007), Blue-eyed Devil, Autonomedia, ISBN 978-1593762407 
5. ^ http://www.mideastyouth.com/2009/09/09/sagg/
6. ^ http://www.secrettrialfive.com/about-us/
7. ^ Knight, Michael Muhammad (2004), The Taqwacores, Soft Skull Press, ISBN 978-1-59376-229-2 
8. ^ http://quran.com/15
9. ^ Knight, Michael Muhammad (2004), The Taqwacores, Soft Skull Press, ISBN 978-1-59376-229-2 
10. ^ http://www.taqwacore.com/
11. ^ Knight, Michael Muhammad (2009), Osama Van Halen, Soft Skull Press, ISBN 978-1-59376-242-1 
12. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/12/entertainment/et-muslim-punk12
13. ^ http://beingwendyhsu.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/kominasmap3.html
14. ^ http://norient.com/en/video/taqwacore/
15. ^ http://norient.com/en/video/taqwacore/

External links

• Taqwacore Webzine
• "Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book", New York Times, Dec 2008
• "Islamic Street Preachers: From Boston to Lahore & Beyond", Guardian, April 2007
• Photography by Kim Badawi on Taqwacore, Pangea Magazine
• The Taqwacores (book) webpage at Autonomedia
• "Muhammad Rocked the Casbah by Lydia Craft", "Texas Observer"
• Official Website
• [1]