Young US Muslims rediscover identity via underground book

Young US Muslims rediscover identity via underground book

By Christopher Maag

Cleveland: Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called "The Taqwacores," about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo.

"This book helped me create my identity," said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Connecticut.

A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. "When I finally read the book for myself," she said, "it was an amazing experience."

The novel is The Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims, said Carl W Ernst, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

Now the underground success of Muslim punk has resulted in a low-budget independent film based on the book.

A group of punk artists living in a communal house in Cleveland called the Tower of Treason offered the house as the set for the movie.. The movie will be released next year, said Eyad Zahra, the director.Filming took place in October, and the movie will be released next year, said Eyad Zahra, the director.

"To see these characters that used to live only inside my head out here walking around, and to think of all these kids living out parts of the book, it's totally surreal," Muhammad Knight, 31, said as he roamed the movie set.

The novel's title combines “taqwa”, the Arabic word for "piety," with "hardcore," which is used to describe many genres of angry Western music.

For many young American Muslims, stigmatised by their peers after the September 11 attacks but repelled by both the Bush administration's reaction to the attacks and the rigid conservatism of many Muslim leaders, the novel became a blueprint for their lives.

The novel's Muslim characters include Rabeya, a riot girl who plays guitar onstage wearing a burqa and leads a group of men and women in prayer. There is also Fasiq, a pot-smoking skater, and Jehangir, a drunk.

Such acts -- playing Western music, women leading prayer, men and women praying together, drinking, smoking-- are considered haram, or forbidden, by millions of Muslims.

Knight was born an Irish Catholic in upstate New York and converted to Islam as a teenager. He studied at a mosque in Pakistan but became disillusioned with Islam and wrote "The Taqwacores" to mend the rift between his being an observant Muslim and an angry American youth. He found validation in the life of Muhammad, who instructed people to ignore their leaders, destroy their petty deities and follow only Allah.

After reading the novel, many Muslims e-mailed Knight, asking for directions to the next Muslim punk show. When thay were told that no such bands existed, some of them created their own, with names like Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five. One band, the Kominas, wrote a song called Suicide Bomb the Gap, which became Muslim punk rock's first anthem.

Hanan Arzay, 15, is a daughter of Muslim immigrants from Morocco who lives in East Islip, New York. In the months after the September 11 attacks, pedestrians threw eggs and coffee cups at the van that transported her to a Muslim school. At school, her Koran teacher threw chalk at her for requesting literal translations of the holy book. After she was expelled from two Muslim schools, her uncle gave her "The Taqwacores."

"This book is my lifeline," Arzay said. "It saved my faith."

Note from Wikipedia: The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight is the author's debut novel, depicting a fictitious Islamic punk rock scene. The title is a portmanteau of taqwa, an Islamic concept of love and fear for Allah, and Hardcore, the punk rock subgenre. Taqwacore thus refers to a genre of Muslim punk rock, existing only in the novel at the time of its writing, but since emerging as an actual genre, inspiring taqwacore bands such as the Kominas and Secret Trial Five. The novel has also been credited by Asra Nomani as first presenting her the idea for woman-led prayer, leading to a historic woman-led congregation on March 18, 2005.

Knight originally self-published The Taqwacores in DIY zine format, giving copies away for free until finding distribution with Alternative Tentacles, the punk record label founded by Jello Biafra. After receiving an endorsement from Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), the novel was published by radical press Autonomedia. A UK version is published by Telegram Books. In its Italian translation, the novel is retitled Islampunk.

The narrator of The Taqwacores, Yusuf Ali, is a Pakistani American engineering student from Syracuse, New York who lives off campus with a diverse group of Muslims in their house in Buffalo. Besides being their home, the house serves as a place to have punk parties and a place for Muslims not comfortable with the Muslim Student Association or local mosques to have Friday prayer.

In 2008, the book was made into a feature film by director Eyad Zahra starring actress Noureen DeWulf as Rabeya, actress Rasika Mathur as Fatima, and actor Bobby Naderi as Yusef. The film is expected to be released sometime in 2009.

Soft Skull Press is publishing the revised edition, which became available in December 2008.

Posted: Dec 25, 2008

URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-culture/young-muslims-rediscover-identity-via/d/1086