philosufi

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam

How can we NOT love this film? We’re both in it. No, seriously, we are! Okay, just barely: you can see the backs of our heads in some of the scenes of Michael Muhammad Knight’s reading at The Gladstone in Toronto in early 2009. Director Omar Majeed was there, too, showing some scenes from the then-unfinished version of Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a documentary that was released in late 2009. We were thrilled to see those scenes then and couldn’t wait to see the finished film, which we did last year.  It's gotten very strong, even stellar, reviews. It's still making the rounds on the festival circuit and tomorrow night, it premieres on the Documentary Channel.

Almost any discussion of this documentary has to start out by distinguishing this film from the very similarly-titled drama The Taqwacores: The Movie, which came out this year. That movie, directed by Eyad Zahra, is based on the 2003 novel The Taqwacores, by Michael Muhammad Knight, which imagined and then spawned a Muslim punk scene…which is what Canadian director Omar Majeed then made his documentary about. Got that? Good.

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam looks at the very marginal subculture that sprung to life after Knight self-published his provocative novel, a book he says he wrote “from a place of extreme loneliness,” several years ago. Majeed focuses the film around the experiences of Knight and a band called The Kominas (“scumbags” in Punjabi). The first half of the film follows them as they set out on a old school bus to tour around the US, meeting up with the members of the widely scattered North American Muslim punk movement (Secret Trial Five, Al-Thawra, Diacritical, Vote Hezbollah) and doing shows on what was called The Taqwatour. The climax of the first half is their performance at an Islamic Society of North America annual conference, which is met mostly with the disapprobation of the organizers, although some of the audience members are receptive. The ISNA organizers object primarily to the performance of Secret Trial Five, whose lead singer is a woman, Sena Hussain. Apparently one of the main policies for musical performances at ISNA conferences is “no female singers” (whether or not they’re in hijab).  The ISNA people finally call in the police, and the bands choose to leave, chanting “Pigs are haram in Islam!” rather than get arrested.

In the film’s second half, Basim Usmani of the Kominas goes to Pakistan, and eventually Knight and Usmani's bandmate Shahjehan Khan haul themselves to Pakistan, too. Khan and Usmani start a band called Noble Drew and try to unleash their brand of punk in a Muslim country with varying results. They explore some of the many expressions of Islam in Pakistan (specifically, Lahore), visiting Sufi shrines and a Shi’a mosque, taking part in a ritual that I’m fairly sure is connected to the mourning of Ashura. Knight travels by himself back to Islamabad, to revisit the Faisal Mosque where he spent time as a teenage convert, getting enough Wahhabi indoctrination to push him almost completely out of the religion. In Lahore, Noble Drew tries to put on a concert that quickly gets shut down, and they struggle to figure out how to connect with audiences in Pakistan. A local friend explains, “In order to make a difference in someplace, you first have to be absorbed in it. That takes time.”

They finally decide to put on a free show on a rooftop overlooking both the beautiful Badshahi Mosque and Lahore’s red light district—one can hardly think of a more perfect location. It’s not easy to get people interested. Someone in the film describes the way musical appreciation tends to fall along class lines in Pakistan: pop music is for the rich people, traditional music is for the poor. And who even knows what the hell this Muslim punk thing is? Noble Drew and their supporters are trying to reach anybody/everybody, and it’s not easy. But they finally manage to attract a pretty enthusiastic crowd to the free concert, and give a really successful, well-received show, which forms the climax for this half.

The juxtaposition of the two very different cultures and worldviews works well, I think; on some level, it’s kind of amusing how uptight and/or ambivalent the North American ISNA scene is, contrasted with how receptive and open the Pakistani audience is. Everything and everyone in the film underlines how complex, how multifaceted, how diverse Islam really is—and you’re only seeing a small fragment of that diversity in this movie. There isn’t just one kind of Muslim, no matter what certain mullahs and media outlets would have you believe. There isn't only one right or good way to be Muslim. And no matter how much cognitive dissonance the notion of Muslim punk might evoke, it still exists. As Knight says at one point, people should understand that “in the so-called war of civilizations, we’re pointing the middle finger in both directions.” Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam looks at some of the challenges in getting that message out there.

The one criticism I think I would make of the film is that as a Muslim woman I would like to have seen and heard a little bit more from the women in the Muslim punk scene. Sena Hussain, the lead singer of Secret Trial Five, gets to talk and sing a bit, and I realize there aren't a ton of women putting out Muslim punk music, but we could have heard more from the female fans, especially the women at the basement concerts and so on. However transgressive it may be for the men involved in Muslim punk, it’s more transgressive for the women. I think there would have been room for it in the film; it’s certainly not overly long at 79 minutes and it’s consistently engaging.

Anyway. I’ve gone on a bit longer than I meant to, but I really enjoyed this film and I want to encourage you to see it. If you’ve got the Documentary Channel (US version), it’s on Saturday, October 23, at 8 p.m. Join the film’s Facebook page to be kept abreast of festival screenings and other opportunities to see it. As Knight says in the film, “There is a cool Islam. You just have to find it. You have to sift through all the other stuff, but it’s there.”

 

Moschee Baba: Shooting Muslims & Minarets for Political Gain in Austria

Austria has up to 500,000 Muslims and 200 mosques. Three of them – in Vienna, Bad Vöslau, and Telfs – have minarets. Accordingly, Austria's far right Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Heinz-Christian Strache, and Gerhard Kurzmann, the party's candidate in the province of Styria, have released a video game called Moschee Baba (Bye Bye Mosque). Moschee Baba encourages you to shoot – excuse me, stop the building of – minarets and Muslims. Since one doesn't really stop the building of people, and the targeting circle looks pretty much like, well, a target, it's easy to understand why I was confused when I first saw it. That, and the red Stop sign that follows when you pull the trigger kinda makes you think of blood.

Speaking of blut und ehre, the right-wing party's new election campaign poster series calls for "Mehr Mut für unser 'Wiener Blut' - Zu viel Fremdes tut niemandem gut," meaning "More Courage for our 'Viennese Blood' – too many foreigners does no one any good." This apparently rhymes pretty well, and is not racist or xenophobic at all, no sirree bob. It's simply a shout out to Johann Strauss' music for Wiener Blut, or for the less culturally sophisticated amongst us (i.e. me), Falco (+2 for the fish ties, Der Kommissar). Because really, there's nothing more authentically Austrian than Strauss and Falco. (BTW, despite the Nazi overtones of racial purity, I can't stop snickering at the phrase "Weiner Blut.")

Quite a while back, the FPÖ used the slogan "Daham statt Islam," which translates as "(at) Home, no Islam." Over one-fifth of the Muslims in Austria are Turks, so the slogan efficiently mixes racism and Islamophobia. Charming bunch of folks, the FPÖ. They are well-practiced demagogues who are predicted to gain much more than their 2005 showing of 14.8% in the October 10 Vienna election.

Vienna is a city of migrants, so in reality, Weiner Blut has been salmagundi for hundreds of years. It's said that every other household has at least one member of a migrant background. But just like the much-loved fictions of race and racial purity, the fiction of Wiener Blut holds strong. And why shouldn't it? Thinking somehow you're different and special lets you blame others for your own shortcomings, and once you get rid of those thieving, scheming Turks / Muslims / Jews / Blacks / Gypsies / Catholics / Hmong / Mormons / Hatfields / McCoys / etc., all will return to Utopia once again.

There's a lot of outrage around the now-offline game. The Moschee Baba site now has a still of a frightened cartoon Muslim, followed by a Get Ready graphic where the sun symbolically rises over the dark night in (presumably) Styria. Just when you think you can lock and load, a note comes up to let you know, dear visitor, that interference by political opponents resulted in the banning of the game, but you can decide on September 26. There are quite a view YouTube videos showing "walkthroughs" of the game; don't ask me to explain the soundtracks.

At the end of the 60 seconds of "play" a message pops up stating "Game Over. Styria is now full of minarets and mosques! So that this does not happen, on September 26 choose Dr. Gerhard Kurzmann and the FPO!" It's not all politics; they do tell you your score. But clearly you cannot win without voting for the gut doktor.

The Ornament of the (Virtual) World: Second Life’s Al-Andalus

 

I am not a gamer. I say that with no arrogance or judgment. I learned, from alarmingly strong (albeit thankfully short-lived) addictions to things as simple as Tetris, Solitaire, FreeCell, Minesweeper, Wolfenstein (yeah, I’m old), and various word games that I am far too inclined to spend too much time that I simply don't have in such pursuits. I just have to stay away from such things. I don’t have enough discipline to devote only small amounts of time to them, to spend just a few minutes taking a mental break. No, I start playing and three hours later, I feel I have nothing to show for my time. (Strangely, I don’t feel this way if I spend, say, nearly three hours playing real-world Scrabble.) Knowing this about myself, I have always been too nervous to explore virtual worlds, computer role-playing games, etc., fearing I would never again get anything done in the “real” world.

So of course I was especially intrigued to discover an article called "Al-Andalus 2.0" in the July/August issue of Saudi Aramco World (a very well-produced print magazine that is always full of interesting and original stories, and which will give you a subscription free for the asking) about the virtual community of Al-Andalus in the 3D online game Second Life. The article is written by Joshua Fouts, the Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a non-partisan NGO, who did a study with Rita J. King (whose list of roles is too long and varied to include here) called “Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds”.

King and Fouts chose to look at Second Life for various reasons, including the fact that it is completely user-created, it is the largest of the virtual worlds, and the vast majority (more than 70%) of its users are from outside the US. Given my ongoing interest in interreligious encounter and dialogue, one of the things I found most compelling about their research is this:

In our study, we learned that the more time that users invest in their Second Life experiences, the more they come to express high degrees of creativity and understanding of each other.

Apparently, in the Second Life community of Al-Andalus, hundreds of users from all over the world are exploring modern-day manifestations of convivencia, a term that evokes the predominantly creative and peaceful coexistence of Jews, Christians,and Muslims that once prevailed in medieval Spain under Muslim rule. We are reminded, however, in a 2009 lecture by Islamic studies scholar Dr. Franz Volker Greifenhagen of the University of Regina, that convivencia is often “romanticized and idealized” and that “this age was also characterized by violence and conflict.” He sees convivencia, therefore, as describing “not just the co-operative, but also the conflicting co-existence of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities.”

I suspect this is an accurate characterization of the tensions present in Second Life’s Al-Andalus. While the Saudi Aramco World article paints a very positive picture of convivencia in the game, the short video documentary the researchers made about it (see below) suggests that there are significant interreligious and intrareligious tensions: the video makes mention of one player’s avatar, who is perpetually upset about visitors to the virtual mosque who don’t remove their shoes, and wants to ban them from the simulation. Other players oppose his wishes.

I was also fascinated to read, for example, that one player from Singapore performs some of the optional prayers (known as nawafil) in La Mezquita, the virtual mosque. There’s obviously a great deal going on within this game; the video doc (below) gives a taste of what it must be like.

I am definitely captivated. But when I’m two weeks away from starting my honours thesis, it’s probably not the time to start exploring virtual life. On the other hand, my thesis is on multiple religious belonging, so maybe I can work SL’s Al-Andalus into it somehow…

Qur'anicidal Maniacs

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823 

Likely you've heard about the uninspired plans of a Florida-based (and comically named) church, the Dove World Outreach Center, to commemorate September 11 by burning Qur'ans. As a bonus for the haters, many Muslims around the world will be celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr (the three-day feast marking the end of Ramadan) on or around September 11. So this Qur'an-burning oughta learn them nasty Moozlims--in much the same way that flipping the bird as you speed past the guy who just cut you off invariably teaches him a lesson, too. No, all it will do is inflame not just some copies of a holy book but the passions of many believers--not just in the Qur'an, but in freedom of speech and religion. The predictable denunciations will issue from all quarters (here's the mayor of Gainesville calling the DWOC a "tiny fringe group and an embarrassment to our community." Saudi Arabia and Iran will probably instigate boycotts of citrus fruit and pink flamingoes. And so on. Hate, ignorance, and conflict FTW!

Recently, I was rambling to my husband about how best our community can respond to these kinds of haters. Naturally, I feared replays of responses to previous controversies and offenses: The Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, the teddy bear named Muhammad...sigh. CAIR issued a release urging Muslims to use the month of Ramadan to share the Qur'an with others by gving away copies and donating money to that cause, and to hold iftars (fast-breaking meals) at which such copies are presented to various members of local communities. A nice enough idea, and I note that the translation they've chosen for this initiative is Muhammad Asad's, which pleases me. (I would be more impressed if they'd chosen Laleh Bakhtiar's translation, the only currently available complete English translation by a woman that I know of, but you know, baby steps...)

My idea was that we should respond by designating September 11 as a day to mutually venerate/share/learn from scriptures of all faiths and to develop events around this notion. I know perfectly well that many of my co-religionists will not be able to bring themselves to be quite this religiously pluralistic, but at the very least, Muslims need to be able to honour and respect the Torah and the Gospels, as we are commanded to do. And I know the anti-religionists will obviously not get on board this train, either. But peoples of faiths vastly outnumber those who feel otherwise, so it still seems to me there's a large pool of potential participants on which to draw. Local groups could develop events in whichever way seems most appropriate and relevant for their community.

And I figured that social media would be the easiest and most obvious way to get such a campaign off the ground, although I knew before I even spoke the words that I did not personally have time to commit to such a project. Fortunately, others are on the same wavelength and have started a Facebook campaign: National Don't Burn A Quran, Read a Bible, a Torah, and a Quran Day! (Exclamation mark is theirs, btw.) I would have preferred that the initiative included scriptures beyond those of the Abrahamic faiths, but again, baby steps...it seems worth supporting. Perhaps it will get a fraction of the media traction that the Qur'an-burners have, but I won't hold my breath.

I'll leave you with this funny little bit from Maniac Muslim: Burn a Qur’an Day Fails Miserably.