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Friday, 03 Sep 2010
Taqwacore: rise of the Muslim punks
I discovered Michael Muhammad Knight while searching for some obscure punk bands on the internet. Clicking through different portals, spam pages and search engines I ended up on a page that stated The Taqwacores, with a drawing of a bearded man with a Mohawk sitting in the jalsa position saying his prayers.
Muslim punks was a term I never thought I’d hear, but here it was, a fictitious manifesto depicting a person caught between rebellion and Islam, choosing both.
I got hold of the book and went through it within a day. The book is written well enough to keep you engrossed through to the end. The narrator of the book is a young engineering student who moves into a house full of muslim punks who party every night yet wake up to say their Fajr prayers in the morning.
Shocked, intrigued, I searched for more.
Where Knight’s first book on punk spoke about their day-to-day life and the setting up of a Woodstock of muslim punks, the second book talks about muslim punks is an entirely fictional piece featuring Knight himself and the real world taqwacore band The Kominas.
This book, while not as engaging as The Taqwacores, is a decent read. It follows one of the characters from the previous book, Amazing Ayyub, on a mission to kill a pop punk band who have taken the term muslim punk and turned it into a commercial venture.
Knight seems to know what he’s writing about, his experiences in Pakistan as a muslim and then moving back to the US after being advised not to leave for Jihad can be a possible explanation of him creating characters who look towards an Islam that is not limited to a geographical location.
The two books by Knight that I’ve read were an equally enlightening and shocking experience, and they would definitely be shocking for the majority of Muslims the world over, yet there is a quality to them which lends to re-affirming one’s faith. Overall, his writing style keeps you engaged and his works are curiously fictitious enough to be real.
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I don’t mean to be harsh, but Shaheryar Popalzai’s belated discovery of Muslim punks is a bit disconcerting – where exactly has he been living the last few years? Possibly a remote village in Tibet because Michael Muhammed Knight and The Taqwacores aren’t exactly recent enough to be news, nor are the comments made here providing any new insights into the Muslim punk scene to warrant prime space in the web pages of a frontline publication. In fact The Taqwacores is already a film (Sundance 2010) and the rise and rise of Muslim Punk (fact following fiction) has already been the focus of an in-depth documentary. The Kominas have been youtubing it for quite a while and been written about in everything from the New York Times to The Friday Times as well as music blogs. So I have no idea why the word “shocking” appears constantly in Shaheryar Popalzai’s post. As someone who is a writer for The Express Tribune, he seems to be a little behind the times. And journalists can’t afford that kind of luxury. We (and I speak as a member of the fraternity) should be perpetually on the brink of a story, not waking up to it several years later.
Hi Fifi,
I think you seem to have misunderstood this post. It is not a news piece, but rather a blog post about my experience with the books.
I could hardly think it was a news piece Shaheryar; but blogs need to be even more timely. If you intend to blog about “a past experience” you need to be far more explicit in contextualising it or relating it to a current thread or you will leave some of us very perplexed and responding vigorously on a sunday morning, when after going to a great concert the night before I should have only been doing one thing – sleeping in! Now that that is all sorted out, will look out for more of your writings on the music scene in Pakistan as living out of the country means I need to stay up to date through those of you who are experiencing it first-hand.
@Fifi
Believe me, Shaheryar knew about taqwacore and muslim punk WAY before anyone else did. But that is all a trivial discussion and beside the point.
@Jazid
Why bring it up then? Seriously. Your contribution here is to bring up a meaningless trivial point that only serves to big up your man?
and i’m fairly certain there are other people who knew about muslim punk and the taqwacores way before Shaheryar did.
just to contextualize your irrelevant point. which you brought up. despite it being irrelevant.
I just recently discovered Taqwacore myself, I’m surprised that I missed it actually. Couldyou tell me where you procured the book? Liberty Books doesn’t really carry controversial books like Trainspotting or Taqwacore. I love the movement because I identify with the confusion and lack of a proper identity, but The Komina’s music, too blasphemous, even for a half agnostic like me.
Hey Ghausia,
Very true about Liberty Books not carrying such books, but surprisingly I did find ‘Osama Van Halen’ at the store carefully tucked away between some books. They also had a couple of other Knight books they had sold out so I couldn’t get hold of those.
I got my book via Amazon, if you choose the quickest delivery method it ensures the book reaches you by giving you a tracking code. So you don’t hhave to worry about paying and losing the book.
As for your mention of The Kominas, absolutely right. The real world Taqwacore scene is nothing like the one in the book. Like I mentioned, the book was very enlightening for me, probably had the reverse effect rather than the one the author was trying to achieve. I hope you get hold of a copy and enjoy the book.
Oh wow, really? I’m surprised. Liberty’s really using its value for me, I had to get Trainspotting all the way from Dubai, thank God Borders had it. What I don’t understand is that real Taqwacore bands like The Kominas, they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong with their blasphemous lyrics. Half-agnostic I may be, but I respect every religion. The Dead Bhuttos, I like their single because of the message it conveys, more political than religious. I’ll check out Liberty else I’m ordering it off Amazon like you.