Christians Sing About Allah Too
The first time I blogged about The Kominas and The Taqwacores at Sepia Mutiny I made the mistaken comparison that the “Muslim Punk” of The Taqx was akin to the Christian Punk scene. In high school, my best friend was this crazy blond Christian listen to nothing but Christian punk songs. She was my association to the space. But it is a comparison for which Basim from The Kominas has never let me forget and one that I realize now is far from comparable of the two genres. I get it. I get it.
Christian Punk as a genre usually preaches the godliness of God through the music of punk. The Taqwacores, is barely “Muslim Punk” in that sense. It’s more a space for people to explore, debate, and discover the spiritual, political, and cultural contexts having a Muslim identity and that often can be mutually exclusive, or ridiculously muddy. Or on the flip side, it’s a space to explore what it means to be punk within the context of identifying spiritually, politically or culturally as Muslim or brown or curious. I get it. I get it. And now that I’m looking at Taqx from the inside out, I really see how no definition can succinctly capture what it means to be Taqwacore because it is constantly morphing and changing person to person, band to band. Taqx, unlike Christian punk, is the intersectionality of identity politics at it’s finest.
That being said…this month’s The Atlantic profiles a Philly based Christian post-punk band called me without You signed onto the Christian rock label Tooth & Nail.
Started in 2001, the band has released four albums, and morphed out of a straight-edge discovers Jesus type scene. They sound kind of like Sea Wolf, but campfire hokey like They Might Be Giants. My interest was peaked when I read the following: “…having spiraled along the spiritual trajectory of its mercurial singer, the band now wraps up its live set with what can only be described as a Sufi worship song: ‘In everyone we meet/Allah, Allah, Allah!/In everyone we meet.’”
That sounded quite similar to what I saw as a Five Percenter school of thought where they believe that Allah is in everyone. Men are called ‘God’ and women, well, women are called ‘Earth.’ But we’ll save that for another conversation. I was now officially curious in me without You (and selective capitalization reminds me of the capitalization of ‘no god but God’.)
Lyrics to Allah, Allah, Allah.
Turns out that the latest album, It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All A Dream! It’s Alright largely influenced by the sufi teachings of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. The album can be streamed entirely on their imeem site, and it’s kind of interesting to here songs peppered with Islamic phrases when this band has such a large Christian following. Another song on the album, Every Thought a Thought of You melds together Hewbrew phrases and “la illaha il Allah.” For the record, the Weiss brothers of the band were raised in a Sufi Islam household (Dad, a Jewish convert and Mom an Episopalian convert) and they doesn’t consider themselves a Christian band (says lead singer Adam Weiss, “I just don’t think it’s true. I don’t think we live up to that calling, so I’d be reluctant to go saying that, and God knows the truth.”) I find this to be an uncanny resemblence to bands in the Taqwacore space who shy away from being identified as “Muslim punk” bands.
Can you picture it? A Christian punk show where I would imagine the crowd would be largely evangelical and white (I’m making assumptions, obviously), all singing along to “Allah, Allah, Allah” or “La illaha il Allah.” I have fantastical images The Kominas dressed in Taqwacore super hero costumes barging into a Christian punk fest, fists in air, kafiya in hand. I wonder how they would be treated. Will it be like Basim at the straight edge show where he got his arm torn out of the socket because he wasn’t white? Or will the band be heralded and brought to the stage? Or will an attempted kidnapped baptism take place and they have to escape by Omar’s hybrid car with the tour trailer jostling over the road….? Jesus Christ on a pogo stick chasing them…? Ahem. Sorry for the tangent… What I meant to say was — is the band me without You serving to build or hinder an interfaith punk/rock alliance? More importantly, how does that translate to shifting the attitudes of their fans to be more accepting of Sufi and Islamic teachings, and by extension, people like us in the Taqx?
Take a look, take a listen. Is this the new wave of [name your religion] meets [punk/core/post-punk/rock/gypsy/country/rap] music? Is everything is everything, anyways?
Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Los Angeles. She is the Founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.
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[...] Christians Sing About Allah Too « The Taqwacore Webzine taqwacore.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/christians-sing-about-allah-too – view page – cached The first time I blogged about The Kominas and The Taqwacores at Sepia Mutiny I made the mistaken comparison that the “Muslim Punk” of The Taqx was akin to the Christian Punk scene. In high… (Read more)The first time I blogged about The Kominas and The Taqwacores at Sepia Mutiny I made the mistaken comparison that the “Muslim Punk” of The Taqx was akin to the Christian Punk scene. In high school, my best friend was this crazy blond Christian listen to nothing but Christian punk songs. She was my association to the space. But it is a comparison for which Basim from The Kominas has never let me forget and one that I realize now is far from comparable of the two genres. I get it. I get it. (Read less) — From the page [...]
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[...] should be no surprise to readers who’ve read my post on “Allah, Allah, Allah,” that I have a slight fascination with Muslim lyrics in non-Muslim places. After reading the above [...]
I thought Basim got stomped because he shoved the singer who was sort of starting into the whole audience. Where his brother just went into him for doing that. violent kids doing violent shit. I never got a good reason why Basim was at this show if he was to think there were racist kids (as in people in the band) who would beat the shit out of him. I think this story has had the worst case of grandmothers whispers over the span of 6 years.
I think the problem with Christian influence is in the USA and probably most, but not all parts of the Western world people do not consider the cultural aspects of it like the would Muslim or even Jewish bands (who sing about it) or whatever. I think to use a mainstream example is the two big super mainstream Punkers Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly who both have Irish Catholic references in their songs and both invoke god and his meaning. However I’ve never heard them be referred to as Christean punk or rock ever. I think people disregard it as cultural. As it may be because their music doesn’t predominate religion. I have come to believe either it’s bands selling themselves a certain way that people believe what they are about or just look for the most obvious quirk to latch onto to distinguish them.
I know this isn’t right to the point of what you were writing about Taz, but I was inspired by thinking if a band doesn’t consider it’s self Christian rock or whatever, even if religion is a primary factor in their music so be it. Religion may be an individual thing or collective but outside of the band. The Bands are not a religious force in it’s self but an entity of art and expression leaving it for the consumers to extract.
My opinion is music has always been cultural and perhaps religion is used because it’s something in a given artists life or inspired out of love for god but in its self can’t be called religious music unless it makes someone feel that way.
We’ll have to wait for B’s book to get the real reason. The reason I dropped that antidote in is because I don’t think it’s a secret or stretch about how the nazi skinhead meets straight edge meets white punk scene can connect. I also don’t think bands/people need have a racist/white supremascist/nazi labels for them to act racistly – racism is implicit and ingrained and can play out with violent people even if their intentions aren’t there (I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink this week and he has a fascinating section on how these implicit bias can play out in the blink of a moment).
As for Christian rock labels – I was debating this label for me without You as I wrote it. The last hyperlink is to an extensive interview w/ Adam Weiss which gives quite a bit of insight. I think he said what he did because he didn’t think he was preaching the words of the bible and Christianity – trying to be humble, not because he didn’t believe it. As I scoured the lyrics for the latest album, everything about it is preaching the godliness of god. They just use Christianity, Jewish and Sufi lingo to do it. I think that they are on a major Christian rock label is a huge factor as well as that they are a big name on the circuit. The interview also goes into how he feels about “typecast” musically. I see mewithoutYou being Christian in their music the way I see Cat Stevens being Islamic in his latest album. It’s preachy, not questioning the rules and they are both packaged by religion when it comes to marketing them.
If I had to make an allegorical comparison –
The Kominas:Cat Stevens:: Dropkick Murphy:me without You.
But that could just be me.
I also think a Taqx band should jump on and do a cover of “Allah, Allah, Allah.”
That’d be the ultimate in interconnected breaking label-ness.
perhaps we should wait for his book. But I mean I was pretty much in touch with him the whole time before and after the show (I didn’t actually go there cause I had work or no car or something stupid) But I mean, I’ve been punched in the head at punk / metal shows and I’ve also seen how Basim acts at shows sometimes, he can be a bit of an antagonizer himself. I read Blink awhile back to and while I know what you are saying I actually find it quite hard to believe in conditioned responses of Racism for someone akin to Basim (who was in the Elks hall at Cambridge which is very dark, while he is rather light). Also Basim was into this hardcore / skin music and I really can’t understand why he would be there if he thought it was outright racist. He never said anything to me about it, the day after he was laughing. I don’t know though. I’ve been to these shows and I usally only see aggressive kids. Sure I think that there are tons of white people that are inheritently racist, even shocking to me, and violent people may be looking for an excuse or just give less of a shit about not having controversial views (as should also be the spirit of punk). But racially motivated above simpler reasons I think is increastingly further off the mark these days I think it makes a good legend and story that’s hard to refute. and I mean he was part of the goth scene at the time a scene that worshipfully prides it’s self on pale skin, (talk about Gladwell’s Bais!) And nobody , ever seemed to give a shit about where Basim was from, I think he was wired enough they just assumed he was from another planet(and weird in the sense not culturally but just who he is, probably overly social for a goth kid).
you probably know more about the religious sides of Rock music as you’ve shown. and probably much more correct on than me, I just look for labeling and how well anything can latch on to a gimmick, which is usually limiting to a band but easier for the consumer to understand and make sense of.
you know there’s already a christian punk talking about Allah in all this, right?