TAQWACORE WEBZINE

I think I may have misinterpreted the whole Muslim thing – I didn’t realize that I had to be baptized by being thrown into a lake and have my girlish long locks hacked into a bob chop fashioned by a police chief to prove my Muslim-ness. 59 guys and 5 girls have been sent to a ten day morality camp in Bandeh Aceh, Indonesia – their crime, they went to a punk show. They shaved their heads and threw them into a lake…for a bath. This is their start to morality brainwashing.

Indonesian sharia police are “morally rehabilitating” more than 60 young punk rock fans in Aceh province on Sumatra island, saying the youths are tarnishing the province’s image.Hundreds of Indonesian punk fans came from around the country to attend the concert, organised to raise money for orphans. Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day “moral rehabilitation” camp run by police. [link]

My baptism wasn’t by lake water but by fire, avoiding the glares of the Christian fundamentalists with their barking dogs on the street corner protesting outside my American mosque, or getting pulled out by TSA in airport security lines. My Islamic baptism happens when I watch my back for hate-crimes when walking down the street defiantly brown in a white America or when I get told by drunk bigots at parties to go back to where I came from.  My boycott these days is of a hardware supply store for not supporting a reality show. That is the American Muslim punk baptism right there.

In America, being Muslim is an act of defiance. That’s punk. But what does it mean in a Muslim province with partial shahria law? If punk is relative to your environment, and the establishment is staunchly Islamic, does that act of being an anti-establishment punk push you further away from faith?

A local rights activist Evi Narti Zain said the arrests breached human rights. “What the police have done is totally bizarre. Being a punk is just a lifestyle. They exist all over the world and they don’t break any rules or harm other people,” she said. Hasan denied the accusation, claiming the rehabilitation programme was merely an “orientation into normal Indonesian society”. [link]

The irony is that the concert was a benefit to raise funds for orphans. Are fundraisers anti-Islamic now? Do we hate orphans? And what is up need for indoctrination into normalized society? No mohawks? No black clothes? Showers are mandatory? And if you disobey, you get sent to a 10 day morality camp? Diversity discouraged? This is not the Islam I was raised with.

I was facebooking with a friend in Indonesia who said, “I myself don’t like them, because they will be someday criminals. They act like punk, but actually it is nothing to do with arts, but criminals….They don’t understand the meaning to be punks and why that movement show up. They just imitate the outfit and the hair. But in the reality they are street children and no education, though some of them have parents and can afford them to have proper education. The clothes are dirty.”

Though I know it’s a different culture there, I balked at the ease at which punks are correlated with eventually being criminals – that’s harsh especially considering some of these kids have jobs according to the article. A bank too, of all places. I strongly believe freedom to express oneself in a form that is anti-establishment should never be a crime, especially if it isn’t harming anyone else.  It’s what the Occupy movement in the US is all about. At the end of the day, all is relative.

I do know that if I was raised a punk in a Muslim world, how I approached my faith would have been totally antithetical to how I’ve embraced being a Muslim now. I love my hyphenated identities in all their complicated messiness. I think the government in Indonesia needs to let these kids be kids. They are going to learn the hard way that  brainwashing camp will only serve to have these punks rebel exponentially. You feel me? Then let’s dishoom back – with a mixtape.

The mixtape is a crucial part of our subculture, and is solely responsible for the spread of punk influence worldwide.  Mixtapes have introduced myself and many others to so many amazing bands, and the act of making them is one of the most sincere forms of friendship that exist in our world.  So, we are asking our friends, our community, and anyone else who remotely gives a shit to make and donate one mixtape cassette to the kids in Aceh who were forced into detention solely for being punk. [abortedsociety]

Up the Indo Taqx and make that mixtape. You know, for the kids. I mean, the punks. See photos of them getting “baptized” here.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a punk, political organizer and writer based in California. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), curates MutinousMindState.tumblr.com and writes at www.sepiamutiny.com. Follow her at twitter.com/tazzystar