I have no idea who hitchens or coulture (culture vulture ) are…nor will i be making any attempt to find out.i figure if they had something significant to say about the the hardcore scene that interested me then i would have heard of them by now..properbly a bunch of bohemians or academics or worst of all nme type journmalist.

As for my homophobia… what homophobia.??Even i was to disagree with homosexuality on a certain level,which i do(as do alot of people in the hardcore scene) what has that gotto do with this issue here?.I dont feel the need to conform to some pc concept of equal rights to fit into some kind of punk rock acceptability…hey i work with and even went to gigs with some queers…they dont seem to think im homopohobic…

btw :what exactly about my post is ill informed..your reponse was a hardly a scathing critique was it …

Basically no muslim kids (or punk rock kids for that matter,apart from the arty wimps wit htheir arent they so exotic like a pakistani ramones variety)are interested in your package rebellion.,,the kids might be stupid alright,but theyre not that stupid..

but the religio-cultural criticism of the band is starting to get tiring.

well hey if you left that out of your lyrics and shock thetrics you wouldnt open yourself up to such criticism,you cant have it both ways..

…you would be judged purely as a punk band,in which case you would be universally…ignored properbly..well i suppose you know that dont you!

Red Dan: I suggest you read Mike Knight’s book, then watch the documentary, and the feature film. What you decide to do with it afterwards is up to you, but if you are looking for a dumpster to toss the trash, we’ve already been there and done that. Fuck Muslim punk. Here’s a little illustration from the bowels of my creativity to illustrate my gut reaction to the ‘genre’ http://imgur.com/U1XUl.jpg I couldn’t give a shit about proselytizing about Islam through dinosaur music that once, thirty years ago, was FRESH and stood for cultural rebellion.

The truth is that in order to continue to label us as Muslim Punks or to say that Taqwacore == Muslim Punk would require some real analysis of the content. Try and find me a song in the Kominas repertoire that professes earnest fear/love of Allah (Taqwa-) or wholeheartedly endorses any particular religion. To say that kids who grew up as Muslims can’t play punk rock about where they are from is patently absurd by the same principles that disallow overtly religious bands to be including in the ‘DIY consesus’ as real punk. Punk has been and will continue to be a primarily Caucasian music, written by Caucasians about the things that bother Caucasians. We aren’t white, but we like the music, the attitude, and the ethic. So this is where we come from. If you don’t like the songs, thats fine, but the religio-cultural criticism of the band is starting to get tiring.

BTW, here are a list of glaring exceptions to the punk ethic you have described..how did these slip through? Bad Brains, Shelter, Cro-Mags, most anything Hard-line, Crisis –>Death in June

and these guys all actually seemed to believe in what they were doing. We’re just fucking around, relax.

true which just proves that their is nothing inherently rebellious about it,hardcore haasent affected nor has the capacity to effect any real change.it just perpetuates the pop culture it is part of ,yet tries to be seperate from…..I mean the whole need to be a rebel,is a middle class thing..a figment of middle class guilt or boredom or whatever to give rich kids some sense of meaning in life.. Making all that ugly noise again is mainly a middle class thing…..working class people generally dont like it…theres enough noise down the pit as they say in england..

Punk as practised by the kominas..is a contrivance,a product of bohemian culture..in the 60;s with the velvets and warhol….thats where it started..in the 70′s you had the art scene in new york..and then the very middle class (properbly jewish mclaren)made it very calculatingly into a shock sells vehicle..the hardcore scene was more organic i suppose..but hardcore doesnt really go on about rebellion..it just focuses on issues of living a real life…

the kominas are in the shock/fake./arthouse strand of punk culture..if you were a hardcore band you wouldnt be trying to do all this stupid media shit.. i loved the bad brains..grew up with bands like youth of today/shelter and earth crisis…so i dont have a problem with punks who have religous values..in fact one of the guys mentioned bad brains to give the kominas position some reference..sorry kominas can in no way in any shape form or fashion be compared to the legend that is bad brains..

the bad brains jst happned…the kominas tried to happen..also the bad brains played music in away nobody had ever played before…well so do the kominas except they dont play it in a particularly inspiring way..

Also Bad brains respected religion and werent afraid to show their stand against homosexuality..they werent ashamed to be themselves ..i just get the feeling the kominas are ashamed to be themselves and are playing the islam card so white culture vultures like jello biafra get to feed their middle class fantasies…(white man feels radical because he is supporting tthe oppressed ethnic minority man–tired!)

Jello knows the white boy rebellion stuff is playted out.hes been trying to get his kciks from the ethnics for a long time…he once said in the ghettoes ,the hispanic kids were giving up hip hop and listening to death metal?????That was just hius imagination..he made it sound like it was happening all over america..you know like some core underground movement!!

..the taqwacore movement is just cheap blasphemous potshots at sacred religous symbols…youre rebelling against religion in the way the white man taught you…he must be well pleased!!

Be a real rebel,and tell religion to FUCK RIGHT OFF! man you need to grow up.Religion is the new counter culture…your jonny rottens/sid vicouces are the new gods of the mainstream culture…sex drugs and rock and roll is the mainstream and never has and never will be anything to do with rebellion.Rebellion …pahh such a bourgewoise concept anyway ,that only fake rebels could create.

YOU know my Sufi teacher saw a punk once with one hugh spike on his head..it looked like it was superglued ( this was in asia too)…i asked him what he thought about the guy..he just smiled and said..it must be difficult for him to sleep without messing his hair up…

that kind of really woke me up to punk rock..it was like a zen koan..all that self hate and ugly noise…its utterly ridiculous really isnt it??It just a waste of energy trying to find some glory in being a fuck up…all so removed from the things that are true ,real and important in life…

Really Asians who should know better,creating a crappy movement after reading some white mans tantrum at not getting his way with god…how sad and pathetic…

Being of a certain age, and having been active within the English Punk scene for the last 30 years or so, I feel I have to chip in with my two pennorth on the subject of so called ‘Taqwacore’, or ‘Muslim Punk’ (?), if you will. Religion has always been anathema to the overwhelming majority of Punks, both punters and bands alike. From Lydon’s opening verse of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ right through to todays younger bands, the general view of religion hasn’t changed much. ‘Crass’ were vehemently critical of that other desert religion, Christianity – just check out them lyrics – vicious! Backward superstition, homophobia, sexism, and conservative, patriarchal, traditionalism have no place in Punk Rock. Merely adopting an outlandish haircut, and playing bombastic rock music doesn’t a Punk Rocker make! It’s more to do with rejecting the norms of society, and even more to do with attitude – not espousing the supposed virtues of the religious dogma laid down by your parents, priests, vicars, rabbis or imams. Be a real rebel, and tell religion to FUCK RIGHT OFF!

Red Dan.

this is lame

And why are you guys all on Imran’s case about drumming? Have you been to any of our shows? And if you did, how come I’ve never heard of you or remember arguing with you, Mr. Internet Heroes? Imran has not been on any of our first album recordings, so why don’t we see you next time, before you start hammering away at the musical proficiency of our drummer. My brother Karna was drumming on most of the tracks on the album, and I’m not even gong to try and give validity to my background in more complex music than punk to say that he is one of the best drummers around, and anyone who has seen him play can confirm it. You can think what you want about the album songs, but the drumming is solid.

So lets please not talk about the political point of Taqwacores. There isn’t any, at least nothing you can qualify enough to disagree with. The kind of people who will talk to you about a cohesive political point will not receive your questions with answers and speak mostly from pages of glossy magazines about how in their minds, four or five somewhat defunct bands of 250 miles or more distance between each comprise a scene. These writings which you have been shoveling onto the embers of this debate are mostly outsiders to punk and uninterested in the real content of taqwacore. They come to us with articles already fully conceived and use the power of selective perception to get the soundbytes they need out of our mouths to back themselves up. In that light, you might find it rude that we are” saving islam from itself”, and “putting the Islam back in punk” or whatever horsecrap they talk about. Believe me, I find it deplorable too.

About the Islamic Hindu Desi Arab thing; for Christs sake why does everyone want to lay claim or disclaimer to this ‘thing’ along party lines? This does not belong to anyone, its like trying to can the air around their head to save memories for later. This is not a thing you can claim unless you contribute, and no one has committed such egregious acts in the name of Taqwacore that the mass of contributors has decided to oust them. To put a fine point on it, all of the Kominas are Desi, even though Jinnah had a big idea once after the British shat on our houses of government before leaving for good. I’m the Indian, they are all Pakistani. I’m not going to pretend that we have any reason to even notice this in our life in America. Besides that, we eat and live the same culture and that is the glue. There is also something that stick between us and Marwans band, the Rai Crust Al-Thawra that has to do with collective Islamic history, of which I am not directly a part. If you start adding in the other bands and people we associate with, then you will start to have trouble defining the borders of what is and is no longer part of Taqwacore and what exactly the glue is. It most definitely will not fit under Muslim punk, or Bollywood punk, or Desi punk at that point, or even necessarily under punk at all. Our reasons for conglomerating are the flipside of a rich and varied cultural history that ties huge part of the world together through thousands of years. You can’t believe that Taqwacore is Muslim punk as much as you can study the history of Indian and ignore the Persian, Mughals etc.

And for chrissakes stop with the middle class shit. Are ye from the fackin UK? Do you shop at SEX and play in an Oi Streetpunk band? Is it 77′ or am I lost? “Real punk isn’t art school and comes from the working class kids.” give me a fucking break. most of them would beat your brown heads in with their working class fists, y’all could be Pakis needin a bashin. American hardcore was a resolutely middle class thing and included few enough brown people that Bad Brains was seen as a spiritual experience rather than just and amazing hardcore band. Brown people in small numbers doing cool things gets white people all blissed out. We were part of neither thing directly (much much too late) and draw from both. We live in middle class towns, so what should we do? Excusivity along class lines is bullshit in my opinion when it come to punk. My parents came here as dishwahers while they got degrees. I htey live in Suburbia now, I see it as confused, not as our assimilation into WASP culture. Sure I’ve got things to be mad about, and we don’t fit in. Do I need to pretend my parents are poor white New England fisherman to give my anger the credibility it lacks. No.