But Ashraf insists that her burqa is more than an exercise in image management. “I didn’t make a conscious decision to rap in a burqa. Rapping is something that I did and the burqa is part of my identity. Eventually both of these combined, which I didn’t want to let go of.”

If there is any contradiction in being ‘burqa rapper’, it is based on a misconception, says Ashraf, who tries to convey the message through her lyrics.

According to her own admission, it was not anything life altering that made her wear a burqa. She tried it during an Islamic convention and found it “convenient and functional”. To those who cannot see beyond their own veil of fundamentalism or fundamental secularism, she asks in one of her songs: “Is this all you see?”

The youth in her community, she says, are losing their identity. “They think as Muslims we should stay away from other communities, or conversely, we have to ostracise ourselves from our own community to be part of society. This is what I want to disprove. You can be Muslim, and you can be cool.”

In her view, the present perception about Islam is also due to the moderates among the community who do not take on the challenge of disproving common misconceptions of about the religion.

“When a non-Muslim sees a man chanting Allah Akbar whilst chopping off another man’s head, how does he know this is not the real Islam? So, as a Muslim who has read the Quran and the Hadith, it is my duty to go to them to say, ‘this is not Islam, which is an old, beautiful religion’.”

... contd.