Shahjehan Khan, a 25-year old Pakistani American, grew up in a Boston suburb where he played soccer, listened to heavy metal music and lounged at pubs with his White peers. At home, he ate chicken curry, offered namaaz and fasted during Ramadan, like other children of Muslim immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East—perfectly at ease with his dual identities. That was till 9/11. A day later, a student cornered Khan in the hallway of his high school and asked, “What did your people do?” A bewildered Khan asked, “My people from Boston?”

“After 9/11, I felt there was no way to reconcile my Pakistani-ness with my American-ness,” he says. After a two-month-long drug binge, Khan dropped out, returned home and enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, where he met fellow Pakistani American and punk-rocker Basim Usmani. Usmani gave Khan a book, The Taqwacores, about imaginary Muslim punk rockers in Buffalo, New York. The characters in the book held mixed-gender prayers, drank alcohol and doped—all forbidden by Islam. Yet, they also offered namaaz. The book changed Khan. In 2004, Usmani and he formed a Muslim punk band called ‘The Kominas’.

Sporting Mohawks and wearing tees with slogans such as “Frisk me, I am a Muslim,” the duo combined rock, hip-hop, rap and bhangra to produce songs such as Suicide-bomb the GAP (Muslim punk’s anthem), Sharia Law in the USA, Wal-Qaeda store, and Rumi was a Homo. The songs strike at the “irrational” American fear of terror and the “corporate imperialism” of the US, but, at the same time, the songs rebelled against “Muslim fundamentalism”. In Par Desi, Usmani describes being beaten up by White punks following 9/11 and ending up in hospital with a dislocated shoulder. “In Lahore, it rains water/In Boston, it rains boots”, the song says.

... contd.