“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.

The Muslim Hippies?

The Taqwacores inspired not just ‘The Kominas’ but a whole new subculture of Muslim punk groups across the US and Canada such as ‘Vote Hezbollah’ in San Antonio, ‘Al-Thawra’ in Chicago and the all-girl ‘Secret Trial Five’ in Vancouver, Canada. The bands define their brand of music as ‘Taqwacore’—from the Arabic word ‘taqwa’ or ‘consciousness of Allah’ and ‘hardcore’, a form of punk rock.

Michael Muhammad Knight, the author of The Taqwacores, converted to Islam at 15, went to Pakistan at 17 where he studied at a madarsa and almost joined the Chechen mujahideen before growing disillusioned with orthodox Islam and returning to New York. “I imagined the Taqwacore scene as a place where Muslim kids could define Islam for themselves. Punk and hardcore seemed like the best way to do that,” he says.

Marwan Kamel, an Arab American who is the lead vocalist of the ‘Al-Thawra’ band, says he’s had ‘bombing jokes’ and ‘camel jokes’ thrown at him since he was in school. “My peers would ask me if I had ever seen a bomb or rode on a camel in the desert and I’d say that I have only seen a camel in Chicago’s zoo,” he says. American Muslims, says Kamel, are the neo-Blacks. “Muslim and Arab bashing has become a socially accepted form of prejudice in the United States, reminiscent of the Black-bashing in the American media of the ’50s and the ’60s,’’ he says.

So, how does the Taqwacore philosophy solve Kamel’s dilemma? “It allows me to be a complicated Muslim. Several Muslims in the US think it’s not ‘Muslim enough’ to be ‘too American’ just as Americans think it’s not ‘American enough’ to be ‘too Muslim’. Taqwacore seeks to turn around this false dichotomy. It’s okay not to feel American enough or Muslim enough,” says Kamel who doesn’t feel guilty about drinking or not praying.

Like the The Taqwacores characters, some Muslim punks are queer, others straight; some drink, some don’t. Sena Hussain, the lead vocalist of ‘Secret Trial Five’ (named after five Muslims who were held without charge in Canada after 9/11), is a 26-year-old Pakistani American lesbian married to her girlfriend and performs as a drag queen. She says her parents are ashamed of her being gay but are glad about her band because it has “at least something to do with Islam”.

Shock Value

The cover of The Kominas’ album, Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay, has a gun-wielding woman, whose burqa has fallen off to reveal tattooed arms and a tight tank top. Kamel, the Al-Thawra lead vocalist, gets kicks out of punk-rocking for a White audience. “It’s fun to shout at the White kids in Arabic for a full 45 minutes without them understanding a word. When they see us shout at them in punk style sporting green boots with red laces and patched shirts, they’re startled at this kind of ‘defiance’,” he says.

Building bridges

Two members in ‘The Kominas’ band—guitarist Arjun Ray and drummer Karna Ray—are Hindu brothers from Kolkata. “My connection to Taqwacore is personal, not ideological,” says Karna, who has had “sand-nigger” yelled at him. Then, there’s a 30-something White Christian youth called ‘Sagg’ who formed the band Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate in late 2006. “I try to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims in the US”.

‘The Kominas’ had performed at a fund-raising concert at Brooklyn for the rebuilding of a Hindu temple vandalised by two White youths in Maple Grove, Minnesota in 2006. Usmani is also looking for people in India who can help him with a tour he’s planning of Delhi and Amritsar. “I am planning to call it ‘Party like it’s 1946’,” he says.

Currently, Usmani and Khan are in Lahore where they have done 25 concerts over the last year. Their songs comment on the political and social situation there but steer clear of Islamic fundamentalism. “In America, we could afford to be sarcastic because the fear of terrorism was misplaced. In Pakistan, there is genuine fear of terror because Muslim fundamentalists are actually killing people here,” says Usmani, whose concert in Lahore last November was disrupted by a bomb attack.

The road ahead

The Taqwacore group on Facebook has 394 members while ‘The Kominas’ has 307. Hiba Siddiqui, a 17-year-old high-schooler in Houston, is drawn to Taqwacore because it allows her to be an “imperfect and confused Muslim”. Her Facebook photo has her wearing the Arabian white robe and red-check scarf for Halloween, holding a toy gun, gritting her teeth and frowning. Its caption: “My Al-Qaeda audition tape”.

Half-Iraqi, half-Kashmiri American Yusuf Barzinji, 14, writes on Knight’s Facebook wall, “Dude, Taqwacore has changed my life.” He converted his hardcore punk band into a Taqwacore band called ‘Purple Skies’ in 2008”.

But the sales of the music aren’t rocking. Sagg calls his sales “crap”; al-Thawra’s Who Benefits From War (May 2008) has sold only 200 copies; ‘The Kominas’ haven’t bothered to check the sales of Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay whose 500 copies were put for sale on CD Bay last year.

Knight sums up the future of Taqwacore: “It can go anywhere, and it can go nowhere. Taqwacore is about being young and confused.”

The inspired

Besides inspiring the subgenre of Muslim punk rock, Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel The Taqwacores inspired author Asra Nomani to lead a mixed-gender prayer in March 2005. In the novel, a burqa-clad riot girl Rabeya gives a Friday sermon and leads a mixed-gender prayer. The Taqwacore movement is also a part of several college curriculum including Vassar College in New York. Two films—a feature film based on the novel by Eyad Zahra and a documentary by Omar Majeed—are expected to be released in the first half of 2009. Meanwhile, Knight is busy completing his next novel titled, Osama Van Halen.