Taqwacore

Yesterday was the last day "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam" was playing at this small art venue called Zeitgeist here in New Orleans, so me & my friend/band-mate Candice went to go catch it while we could. I'd never heard of the book The Taqwacores until last night, so I had no idea what to expect exactly. The book, according to what I gathered from discussion throughout the documentary, was Knight's way of fusing together two worlds he took part in that never overlapped, except for in his own life.

Essentially, The Taqwacores is an Islamic punk rock fantasy, set in Buffalo, New York complete with “burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi’a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists.” The author, Michael Muhammad Knight is a white U.S. born convert who found Islam as an adult.  Knight says he assumed that writing the book would end his relationship with Islam, but instead it re-inspired it. How did a white punk dude end up converting to Islam in the first place? Knight makes it known in the movie is that his dad was a "rapist and a white supremacist" (Knight's own words.) His conversion to Islam is said in the movie to be a reaction to being raised by a bigot.

The movie follows Boston based, Pakistani-American punk band The Kominas on tour in a painted green school bus with "TAQWA" stenciled across the front. (Taqwa, by the way, is a concept in Islam that refers to the idea of a higher consciousness.) Knight and solo performer Omar Waqar accompany The Kominas on their journey, bringing taqwacore to the rest of the nation, and eventually to Pakistan.

Punk rock has always used adversity as its ammunition and the taqwacore bands represented in the movie each had that raw, fuck-you thing going on, but that's where the similarities end. As a term, taqwacore--like afro-punk or queercore--speaks more about an identity than a particular sound. Aside from The Kominas, the other band you see the most footage of is Secret Trial Five, an all-girl band with queer members that formed in Vancouver and has since relocated to Toronto. They sound nothing like The Kominas and have actually withdrawn their affiliation with taqwacore since the movie was made. According to the band's website, they find the term limiting and they reject the assumption that their band came to exist due to the fictional writings of a white American convert.

At no point in the movie does Knight try to lay down some kind of Islamic punk ideology. In that way, we see punk's influence; taqwacore is anti-ideology. There are no rules. Even as they worship Allah and cover their tour van with pro-Islam graffiti, they simultaneously stand for blasphemy and irreverence. Throughout the movie, jaws dropped when bands sang lyrics like, “I am an Islamist/I am the anti-christ!” Knight talks about the fact that he portrays Muslim punk characters in his book drinking and doing drugs but then admits that he himself has never had a beer in his life. Alternately, they show the band on tour smoking a shit ton of hash when they're in Pakistan. Their stance seems to be, "We do what we want and we call ourselves what we want," and they dare you to disagree.

It is this type ambiguous location that gives taqwacore it's power. Like Knight says in the movie, taqwacore exists to piss everyone off. They exist to piss of mainstream America, which is largely miseducated about Islam. They aim to piss off Islamic conservatives who are patriarchal and who call music and dance haram (a forbidden act). They aim to piss off the typical punk rock atheist who thinks that organized religion just cannot go hand in hand with punk rock.

The most powerful parts of the movie are when The Kominas and Secret Trial Five play to mainstream Muslim audiences both here in the U.S. and also in Pakistan (just The Kominas.) Punk rock is supposed to shake things up in the world, but that is happening less and less as punk rock becomes more insular. We play to each other; we preach to the choir. The Kominas and Secret Trial Five somehow got booked to play this huge Muslim gathering (according to the website, the largest one in the country) and I was literally holding my breath, waiting to see how the audience would react.

Of course, people were outraged, especially when Secret Trial Five took stage because both bands had been told that no female singers would be tolerated at the event. But at the same time, you see teenage girls wearing their veils, looking the way teenage girls did in the 1950s and 60s at rock n roll concerts, freaking the fuck out and taking pictures with their cell phones. As the bands played on, you start to see some smiles and then you see some people start to dance and clap along. Music is amazing. I feel certain that The Kominas and Secret Trial Five changed at least a couple of those people's lives that night.

When The Kominas travel to Pakistan, they put on a totally DIY show on a rooftop in the city. They show the band passing out flyers ahead of time in the streets and getting into debates with strangers about whether non-traditional musical celebration has a place in Islam. There was no pre-established punk scene to rely on so trying to do something like that took an extra leap of faith. The evening of the show, you can see them begin to wonder if anyone at all will show up, but when it turns into a huge block party, you can't help but share in that feeling of triumph the band displays while they play. Punk rock makes dreams come true. You can tell that they'd all somehow accomplished something that they never dreamed was possible, and it was really inspiring to watch.

I'm not excited about this movie because I love to see organized religion and punk rock meet, or even because taqwacore is another space that people of color are carving out for themselves within punk rock. In fact, it was hard for me to not feel a little bit judgmental watching people who call themselves punk pray in mosques and participate in religious rituals. Furthermore, I instantly felt instantly cynical when I learned that Knight was a white guy. The Muslim struggle in the U.S. today isn't just about religion, it's a struggle against racism and xenophobia. The Taqwacore website states plainly, "The Islamic punk music scene would never have existed if it weren’t for [Knight's] 2003 novel, The Taqwacores.” But even though Knight speaks throughout the whole movie with the utmost humility, which is kind of endearing, in the end it's annoying that a white guy gets the credit for starting taqwacore because it just can't be true. As I mentioned before, Secret Trial Five deny that they spawned from the book, and claim independent origins.

I think the beauty of movies like Taqwacore as well as others like, "Trembling Before G-d," a documentary about gay & lesbian orthodox and Hasidic Jews, is that it shows people being something that everyone says cannot be or does not exist. When we say that certain individuals or groups “aren't punk” because they make choices that don't fit into our definition of what punk is, we are denying their right to define themselves as they wish. We also force people who are looking for a home in punk to leave part of their identity —part of who they are— at the door so that they can be accepted, i.e. “You can hang out, as long as you don't talk about __________.” This is just one way that punk continues to be a subculture that alienates individuals who would probably make our communities stronger if they felt more welcome.

As people who are interested in creating an anti-oppressive society, we can't buy into that way of thinking or behaving. As a black person, a queer person and the child of parents from a former British colony in Africa, I can't help but tie the importance of self-definition and self-determination to larger post-colonial struggles, or to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or even to the LGBTQI struggle here in the U.S. and around the world.

When we deny someone's identity or choices, we deny reality, and if there's anything I want my politics to be it's realistic. In reality, the most surprising combinations of identities and beliefs can be housed in one body. I know black gay Republicans, anarcho-feminist Muslims, black punk Jehovah's witnesses and more. In order to move forward and create a non-oppressive society, we have to recognize and accept all of the subversion and cultural permutation that are inevitable parts of life, and that ultimately we all benefit from. At some point, we all have to admit that the words that we use to define ourselves, whether it's punk, feminist, Muslim, Christian, queer, or woman, are all words that mean a wide variety of things to the people who use those words on themselves, and that there's nothing we can do to control how those words get used or by whom.

Believe me, you don't wanna hear yourself say, “I don't understand how people get so sucked into religion,” in the same way you might hear someone else say, “I don't understand why someone born as a male would want to be female.” It's worth it to be able to come to that place where you can imagine how something that makes no sense to you in your life can make perfect sense to someone else without writing them off as stupid or insane.

I want to thank the Anarchist People of Color (APOC) movement that began at the first APOC conference in Detrioit in 2003 for helping me to see where anarchism and identity politics meet, and also Candice for proof-reading this and helping me hash out my ideas.