Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

DOI 10.1007/s11562-012-0225-8

From Muslim punks to taqwacore: an incomplete

history of punk Islam

Anthony T. Fiscella

Published online: 16 September 2012

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract This article is an attempt to provide a very rough outline of the historical
interaction between punk rock and the Muslim world. For the most part, the antino-
mian youth culture of punk rock was relatively slow to reach Muslims outside of
Europe and North America. When it did reach Muslim youth (from Europe to Asia to
the Middle East), it tended to initially manifest in secular and antireligious terms. Yet
by the 1990s, some examples of punk arose that claimed a Muslim identity, and by
the year 2005, a scene called “taqwacore” developed. This new scene embraced both
religious and nonreligious Muslim punks and others who did not self-identify as
Muslim in any way. It’s been called “punk Islam” and has made a place for itself on
the fringes of the punk scene and the Muslim world. Finally, this article briefly
addresses some ways in which taqwacore can be seen as a theological development
within Islam.

Keywords Muslim . Punk . Islam . Hardcore . Subculture . Taqwacore

Intro: the meaning of noise

I stopped trying to define Punk around the same time I stopped trying to define
Islam. . . . Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when
nothing could be further from the truth. . . . You cannot hold Punk or Islam in
your hands. So what could they mean besides what you want them to?
–Michael Muhammad Knight (via protagonist Yusef Ali), The Taqwacores
How can one begin to tell a story about the interaction between two highly
complex and culturally diverse entities such as “punk” and “Islam”? There is no
self-evident process. The writing of history is the messy construction of a

A. T. Fiscella (*)
Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
e-mail: Anthony.Fiscella@teol.lu.se
256 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Frankenstein’s monster. Complex processes involving a multitude of interdependent

factors (i.e., interwoven feedback loops, invisible butterfly effects, hidden genealogies,
accidents, shifting identities, co-optations, hear-say, after-the-fact-constructions, etc.)
are sewn together (misleadingly) into a seemingly coherent—often highly speculative—
body of thought. The reader rarely sees which body parts were amputated or reconfig-
ured. Not only does this construction involve the historian (rather arbitrarily) fumbling
with decomposing corpses, it also implies that a “dead” history is resurrected as a
“monster” that (by our imagining it to be real) somehow animates our current lives.
The “monster” being constructed here is that of the interaction of the punk scene and the
Muslim world,1 and like all histories, it will remain incomplete and distorted. Neces-
sary corrections, additions, fine-tuning, and updates will hopefully come in due time.
What is punk? What is Islam? What happens when they meet? This article does not
attempt to present any ultimate answers to these questions, but it does hope to present a
rough outline of the historical encounter and development between these two (sub)cultural2
spheres. There is no lack of general overviews written about Islam or punk in and of
themselves. Beyond that, research on the connection between them is spotty. There
are national case studies of punk in predominantly Muslim countries (Baulch 2002;
Boynik and Güldallı 2007; Hannerz 2005; Pickles 2001). There’s a little on religion
and punk rock (i.e., Luhr 2010). There are journalistic accounts of heavy metal scenes
in predominantly Muslim countries (LeVine 2008; Heavy Metal in Baghdad 2007).
Finally, there has been a spurt in scholarship in regard to the recent taqwacore3
phenomenon (Andersen et al. 2010; Hosman 2009; Hsu 2011; Mitter 2011; Murthy
2010). So far, however, there has been no scholarly presentation of how punk rock and
the Muslim world have historically interacted with one another and what the result has
been so far. That is the point of this article: to begin that process of discovery.
This article shall assume that scenes and movements tend to be symbolically
interwoven with the individuals and groups who come to symbolize them.4 This is
not unproblematic. First, symbols tend to oversimplify complex stories (think of how
Martin Luther King Jr.’s elevated status tends to overshadow the thousands of events,
ideas, groups, and individuals who made the U.S. Civil Rights movement possible).
Second, symbols, especially in the mainstream media, tend to consolidate specific
narratives for specific purposes (i.e., profit, nationalism, etc.). As Said has pointed out
in regard to media coverage, “‘Islam’ has always represented a particular menace to
the West” (1997: lii). A similar remark could be made about the mainstream media
view of punk (see O’Hara 1999: 42–47). This article, being written primarily for an
audience of scholars in Islamic studies, shall attempt to both identify and dispel
simplistic approaches to punk and Muslim expressions of punk.

1
The “Muslim world” shall here refer to people who are in an active historical and discursive relation to
Islam.
2
There is an entire field of study devoted to “subcultures” that will be ignored here, since it distracts from
the article’s focus. Besides, what should one call a subculture of a subculture? Hence, the terms “subcul-
ture” and “culture” shall be used rather loosely (for subcultural studies, see Williams 2011).
3
Taken from the 2004 book The Taqwacores, the term, coined by Knight, is a mix of hardcore (punk) and
the Arabic “taqwa” (roughly, “God-consciousness” or “God-fearing”). Although generally capitalized in
academic literature (Andersen et al. 2010; Hosman 2009, Murthy 2010), it is not capitalized here to be
consistent with related (noncapitalized) terms such as hardcore and punk and to distinguish it from
Majeed’s Taqwacore film.
4
For a distinction between “scene” and “movement,” see Leach and Haunss (2009).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 257

In the case of punk rock, the popular narrative is that punk began with the
breakthrough of the Sex Pistols in 1976.5 In particular, John Lydon, aka Johnny
Rotten (b. 1956), along with John Simon Ritchie, aka Sid Vicious (1957–1979), who
joined in 1977, came to be the trademark symbols of the new subculture through their
names, attitudes, appearances, and (lack of) musical approach. “Anarchy in the UK,”
with its ambiguous antisociety anger, became the accompanying anthem as Rotten
sang, “I am an anarchist, I am an anti-christ” alongside Vicious in a swastika t-shirt.
In fact, not only did punk have its roots long before the Sex Pistols (via scenes that
included the Sonics, Iggy and the Stooges, MC5, Pink Fairies, Radio Birdman, the
Velvet Underground, the Fugs, the Ramones, Television, the Dictators, and a number of
others), the bands themselves and their image were the culmination of a group effort.
Malcolm McLaren, who had previously attempted to recast the New York Dolls as
communists (Savage 2001: 77–78), brought members together and helped produce the
concept. His partner Vivienne Westwood helped design the clothes that London punk
bands wore. Jamie Reid created Situationist-like artwork for the record covers.
Finally, fans like Siouxsie Sioux, Ian Stuart, and Joe Strummer quickly formed punk
bands (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Skrewdriver, and the Clash) that helped broaden
the base of what punk could mean (later becoming inspirations for goth, nazi punk,
and ska-punk, respectively). Yet “genealogies” have no real beginning. As John
Sinclair (the manager of the MC5) wrote in Guitar Army, “our real ancestors [were]
the flipped-out beatniks and dharma bums of the 40s and 50s” (1972: 16).6 Where do
beginnings end with punk? Dadaism? Nietzsche? Rimbaud? Bakunin?
Rather than state where the history ought to begin, this article would simply like to
emphasize that there is a history at all: Before “punk Islam” was a social reality, it was
a song that was released in 1984 by the quirky art-punk Italian band CCCP Fideli
Alla Linea. Before the Chicago-based band Al-Thawra experimented with noise in
their music, Halim El-Dabh from Egypt was pioneering noise music in the 1940s.
Before the “taqwacore” of the Kominas, there was the “zarmacore” of Rachid et Les
Ratons, who blended traditional Arabic music with punk rock. Before there was the
Texan band Vote Hezbollah, there was Vote Hezbollah the LP by U.K. artist Mus-
limgauze. Before there was Rabeya, the fictional riot grrrl (punk feminist) in a patch-
speckled burqa in The Taqwacores (2004a), there was the Danish–Turkish Tesnim
Sayar, who got into punk in 2001 and later designed her own hijab, complete with
cloth mohawk (Fig. 1). Before the movie The Taqwacores (2010) put “brown-
skinned” punks front and center in a full-length drama, the Indonesian movie Punk
in Love (2009) and the Iranian Les Chats Persans (2009) had already done it. Before
there was the Algerian hardcore band Demokhratia (an Arabic conflation of “democ-
racy” and “shit”), there was the French-Algerian woman Sakinna Boukhedenna in the

5
“Punk” as a name became wed to the Sex Pistols by chance. The term had been loosely thrown around by
musicians like Frank Zappa (in his 1968 song “Flower Punk”), Suicide (self-described as “punk music” in
1970–1971), and Lenny Kaye (who used the phrase “punk rock” in 1972) and by reviewers like Trixie
Balm (Creem) and was the title of a fanzine by Legs McNeil and John Holmstrom that began publishing in
the winter of 1975–1976—about the same time that the Sex Pistols started (Rombes 2009).
6
Several of the “flipped-out beatniks,” such as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin (Geiger 2005), were
inspired by the legends of the Assassins and Hassan-i Sabbah (an interest later rekindled by Hawkwind and
the anarcho-mystic Peter Lamborn Wilson), as well as the Master Musicians of Jajouka from Morocco (who
inspired Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and industrial band Psychic TV).
258 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Fig. 1 Tesnim Sayar sports her

self-designed punk-hijab in
Denmark. (Photo credit: Carl
Johan Heickendorf)

1970s–1980s, who, inspired by the Sex Pistols and feeling at home neither in Algeria
nor in France, “defiantly identified herself as a punk” (Farhoud and Watt 2010: 35).
Some of these were connected, many were not. Do they share a common story, a
cohesive history? Perhaps it depends on how the terms are defined.

Verse: between theorizing and theo-rising

Any image around which any people concentrate and commit themselves is a
usable one just because it is theirs.

-Charles Olson, Apollonius of Tyana

This article builds upon the specific research of others, news articles, zines, and my
own research (personal experience, record collection, and interviews).7 To provide a
rough sketch of the historical interaction between punk and Islam requires defining
those two key terms. Although this article shall rely to a large degree on self-
identification, the issue of definition shall remain difficult and unsettled. After all,
concepts like “punk” or “Islam” do not have clear boundaries. For example, punk is
not metal, but the boundaries are not always obvious.8 They are, however, separate
styles, and most of the bands mentioned here do not appear in LeVine’s Heavy Metal

7
For a related summary of the historical encounter between Islam and anarchism (which is what indirectly
led to this study), see Fiscella (2009).
8
The two music cultures indeed have a parallel sound (loud, aggressive music), some common references
(i.e., Alice Cooper, death metal, demonization by media), and a parallel history (beginning with proto-metal
bands like Black Sabbath) that began to intertwine with punk (through later bands like Venom and
Metallica). Yet while punk was rooted in do-it-yourself ethics, anticonsumerist/anticorporate values,
dirty/sloppy music, and “civil heresy,” the metal scene tended to focus on technical proficiency, success,
clean/tight music, and religious heresy. Like siblings with a manic love–hate relationship, they avoided one
another, fought one another, mated with one another, and ultimately produced plenty of inbred, hybrid
young (Napalm Death, GWAR, RATM, etc.).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 259

Islam (2008) (which actually touches on rap, experimental, and punk bands, in
addition to metal bands).9
Islam is here regarded as various cultures and traditions that have a discursive
relationship to the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad from the seventh century.
Rather than strictly a system of transcendental belief, it includes “discourse, practice,
community, and institution” (Lincoln 2003: 7). Rather than being restricted to
“orthodox” definitions of Islam as merely Sunni, Shiite, and Ibadi variants, this
article sides with Al-Azmeh’s statement that “there are as many Islams as there are
situations that sustain it” (1993: 1). In line with Jan Hjärpe’s image of an Islamic
“basket,” Islam is here seen to offer a number of highly diverse “phenomena,
activities and beliefs” from which people choose (1997: 267). Islam’s basket can be
said to include a wide range of ideologies, such as nationalist struggles (i.e., Nation of
Islam, Hamas) or socialism (i.e., Nasser, Bhutto, al-Siba’i); ethical narratives of
violence and nonviolence (both traceable to Muhammad and Ali); interpretive pat-
terns of traditionalism (i.e., Taliban, Mozabites), modernism (i.e., dominant Sunni,
Shiite interpretations), antinomianism (i.e., al-Hallaj, Qalandariyya), ijtihad (critical
interpretation of scripture), or taqlid (deference to authority or tradition in interpre-
tation); belief in the finality of Muhammad’s prophecy (i.e., central doctrine for most
Muslims) or belief in prophets after Muhammad (i.e., Babis, Ahmadiyya); and so
much more.10
Punk is here regarded primarily as a music-based culture, although, as Thompson
has noted, its spectrum is broader and includes style, printed word, cinema, and events.
Then there are significant variations between different regions and time periods. So
punk, too, can be regarded as a type of “basket” where individuals can largely pluck
what they will from the available selection. This punk basket can include a range of
behaviors (i.e., irony, provocation, skating, protests, mosh pits); patterns of violence
(i.e., band attacking audience, self-mutilation) and nonviolence (i.e., peace punks,
Positive Force); a wide range of musical styles from electronic (i.e., Suicide, digital
hardcore) to ethnic blends (i.e., the Irish-flavored Dropkick Murphys, the “gypsy punk”
of Gogol Bordello); and a wide range of fashion styles from skinhead to glam; as well
as ethics and ideologies from nihilism or fascism or homophobia to mutual aid and do-
it-yourself (DIY) and antihomophobia. Many of the items in the basket contradict one
another, and boundaries are continually contested.

9
The differences between that book and this article are several: (1) Although LeVine never clearly
delineates “heavy metal” from “punk,” he focuses on the former; (2) his work is a contemporary study
based on a series of interviews in seven countries from Morocco to Pakistan, while this article is a historical
account based primarily on academic and scene literature and a few interviews; and (3) despite its title,
LeVine addresses advocates of Islam more through the eyes of sympathetic observers such as Sheikh
Anwar al-Ethari and progressive members of the Muslim Brotherhood than through the musicians
themselves (who seem, for the most part, to be un-/antireligious, with a few exceptions such as the “Sufi
rock” of Junoon and an unnamed Turkish band who recorded the shahadah over a hard-rock track).
10
There is not space here to give a proper introduction to the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Moorish Science
Temple (MST), yet it should be noted that they were significant influences in the encounter between Islam and
punk. The NOI, for example, was an influence on Aki Nawaz (Fun-Da-Mental) and Sean Muttaqi (Vegan
Reich/Ahl-i Allah). Later, the NOI, the MST, and the Five Percenters became strong influences on Michael
Muhammad Knight (The Taqwacores). All of these groups differ in several respects from traditional Sunni
or Shiite Islam (see Turner 1997 for more information). In the case of the Five Percenters, for example,
ISLAM is redefined as “I Self Lord and Master,” ALLAH as “Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head,” and members,
believing that “the black man is god,” tend to deny being Muslim (Knight 2007: 190, 194).
260 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

While the popular image of punk tends to be associated with anger and self-
destructive behavior, long-time DC punk activist Mark Andersen offers a definition
that might resonate more with people in the scene: “Think for yourself, be yourself,
don’t just take what society gives you, create your own rules, live your own life”
(O’Hara 1999: 36).
Structurally, this article will adopt a descriptive historical approach (similar to
Lentini 2003 or Osgerby 1999). While the assumption here is that punk is not initially
identified with Islam, it does not follow that punk is necessarily “white.” There is a
history of direct and indirect racism in the punk scene at the same time as there are
large numbers of people of color in the scene (Duncombe and Tremblay 2011). Even
many of the most influential early hardcore bands have had one or more members
who were people of color: Bad Brains, Germs, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal
Tendencies, Void, Agnostic Front, and so forth (not to mention the obscure but early
all-black punk bands like Death, Pure Hell, and the ethnically mixed National Wake
from South Africa). Maximum Rocknroll (MRR), the highly influential punk fanzine,
has had three coordinators with an Iranian background (current coordinator Mariam
Bastani, Golnar Nikpour, and MRR founder Tim Yohannan). Furthermore, some of
the biggest punk scenes in the world today are in Asia and Central and South
America. Nonetheless, there is the temptation to write a story of punk as a history
of “white ‘translation’ of black ‘ethnicity’,” as Hebdige has eloquently written about
(1988: 64). Indeed, John Sinclair wrote how central “rejection of ‘white’ society” was
to their rock and roll (1972: 21). Yet this “white/black” perspective (which largely
informs Duncombe and Tremblay’s analysis in White Riot: Punk Rock and the
Politics of Race) has received critique for overemphasizing punk’s whiteness and
underemphasizing other, more relevant distinctions. In a scathing review of White
Riot, Nikpour (2012) offered an alternative analysis:
If there was a punk scene in Istanbul before there was a punk scene in say,
suburban Iowa or rural Turkey—and there was, as far as I know—then the
movement of ideas is not from “west” to the “rest” but rather a product of a
particular historical moment in the global city, a moment that is rife with
tensions between not only colony and metropole, but also town and country.11
The history of punk and Islam can then also be seen in light of larger shifts and
conflicts in society than merely a “white Western subculture” meeting a “dark Eastern
Islam.” This article hopes to transcend such a dichotomy. Like Thompson (and Kuhn
2010), it seems reasonable to understand certain developments within the punk
scene in terms of separate waves. In regard to punk and Islam, the characteriza-
tion of “waves” loosely applied here shall refer less to chronological shifts and
more to qualitative ones (even if the boundaries often blur): the First Wave here
results in nonreligious or antireligious punk (typified by the bands Demokhratia
or Alien Kulture); the Second Wave involves punks converting to Islam or
Muslim punks expressing their religion in their music without directing an
explicit challenge to Islam per se (typified by Aki Nawaz of Fun-Da-Mental or

11
Even if her specific examples of Istanbul and suburban Iowa might not be true, her point remains valid,
since there were huge punk scenes in cities across Asia before rural places like, say, Gloucester, Virginia
had a single punk.
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 261

Aditya Abdurrahman of Sub Chaos/Underground Tauhid); the Third Wave involves

the re-imagination of Islam through punk eyes and the challenging of religious
authority, which is referred to here as a form of “punk Islam” (typified by Michael
Muhammad Knight’s book The Taqwacores (2004a) or writers such as Sabina
England).
Finally, an essential distinction in any assessment of punk is the contrast
between the popular symbols and the more anonymous DIY (do-it-yourself)
activists within the movement. Most scholars note this type of dichotomy (see
Fox 1987; Hannerz 2005; Malott and Peña 2004; Thompson 2004). With the success
of the Sex Pistols came the accusation that they had sold out and that “punk is dead.”
Jon Savage suggested that the attempt to change the system from within was
“doomed to failure,” since punks were plagued by the question of “how do you
avoid becoming part of what you’re protesting against?” (2001: xvi). Between the
obvious contradictions of anticorporate bands on major corporate record labels (the
Sex Pistols on EMI and the Clash on CBS) and the fact that punk music was subject
to censorship (as Crass experienced with their record The Feeding of the 5000), there
arose a need for a self-sufficient independent network. Hence, the underground punk
scene began to flourish through the practical application of punk’s DIY and anti-
consumerist ethics.
Dead Kennedys, with its lead singer Jello Biafra, who (co)founded the
independent punk label Alternative Tentacles in 1979, is one example of the
hardcore scene’s independence. Their song “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!” drew a
sharp line between the small racist punk scenes and the far larger antiracist
punk scenes during a period when the underground hardcore scene also sig-
naled a structural departure from early punk. In 1982, Alternative Tentacles
released an LP compilation that included the very first issue of MRR (a not-for-
profit fanzine that is still publishing monthly today, with about 100 punks working on
each issue). Whereas the initial punk scene shocked the media and the general public,
the underground scene gradually built up independent networks of clubs, bands,
squats, and, perhaps most important, their own record labels (SST, Dischord, Crass
Records, etc.), their own media (thousands of fanzines, college, independent, and
pirate radio, etc.). MRR, under Yohannan’s lead, set a strict standard that the fanzine
(and radio show) would “not accept major label or related ads,” which included
refusing ads for bands that appeared on independent labels but were distributed by
major labels (Thompson 2004: 153). It was at this underground grassroots level that
the straight edge scene started. In 1981, songs like “Straight Edge” and “Out of Step”
by DC-based hardcore band Minor Threat inspired young punks to a lifestyle of
sobriety. After a San Francisco club marked vocalist Ian MacKaye’s hand with an
“X” when he said that he was not going to drink alcohol, he took the practice back to
DC (Thompson 2004: 48). First, it became a practical means of allowing minors into
the club scene. Later, the self-drawn “X” on the back of a hand became a symbol of
straight edge pride. Vocalist Ian MacKaye had shouted: “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink,
I don’t fuck, At least I can fucking think!” and these words (inadvertently) became
a normative meme for the straight edge scene (often shortened to “sXe”) that
followed. Later, with bands like Youth of Today and Earth Crisis, the sXe
scene began to include vegetarianism and animal rights as key issues for
members of this subculture within a subculture.
262 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Chorus: an incomplete history of punk and religion (1960s–present)

All religions make me wanna throw up, all religions make me sick.
–Dead Kennedys, “Religious Vomit”

As early as the (proto-punk) Deviants, who, with a seductive nun on their record
cover, sang “We are the people who pervert your children” (The People Suite, 1969),
the punk scene has tended to be antireligion and to level a strong critique toward
Christianity for being hypocritical and superstitious. Ironically, the punk scene itself
can seem to exhibit religious qualities. Rancid has sung, “I heard GBH, I made a
decision, punk rock is my religion,” and it seems plausible when, during concerts,
punks are, metaphorically speaking, “chanting, with a big sweaty, massive prayer”
(Stewart 2011: 310).
Punk bands that express traditional religious beliefs have, nonetheless, been
around a long time. For example, American Christian punk bands like Undercover
and the Alter Boys started in the early 1980s. Christian punk later went mainstream in
the 1990s and early 2000s with bands like MxPx and Relient K, who sang about their
faith in Jesus. More recently, the underground folk-crust band the Psalters from
Philadelphia have challenged religion from a Christian anarchist position, toured
the Holy Land, and expressed support for the Palestinian cause. DC hardcore band
Bad Brains started around 1977 and espoused a form of Rastafarianism, but no
religious “rastacore” movement followed. They did, however, have a hand in influ-
encing John “Bloodclot” Joseph: “When I met the Bad Brains, it was like a whole
other aspect of life opened up. They just seemed really mystical” (Davis 1995: 70).
He soon joined the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON), and his macho New York
hardcore band, the Cro-Mags, became the first punk band to integrate Krishna-related
themes into their music.12 Yet there were inherent commonalities between Krishna-
conscious lifestyles and straight edge (see Wood 2006: 137–138), and it was in this
combination that “krishnacore” was to really take root. Through bands like Shelter
and 108, it spread rapidly throughout the punk scene, with a number of krishnacore
bands and zines cropping up around the world. To a lesser extent, bands have blended
punk with other religions, such as Buddhism and Judaism.13 Two Buddhist examples
are the books Dharma Punx (2004) by Noah Levine (who was once initiated by a
sheikha into a Sufi order in New York)14 and Hardcore Zen (2003) by Brad Warner
(formerly of the punk band Zero Defex/ODFX). In the latter, Warner explains Zen
philosophy with a punk attitude and attempts to demonstrate the inherent common-
ality between the two: “The last thing Buddha told his followers before he died was
12
Poly Styrene (Marianne Joan Elliot Said, 1957–2011), the half-Somali/half-British singer of X-Ray
Spex, was one of the early punk converts to ISKCON and became Maharani Dasi for a period but did not
integrate her new religion with punk music.
13
Jewish punk is probably the most complicated, seeing as how a great number of punk bands from The
Dictators to Black Flag, from Bad Religion to NOFX have had Jewish members (see Beeber 2006), and
currently open expressions of Judaism in the scene range from the orthodox (Moshiach Oi!) to the inclusive
(PunkTorah.org). For more info, see, for example, two documentary films Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in the
Holy Land (2005) and Punk Jews (2012).
14
He has apparently inspired meditation groups in 14 cities in North America according to his homepage
(accessed December 15, 2011; http://againstthestream.org/about-us/dharma-punx-nation).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 263

this: ‘Question authority.’ . . . [or] ‘Be ye lamps unto yourselves’” (2003: 7).15 Study
of the history and character of religion in the punk scene as a whole remains sparse.

Verse: First Wave “Muslim punks” (late 1970s–present)

Everyone dress the same way! Everyone think the same way! When that doesn’t
work, issue a fatwa! What is it but FASCISLAMISM?

–Demokhratia, “Fascislamist”

Already in the 1960s, it was possible to see a large number of garage bands cropping
up in predominantly Muslim countries, such as Les Tabalas in Senegal, the Rebels in
Iran, Bunalim in Turkey, and the all-female Dara Puspita in Indonesia. The first self-
declared Turkish punk band, Tünay Akdeniz & Çığrışım, released a 7" in 1978, but it
sounded more like progg or garage rock, and it was not until the mid-late 80s that Turkey
saw its first “real” punk band: the Headbangers (Boynik and Güldallı 2007).
For punks with a Muslim background living in the diaspora, there was the matter
of racism to face both inside and outside the punk scene. Roger Sabin (1999) writes
about the British punk scene of the late 1970s when the National Front was targeting
Asian immigrants, engaging in “Paki-bashing,” and firebombing Asian homes. The
punk scene, he says, was silent. Sabin goes so far as to state that “punk’s biggest
failure in the political sphere was its almost total neglect of the plight of Britain’s
Asians” (203) and “the fact that punk had a blind spot for anti-Asian prejudice meant
that this was an area that was left open for exploitation” (213), thus paving the way
for openly Nazi punk bands.
Encounters between punk and the Muslim world have taken many shapes: casual
lyrical references (i.e., “Ramadan Romance” by the Woggles or “Punkrock Jihad” by
the Derita Sisters); support (verbal or material), such as “Malcolm X” by the Beatnigs
or the 1988 Intifada Palestine benefit LP with bands like The EX and Seein’ Red);
Western punk bands who had members with a background in Muslim-dominant
countries, such as the digital hardcore band Atari Teenage Riot (Hanin Elias), the
French-Arabic Dazibao (Jamil Saiarh), early British punk EATER (Ashruf Radwan,
aka Andy Blade), and the Chicago hardcore band Articles of Faith (Dorian Taj-
bakhsh); pranks (i.e., the faked Tunisia scene report in MRR in 1985); covers (i.e.,
Rachid Taha’s version of “Rock the Casbah”); collaborations (such as when Asian
Dub Foundation recorded “No Fun” with Iggy Pop for their 2008 record Punkara16);
and discrimination: In the West, Muslims can be berated or taunted by punks (such as
15
In an example of “punk Buddhism,” Warner goes on to write, “Question punk authority . . . Question Zen
authority. . . . No matter what authority you submit to—your teacher, your government, even Jesus H.
Christ or Gautama Buddha himself—that authority is wrong. It’s wrong because the very concept of
authority is already a mistake. Deferring to authority is nothing more than a cowardly shirking of personal
responsibility” (2003: 29).
16
The lesser-known but no less exciting al-Qaynah (an international Danish-based collaboration project)
mix their inspirations of (among others) Dead Kennedys, Laibach (industrial art-band), Noam Chomsky,
Public Enemy (political hip hop), Dr. Hashem Aghajari (sentenced to death in Iran for heresy), Malalai Joya
(dissenting Afghan parliamentarian), and Sheila Chandra (Indian British pop singer) into a blend of
“eastern metal.”
264 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

when the quasi-joke band Stormtroopers of Death sang “Fuck the Middle East”) or
harassed by authorities for looking “suspicious.” In the East, punks can be subject to
social or government harassment. One well-known incident was when Indonesian
officials in Banda Aceh recently arrested more than 60 young punks, shaved their
heads, and sent them to a detention center for “rehabilitation” (Ahmed 2011; Asso-
ciated Press 2011) (Fig. 2). One significant type of encounter is, of course, individuals
directly meeting and experiencing both cultures.
This section shall focus on those individuals and bands that come from a Muslim
background. Perhaps the first punk band in the West consisting primarily of people
with Muslim backgrounds was Alien Kulture. Ausaf Abbas, Azhar Rana, and Pervez
Bilgrami, inspired by the Sex Pistols and the Clash, formed the band in 1979 with a
“token white” (Huw Jones) as their drummer (BBC 2011; Manzoor 2010). They got
their name from a quote by Margaret Thatcher, who, according to their Web site, said,
“people rather fear being swamped by an alien culture.” All three were Pakistani
immigrants to England and expressed antireligious sentiment in songs like “Siege and
Turmoil” and “Culture Crossover,” where they sang, “I don’t wanna go to the
mosque, I don’t wanna read the Quran.” Another prominent issue they addressed
was racism, and they performed repeatedly for Rock Against Racism concerts. By
1981, they had disbanded, but they left their mark. A few years later, a very different
approach to racism was undertaken by the San Antonio, Texas band Fearless Iranians
from Hell (FIFH), who, led initially by Iranian-American vocalist Amir Mamori,
sarcastically used Islamic terrorist stereotypes (i.e. “Die for Allah”) while band
members performed concerts in ski masks. According to interviews with Mamori in
the 1980s, their goal was to take the audience’s own “bigotry and stupidity” and spit it
“back in their faces,” because the “ultimate aim” of FIFH was “to insult every last
person, and nation, in the world.”17
British punk bands were touring areas with large Muslim populations (such as
Yugoslavia) by the late 1970s, and local bands soon formed. Hardcore had taken root
in Bosnia, for example, by the mid-to-late 80s with bands like Ludilo, Ženevski
Dekret, and the Dissidents. Although it took a few more years for punk to really
penetrate predominantly Muslim countries, the earliest bands were cropping up by the
late 80s in places like Malaysia, which retains a huge punk scene to this day. In an
MRR scene report from 1995, Luk Haas, who has traveled the world like a modern
day version of Ibn Battuta, tells the general history of the punk scene in Malaysia and
Brunei, laced with band photos and contact addresses.18 Zulkifli Zakaria, aka Joe
Kidd, got inspired through British magazines like NME and started one of the first
punk zines in Malaysia, Aedes, in the mid-1980s. Shortly after that, he began booking
Malaysian shows for the Singaporean punk band Opposition Party and later helped

17
The source that lists the old interviews also includes a new one, but, since no names or dates are listed for the
new interview, it is hard to substantiate (http://www.anus.com/metal/about/interviews/fearless_iranians_
from_hell).
18
Haas also runs a record label called Tian An Men 89, which publishes vinyl releases of bands off-the-
punk-map in places like Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, and Tajikistan. An excellent resource for researchers,
the Tian An Men 89 Web site hosts an archive discography of hundreds of punk releases in predominantly
Muslim countries from as far back as the late 1970s. Haas has also written a thesis in French that covers the
punk scene in Asia up the mid-1990s (see Haas 1994). Maximum Rocknroll’s scene reports from predom-
inantly Muslim countries (often written by Haas) are another rich resource.
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 265

Fig. 2 Punks in Banda Aceh,

Indonesia have their hair shaved
at gunpoint by police in 2011.
(Photo credit: Chaideer
Mahyuddin)

arrange for a local record company to finance punk label Sonic Asylum records. By
1991, there were several bands performing punk and thrash-metal, such as Hijrah
(later the Pilgrims), Mallaria, and Carburetor Dung (where Kidd still plays guitar).
Although few people outside of Southeast Asia are likely to have heard of the
Pilgrims, their first album is reported to have sold as many as 20,000 copies. Haas
described the Malaysian scene:
Hundreds of bands jam and pogo-dance everywhere, down to the smallest
kampungs (villages). Youths in spiked leather jackets, Doc Marten’s boots
and sporting Mohawk haircuts hang around Kuala Lumpur’s Central Market
and different shopping complexes like Lot 10 in the capital, Kota Raya in Johor
Bahru, Komtar in Georgetown, Wisma Saberkas in Kuching or Wisma Merdeka
in Kota Kinabalu. The fanzine scene is quite big too with titles like Parazit in
Kuala Terengganu, Biodegradable Material in Kuantan, M.A.D. in Kota
Kinabalu. . . . The most ridiculous thing to happen to the Malaysian punk scene is
the new trend of nazi punks and skins. . . . They usually start troubles at gigs,
especially when a Singaporean band is playing. (1995)
The scene in Indonesia under Suharto’s dictatorship came later. Foreign bands
were even banned for more than a year after fans rioted in 1993 over Metallica’s high
ticket prices, but a scene had started by 1995, and by the late nineties, a hardcore
scene was underway. A manifesto from the U.S. fanzine Profane Existence was
translated and published in Kontaminasi Propaganda in 1999, helping to inspire an
anarcho-punk scene. As Pickles observed, “punk activists across Indonesia have
formed decentralized, participatory collectives, which are egalitarian, self-managed
and non-hierarchical” (2001: 61). One prominent example is the anarcho-punk band
Marjinal, who started in Jakarta in 1997. They kicked off a whole new trend called
jalanan (street) punk by teaching more than a thousand street children to busk for
money with ukuleles, as well as print their own patches, art-work, and t-shirts. Singer
Mike has said, “Music gives these kids a way to survive, to make some kind of living.
Punk, to me, is addressing the things that are rotten in society. It tells us that we have
the ability to be independent and take care of each other” (Bakkalapulo 2007). The
jalanan songs (often acoustic versions of Marjinal songs) sound more like folk than
punk, but they cut to the core of what much of the hardcore scene claims to stand for:
266 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

independence, mutual aid, and social change. Nowadays, the number of First Wave
punk bands seems to be increasing in many predominantly Muslim countries.19 A
few, like Demokhratia, manage to make it to the West. In 2012, they did a tour of 26
shows in 10 European countries under the rubric “La Dine, La Doula” (No Religions,
No States). One member of the band has said that, “our main problem in our daily
life, it’s not only the State oppression or poverty, it’s mostly the power of religion. . . .
[For example,] the fact that I can’t live with [my girlfriend], it’s not because of the
State, it’s all because of religion. Very few people see that. . . . Arabs won’t be free
unless we fight religion” (Silvain 2011).

Bridge: Second Wave “punk Muslims” (1980s–present)

Attack at dawn with sonic horns, Quranic forms and phonic guns, Sufis surfing
on boards of steel, Laser semi tars coded zikar, Love and hate approach the
state, the Statue of Liberty falls prostrate, On the way to slay the riba, the money
lenders, the bank elite.
–Fun-Da-Mental, “786 All is War”
With the Second Wave, punk and Islam manage to coexist (whether passively or
actively). Various negotiations between punk and Islam (not to mention intersectional
implications) in Muslim-dominant countries are highly understudied and cannot be
developed here. A little, however, can be mentioned.
In 2006, the hardcore sXe band Vitamin X wrote of their recent concert in Kuala
Lumpur: “One interesting thing about this show (as well as the shows in Singapore
and Indonesia) is that there are a lot of girls wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf,
the hijab. These girls rock, stagediving, going crazy like everybody else. One of them
is even wearing a straight edge t-shirt beneath the headscarf” (2006). As Haas notes,
“most Malaysian punks . . . are comfortable with moderate Islam and being punk too,
and see no contradiction there” (interview with author, March 15, 2012). Hannerz
tells of one highly tattooed punk’s tactics to avoid offending people when he attended
the mosque in Bandung every Friday (2005: 28). Similarly, four of the five members
of the Indonesian metal-punk band Dinning Out thank Allah first in the liner notes of
their 2003 cassette, and A-chie, their female singer, wears a hijab.
A Malang-based band Stolen Visions released a cassette of explicitly Islam-
inspired hardcore in 1998, and a decade later, a current of “One Finger Metal”
(representing tawhid or “unity” rather than the two-finger “satanic” salute of

19
There is a huge range of new punk bands in the last 10–15 years in Muslim-dominant countries: from the
art punk of Ya Ves´ Zelyonyi (Kyrgyzstan), 127 (Iran), and Sound of Ruby (Saudi Arabia) to the classic
punk of Cheshme3vom (Iran), Exiles from Noakhali (Bangladesh), As We Fuck (Algeria), and Suchiy
Potrokh (Uzbekistan); from the lo-tech punk-noise of Slum/Trush-Oba (Tajikistan) to the “bourgeois Arab
all-girl” metal punk of Mystik Moods (Morocco; LeVine 2008: 46); from the grindcore of the Constipated
Sandniggers (Saudi Arabia) to the Street-punk/Oi! band Roots ‘n’ Boots (Malaysia); from the political
hardcore of Overkill for Profit (Azerbaijan), Mass Separation (Malaysia), and Multinational Corporations
(Pakistan; see Usmani 2011) to death metal bands like Mazhott (Syria) and Soul Exhumation (Libya); from
Malaysian indie-punk labels like Cactus, Black Konflik, and Dogma Artistic Guerilla to Indonesian labels
like Flatspils, Birthdie, and Riotic. And that is only scratching the surface.
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 267

traditional metal) appeared with death metal bands like Tengkorak (“Skull”), Purga-
tory, and the Roots of Madinah. Now, in part as an outgrowth of that scene, a new
small scene has developed in Indonesia with a missionary purpose around the
organization Ghurabaa Militant Tauhid and their well-polished Web site Under-
ground Tauhid (launched in late 2011). Thufail Al Ghufari (rapper and ex-singer
for Roots of Madinah) is involved, along with Aditya Abdurrahman, aka Aik Forth-
etruth (currently with hardcore garage punk band The Fourty’s Accident), and others. As
Abdurrahman states, “I openly say that hardcore and punk music are just tools for me to
convey the message (da’wah) of Islam. It’s nothing more than that . . . especially for
those who are Muslims, so that they can be closer to religion than to the lifestyle of the
music scene” (Abdurrahman 2012b).20 Abdurrahman also publishes the fanzine Sub
Chaos for the same purpose (issue #10 from February of 2012 deals with anarchism,
sXe, and racism in the punk scene from a strict Islamist perspective). Other bands in
the scene include powerviolence punk band GUNxROSE from Jakarta and the
jalanan-style folk-pop band Punk Muslim (Fig. 3).
The type of Islam advocated by Underground Tauhid and Sub Chaos is similar to
that of the Muslim Brotherhood (Sayyid Qutb is cited, and T-shirts are sold with
Muslim Brotherhood written on them). Citing the slogan of Profane Existence,
Abdurrahman says that this new form of punk is “‘making punk a threat again,’ but
the threat that is meant here is a threat to injustice, oppression, disobedience, crime—
all of which are seen through the lens of Islam” (Abdurrahman 2011). There is a
strong emphasis on pro-Palestinian rights, and Jello Biafra was criticized on the Web
site for planning to perform in Tel Aviv (before he canceled his show there). A
demonstration of punks in solidarity with Palestinians (with about 30 participants)
took place a couple of days after the mass arrests in Aceh in 2011. They also take a
strong stance against Shiites, Ahmadiyya, and liberal Islam. This includes a condem-
nation of homosexuals, such as when lesbian activist Irshad Manji recently visited
Indonesia: “We hate homosexuals and lesbians not due to blind and irrational hatred!
We hate them because Allah commands it!” writes Abdurrahman (2012a). Some
punks have joined them, while others have rejected them. GUNxROSE tells how an
audience member shouted “fuck religion” at them, and they wondered that if punk
and hardcore kids are “screaming to be free from all kinds of rules and laws and
scream what they want, then why can’t we scream what we want?” (Ghurabaa 2011).
An older, more well-known, and nonmissionary bridge between the nonreligious
and religious variants of punk is a Pakistani immigrant to London by the name of Aki
Nawaz Haq Qureshi (Aki Nawaz for short, aka Propa-Gandhi, b. 1961). He per-
formed as drummer with the newly formed Southern Death Cult in 1981, without
being inspired by (or even particularly familiar with) Alien Kulture. Unlike most of
the punks around him, he didn’t drink alcohol and maintained an appreciation for his
cultural heritage, even though religion did not figure largely in his life until many
years later. Nonetheless, he began to see a common quest for social justice between
Islam and the anarcho-punk scene: “From my interactions with many anarchists over
years and well before I took a greater interest into Islam, I saw similar values and
aspirations” (interview with author, November 2, 2008). By the end of the 80s, he had
found himself inspired by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam and started the

20
All translations from Indonesian are my own.
268 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Fig. 3 The Indonesian band

Punk Muslim and friends go
hiking in 2011. (Photo credit:
Ahmad Zaki)

extraordinary musical project Fun-Da-Mental. This band has mixed a politically

charged message with hip-hop, ethnic folk music, industrial, and an in-your-face
punk attitude through records such as Why America Will Go to Hell (1999) and All is
War (The Benefits of G-Had) (2006) (Fig. 4). Rather than missionary dawa music and
anti-homosexual diatribes, Nawaz applies Islam more like liberation theology.
In 1987, a band from Los Angeles called Vegan Reich appeared on a compilation
with a militant animal rights song. Lead singer–songwriter Sean “Shahid Ali”
Muttaqi21 (b. ca. 1968) has cited anarchist books and Malcolm X as early influences
(Peterson 2009: 483). In 1990, he wrote the Hardline Manifesto (released along with
the first Vegan Reich 7" record), which declared a solid commitment to a single ethic:
“All innocent life is sacred.” Subsequently, abortion and “deviant sexual acts” were
also rejected. Hardline became notorious in the punk scene for inspiring macho sXe
males to violence, homophobia, and intolerance. Muttaqi has attributed the violence
in Vegan Reich’s lyrics in part to the climate in Los Angeles, where “we were always
about guns, and fighting with nazi skinheads” and “being violent was sort of second
nature” (Peterson 2009: 484). Vivisectors in particular were targeted for “execution.”
As Muttaqi later explained, “in order to make the issue known, you have to come out
as extreme as you can” (Edge 2009).
As a number of hardline bands formed in the early 90s, Muttaqi founded a label called
Uprising Records (still active today) and took on an Islamic name when he converted in
the mid-90s. He and others involved in the hardline scene (notably, fellow convert
Micah Collins, aka Isa Adam Naziri, aka Micah Ben David) formed a (nonmusical)
political-religious group called Ahl-i Allah (“The People of God”). They drew upon a
mix of Taoism, Rastafarianism, martial arts, MOVE,22 and Islam (especially the Nation
of Islam and Shiism). Muttaqi and Naziri later started Taliyah al-Mahdi (“Vanguard of

21
Regarding his birth name, one online source writes, “Sean Penn (not the actor; now known as Sean
Muttaqi)” (see http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Hardline_movement, accessed May 20, 2012).
22
MOVE is a small group based primarily in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They state that their religion is
“life” and base their practice on the words and example of John Africa, which means that, in principle, they
reject technology, civilization, and other manifestations of human (as opposed to “natural”) design. In 1978
and 1985, they had major confrontations with the police (see Wagner-Pacifici 1994).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 269

Fig. 4 Fun-Da-Mental cover art (2006)

the Messiah”), which was more or less the same type of idea as Ahl-i Allah but
garnered more notoriety through Naziri’s aggressive posts and eccentric claims
(i.e., that angels and djinns are space aliens) and Taliyah’s praise of the 2003
space shuttle Colombia crash, which included an Israeli air force pilot (South-
ern Poverty Law Center 2003; V. 2006). Nonetheless, through their Web site, they
managed to gather a few recruits, such as Naj-One, a vegan sXe rapper and convert to
Islam. Nowadays, Muttaqi says that Islam has softened both his stance on homosex-
uality (leaving non-Muslims to decide for themselves) and his previous conviction
that veganism is the solution for everybody (interview with author, October 19,
2008). Following is a sample from an online text by Muttaqi during the period of
Ahl-i Allah:
There is only one “primordial spirituality” and that is Submission to Allah.
There is only one source of Life, only one way to salvation, and that is within
Allah. So let us cast aside all man made institutions, and sectarian divisions. If
we want to move forward towards the Messianic Era, we must restore the
270 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

primordial faith that is Pure Islam and act as a single body to rid the world of
injustice and oppression. (Muttaqi 1999)

A similar focus on social justice was shared by the Chicago band Racetraitor. Yet
their relationship to Islam was different. Starting in 1996, they released the record
Burn the Idol of the White Messiah on Uprising Records two years later. One of their
members, Mani Mostofi, was born to Iranian immigrants; another member, Brent
Decker, converted to Islam. While they flavored their music and imagery with a
religious touch, their emphasis was more on race issues and radical politics. Still, the
diversity within the band itself began to imply a new approach to religion in the punk
rock scene. As member Daniel explained their album title:
We’re destroying the false notion of religion, but we’re not throwing out the
whole notion of spirit existing. By completely rejecting religion you are basi-
cally saying you accept the oppressor’s definition of religion. What’s more
empowering is to say that you don’t accept that narrow definition; you are going
to define religion and spirituality for yourself from your own investigation of
life and truth. (Peterson 2009: 323)
By the year 2000, Racetraitor and Vegan Reich had broken up, and within a
few years, Ahl-i Allah and Taliyah al-Mahdi had also disbanded, and their Web
sites were down (although traces of hardline in the punk scene still remain
across the world). Muttaqi’s Uprising Records label has continued with acts like
Fall Out Boy (whose drummer Andy Hurley also played with Vegan Reich and
Racetraitor), the hip hop artist and self-described Sufi Amir Sulaiman, and
hardcore band Rogue Nation, who started in 2002. Rogue Nation’s singer Omar
X detailed in an interviewed in 2004 how he viewed the connection between
Islam and punk:

A Muslim punk/hardcore kid must seem like an oxymoron to a lot of Muslims

here in North America but I would argue that a Muslim Punk is the extreme
mumin [devout believer] . . . where a lot of Muslim kids grow up praying, going
to school and becoming doctors, engineers, lawyers, computer specialists and
so on. . . . They become like kufrs [unbelievers] . . . slaves to society and their
jobs and the almighty green when the highest of achievement for any Muslim
should just be to be in the service of Allah only and fight man-made idols such
as capitalism. . . . Islam is the antithesis of the material capitalistic ideology and
to me the biggest struggle for any young Muslim is to figure out if you are
gonna play their game or spend your life fighting it. Being a Muslim punk is to
always question the information you are getting whether it be in the mosques
that have extreme un-Islamic teachings, or in school when your Jewish Islamic
History professor is spewing lies and half-truths to you and fellow students. I
see it as the duty of all Muslims, especially the spoiled brats of the Ummah here
in North America to stand up against ignorance wherever we are . . . and that’s
pretty fucking punk! (Knight 2004b)

This interview took place right when the Second Wave of “punk meets Islam” was
starting to give way to the Third.
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 271

Chorus: Third Wave “punk Islam”/taqwacore (2003–present)

The name is everything.

–Noble Drew Ali

The person who interviewed Omar X was Michael Muhammad Knight (b. 1977), who,
like Muttaqi, was inspired early in life by the autobiography of Malcolm X. To the
soundtrack of Public Enemy, he converted to Islam and moved to Pakistan to study at
the age of 17. Later disillusioned by Sunni suppression of Shiite history, he began to drift
away from Islam. After discovering punk rock, his departure from Islam seemed imminent:

I didn’t encounter punk until college. Punk seemed like another religion, with
its own scripture, prophets and saints, its mythologized Golden Age, and its
own adab [norms]. Punk adab felt like the cure for everything in my religious
experience that had stifled me, everything that made me ashamed and quiet.
Punk adab was to say “fuck you, this is who I am and I don’t care what you
think.” I started to fantasize about having that kind of adab in an Islamic
environment, being a Muslim with that way of looking at the world. (Interview
with author, January 18, 2008)

Subsequently, he wrote a book that was intended to be his farewell to Islam. In it

he envisioned the type of Islamic community that he wished could have existed. This
fictional novel, called The Taqwacores, was written before Knight knew about
Taliyah al-Mahdi, Muslim punks in South East Asia, and so on (ibid). After circu-
lating self-published copies via Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles in 2003, it was
later published in 2004 by Autonomedia (the anarchist publishing company associ-
ated with antinomian Sufi Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey).23 And so the
story began of the Third Wave of encounters between Islam and punk rock.
The book describes the lives of a diverse group of punk Muslims living together in a
collective in Buffalo, New York. It was an intentional hodgepodge mash-up of various
selections from the Muslim basket, with various selections from the punk basket: Straight
edge Sunni Umar prays alongside the Sufi drunk-punk Jehangir and the Shiite skinhead
Amazing Ayyub while the burqa-clad riot grrrl Rabeya (named, of course, after Rabi’a
Basri, the 9th-century Sufi) also joins the fray, crossing out verse 4:34 from the Quran
with the declaration that it was patriarchal and wrong. Zionism is mentioned only
once in the book, when the Star of David is worn by a taqwacore “to get a reaction,”
and queer issues are addressed in part by the character Muzammil, who makes a plug
for a gay Muslim punk scene: liwaticore, a spin-off of taqwacore (2004a: 211, 154).
After reading the book, a young Iranian American Kourosh Poursalehi (b. 1988)
contacted Knight and wanted to meet the characters in the book. When Knight told him
that they weren’t real, Poursalehi responded that he was going to make it real. His solo
project Vote Hezbollah put words from Knight’s book to music in 2004, and
“Muhammad was a Punk Rocker” became the first taqwacore tune (Murthy 2010:

23
Fearing a repeat of the death threats against Salman Rushdie, the European edition of Knight’s book was
censored by the British publishing company.
272 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

182). Later that year, Basim Usmani (b. ca. 1983), a goth-punker, and Shahjehan
Khan, both Pakistani Americans from Boston, started the Kominas (Punjabi for
“bastards”) with brothers Karna and Arjun Ray (Hindu-Bengali background). As
the most well-known taqwacore band, the Kominas played into the image of a
Muslim version of the Sex Pistols by singing, “I am an Islamist, I am the Antichrist,”
in one of their best known songs “Shariah Law in the USA,” and they mimicked Dead
Kennedys naming their Pakistani-based project the Dead Bhuttos. According to
Usmani (the only original member left in the band), he had conceived of the Kominas
before he had heard of The Taqwacores, but Knight’s book “helped reconcile religion
into the music,” adding that “I wanted a Punjabi Dropkick Murphys, Mike wanted a
Qallandari Rancid” (Rashid et al. 2010). Similarly, the Chicago-based band Al-
Thawra (Arabic for “revolution”) had started up about the same time and called their
music “raicore” before hearing about taqwacore.24 Finally, in 2007, all three of those
bands went on tour together, playing shows with Sufi-inspired punker Omar Waqar
from Diacritical (and now Sarmust), as well as the Canadian Secret Trial Five, who
had been inspired by the Kominas (Fig. 5). The following year, Usmani and Khan
from the Kominas played shows in Lahore, Pakistan with a new project called Noble
Drew (named after the MST’s founder). Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, The New
York Times, and The Guardian have all written articles about this “strange” phenom-
enon that mixed such seemingly oppositional cultures. Two taqwacore movies were
soon released: the documentary Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam (2010) and the
dramatization of the book The Taqwacores (2010) (Fig. 6).
There are a number of differences between the taqwacore of the original book and
the taqwacore scene as it manifested. Musically, the actual taqwacore spectrum is
very diverse, ranging from classic punk to hip-hop, from grindcore-rai-noise to
Bollywood funk rock. Not many (if any) ultra-dogmatic Umars or taqwacore femi-
nists in burqas have appeared in real life. In fact, the religious aspect as a whole is far
less conspicuous in the living version of taqwacore than in the book. As Arjun Ray
(then guitarist with the Kominas) challenged in a 2010 online debate, “Try and find
me a song in the Kominas repertoire that professes earnest fear/love of Allah (Taqwa-) or
wholeheartedly endorses any religion.”25
Nonetheless, the book made its impact not only on people who identified as taqwa-
core, but even on “non-punk” Muslims. Knight’s book helped inspire Asra Nomani to
organize the “first” woman-led prayer (with Amina Wadud as imam) before a mixed-
gender congregation on March 18, 2005 in New York City (Knight 2006: 206). Then in
2007, when the “Taqwa-Tour” came to the annual conference of the Islamic Society
of North America (ISNA) in Chicago, the performance of Secret Trial Five broke the
organizers’ rule against female singers. The police were called in to remove the
taqwacore artists (to the protesting shouts of “Pigs are haram!”), but ISNA later
removed the ban on female vocalists at the convention. Taqwacore, however, is not a
political movement. When asked to define it, Khan says, “just friends really is the
best way to describe it” (Hosman 2009: 36). As a further note on the construction of
24
To these one could add Citizen Vex, an industrial punk project in the U.K., which Tariq Sheikh started a
year before he discovered and identified with taqwacore (interview with author March 3, 2010).
25
Ray raises a number of interesting points in his debate with fellow commentators of Taz Ahmed’s 2009
article entitled “Taqwacore. Documented. X2” (http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2009/10/13/taqwacore_
docum).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 273

Fig. 5 Taqwa-Tour flyer from

2007

symbolic identities, Marwan Kamal (Al-Thawra), on the one hand, states there has
“always been Taqwacore, Mike basically gave it a name,” and enabled various people
doing the same thing “to get together, that’s who those kids are, though, in Malaysia/
Indonesia” (Emperor 2009). On the other hand, Imran Malik (the Kominas) has said,
“There never really was a scene. A few bands came together for that documentary, but
the film crew was paying for it, so it was fabricated and forced by someone trying to
sell a narrative, a sexy narrative. Since then, a lot of those bands have either ceased to
exist, or said they’re not Taqwacore after all” (Bhattacharya 2011). They present
opposite depictions (i.e., taqwacore always/never existed) yet both can be accurate
depending on how it’s defined.26
Like the media’s treatment of the original punk scene, the media narrative of
taqwacore has often been simplistic. In this case, it’s called “(White) Man
Writes Fictional Book on Muslim Punk That Becomes Reality.” This simplistic
approach has obscured a large number of things, including the First and Second
Waves of Muslim punk (for example, the posthardline scene, Indonesian/Malay-
sian punks, and figures like Andy Blade are almost never mentioned in this
narrative). It can also obscure the many actors involved—each a story unto
themself. Some of the key figures that have helped create the taqwacore scene
(in addition to the above-mentioned musicians and film makers) have included

26
In line with Kamal’s logic, the label “taqwacore” has been applied retroactively by scenesters to
bands like Fun-Da-Mental.
274 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Fig. 6 From the set of the film

The Taqwacores film (l to r):
Phong “Ian” Tran (Fasiq), Bobby
Naderi (Yusef), Eyad Zahra
(director), and Dominic Rains
(Jehangir). (Photo credit: Tanzila
“Taz” Ahmed)

playwright Sabina England (b. ca. 1982), photographer Kim Badawi (b. 1980),
and writer/activist Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed (b. 1979). Two projects (the Web page
Muslim Punk Foundation and the band Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate) began more
or less as jokes yet, through happenstance, evolved into meaningful relation-
ships. For some people in the scene, the connections resolved a personal
longing. Jason Merrigan, aka Abu Taha, of the Portland band Fedayeen wrote,
“I had been at war with myself for years, 5 prayers a day at the Masjid, then
smoke weed and listen to some old Bad Religion or Crass or Conflict at night,
either a horrible sinner and munafiq [hypocrite] or a gullible idiot deluded by
the opiate of the masses. Taqwacore taught me I can be both [Muslim and
punk]” (Majeed 2009). A similar reaction was felt by England:
When I read the book, I was instantly blown away. I was excited that there was
a book out there about MUSLIM PUNK ROCKERS who felt alienated and
outcasted just like me! I was even more excited that there was a Taqwacore
following, and that I wasn’t alone in feeling angry and fed up with everything
around me. I was happy to see that other Muslims shared a love of punk rock
but also questioned ISLAM and wanted to practice Islam in their own way.
(Interview with author October 7, 2008)
A deaf girl who was raised Muslim to Indian parents, England was a tomboy
who had gotten into punk rock at an early age because of its message that it’s
okay to be who you are and because it functioned as an outlet for anger. Now
she blogs regularly, recently self-published a collection of short stories Urdustan
(2012), and creates skits and theater such as Allah Saves the Punk! Expressing similar
sentiments, Ahmed (whom the actor performing Rabeya modeled herself after) wrote
that at “the intersection of punk, prayer, and love, I had finally found my people”
(2012: 63). She also noted some positive and negative similarities between a punk
mosh pit and Muslims circling the Kaaba: There is a “perceived chaos” but an
“internal order, love and spirituality,” as well as “every now and then—some guy
copping a feel” (2012: 58). As in the punk scene, Islam, and American culture at
large, female presence in taqwacore has not been as self-evident as the male presence.
The Secret Trial Five was long considered the only all-female taqwacore band. After
the release of the documentary (which they participated in), they disavowed the scene
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 275

entirely, writing that taqwacore “limits them, but also, taqwacore has caused a racist,
islamophobic and sensationalist media frenzy.”27
In the Western punk scene, some have reacted negatively. “Just like wearing a
cowboy hat doesn’t make you a cowboy, slapping a cheesy mohawk on your religion
does not make it punk. Nothing about any religion has much of anything to do with the
founding doctrines of punk culture,” wrote one online commentator, while another
defended taqwacore: “I think it’s pretty pathetic that anyone would judge these kids.
There is no doctrine to punk. . . . Punk is . . . above all else, being unapologetic for who
you are or what you believe” (Crafts 2009). A First Wave response from the Middle
East is offered by Aida, the singer from the Lebanese street punk band Detox:
Taqwacore is interesting. . . . But what we think about Taqwacore is that it’s a way
for Muslim-American and Arab-American punks to feel in touch with their
culture, religion, and roots. Especially during the past few years when Arabs
became the common enemy in the US, it must have been a very confusing and
unstable time for most Arab or Muslim Americans. We have lived in Lebanon, and
have been raised with our parents trying to put religion in some of our heads. But
we now see religion as something to break free from. It is more of a problem than a
solution in the Middle East (especially in Lebanon, a sectarian country), but for
people who have barely a connection to their roots, religion can become a spiritual
connection for them. (Interview with author, February 17, 2010)
Yet just as some from the First Wave are far less supportive than Aida, the Second Wave
is also divided. Aki Nawaz is generally supportive, and Amir Sulaiman shared a stage with
the Kominas, but others, like the hardline-influenced Dawud Khuluq, are critical:
Speaking as an American punk/hardcore vegan straight edge kid who converted
to Islam a year before 9/11 . . . I honestly can’t say this book is at all a good
representation of what I would even conceive of Muslim punks and hardcore
kids would be like . . . nor is it at all representative of the ones that I’ve met.
There’s not all that much “taqwa” in the core of the so-called “taqwacores”
here. The characters that do have actual taqwa here are generally represented as
assholes and proto-fascists, while the characters that engage in absolutely
obscene and un-pious behavior at points in the book are lionized. Such as the
burqa-wearing feminist guitar player who leads her largely ignorant jamaat in
prayer. I’ve no problem with a woman with superior knowledge in religion
leading prayer, but I can’t truly ascribe that to this particular character. Especially
after reading what she does at the end of the book. . . . Honestly, I and all my
Muslim hardcore/punk and metalhead peers found this book to be absolutely
reprehensible and a mockery of what we actually are. (Mahmutovic 2009)28
Similarly, according to Hsu, “the Southeast Asian punk kids that [Usmani] has
befriended online all seem to be ‘very religious.’ They pray five times a day and
question Basim for his lax observance of Ramadan” (2011: 168).

27
Quote taken from Secret Trial Five’s MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/secrettrialfive. For those
who didn’t see their homepage, they also recorded a track called “We’re not Taqwacore.” Sunny Ali and the
Kid tackled the topic more subtly with their quirky 2012 track “Taqwa Whores.”
28
Small typos (i.e. “obsene”) were corrected here, rather than inserting the textually intrusive [sic].
276 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

Music stops, voice screams: theological innovations

The human soul, like any other noble vessel, was not built to be anchored, but
to sail.
–Thomas Wentworth Higginson
From the bands on tour to the film version, from the media narrative to each
personal experience, there are many taqwacore manifestations (and undoubtedly,
many non-taqwacore “punk Islams” as well). This section shall just address the
version of punk Islam that appears in Knight’s original book (and that he develops
in subsequent books). There is no common theology among the characters in The
Taqwacores, except the unwritten (and somewhat contested) rule that no one can
exclude someone else from the tawqacore scene for their religious beliefs or practices
—regardless of how heretical or literalist they may be. In contrast to conservative
Islamist tradition that considers apostasy anathema, Knight’s theology considers the
option of apostasy, the revocability of one’s beliefs and religious “culture,” to be
central. In contrast to liberal Islam (whom Knight was partly reacting against),
apostasy is not merely permitted in a punk version of Islam but more or less
recommended. Taking God seriously implies not taking arbitrary human institutions
too seriously, including the Quran itself: “Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah”
(Knight 2004a: 105). The spirit of this point is captured in a quote attributed to W. D.
Fard (founder of the Nation of Islam) that Knight cites: “That is the beauty of Truth: it
must be discovered from moment to moment, not remembered. A remembered truth
is a dead thing. Truth must be discovered from moment [to moment], because it is
living” (2006: 171).29 To be living is both to be aware of the moment and to be
conscious of the limitations of the individual in the face of the divine reality:
Allah’s arranging things beyond all our grasps. The earth isn’t spinning because
you told it to. Your intestines aren’t digesting by your command. You’re made
up of a trillion cells that don’t ask your permission before offering their rakats
[ritual prayers]. And we think submission’s about applying a strict discipline to
our worship? We think surrender’s about not eating a pig? It’s not that small to
me. I can’t fit my deen [religion] in a little box because to me, everything comes
from Allah (2004a: 184).
By displacing the ultimate authority from any religious edict or creed, responsi-
bility is placed squarely upon the individual for creating order. Yet Knight combines a
radical individualism with the call to face the reality that we must submit to the nature
of the universe whether we like it or not. We must deal with human diversity whether
we like it or not. By demonstrating how such a varied group of punk Muslims could
get along and live together, Knight gave the personal quest for contact with the
Divine a human face in a pluralist community. As such, his “agenda” was one of
imagining an arena in which everyone could be however they wanted, grabbing freely
from the “baskets” and finding their own paths. Knight clarifies his humble

29
It could be noted that this exact quote (except for the omission of the second “to moment”) is found on
page 159 of Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1970).
Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281 277

objectives: “I’m not an activist. I don’t care if my views become mainstream. I just
want to have my little corner and show that a corner like mine could exist” (Offer-
Westort 2005: 79). Despite bits of social critique (i.e., anticonsumerism, antiracism,
etc.), he denies having a political agenda or ideology, with one notable exception:
“But I support Islamic feminism—I do want that to conquer every mosque every-
where” (ibid). It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that taqwacore theology has had its
most obvious practical impact in this area (the ISNA concert and the woman-led
prayer). As real-life taqwacores like England suggest, taqwacore can be a safe haven
for “liberals, feminists, queers, and outcasts” (Yasin 2011).
In general, what Knight offers to the reader is a challenge to never give up,
to never rest, to never stop questioning the limitations of one’s own stances.
There’s room for the legalistic traditionalist as well as the borderless mystic. In
fact, they need one another, just as the individual needs the community. We
need idols and we need to destroy them. Knight’s theology is a personal “how
to” process in undertaking that challenge. Punk Islam (à la taqwacore) is not
restricted to (but may include) mainstream Islam with a mohawk. It may
include nonreligious punks. More significantly, it tends to entail (even in the
manifest version) the rejection of religious leaders as absolute authorities and
the assertion of the right to interpret and practice Islam exactly however and
whenever one’s conscience dictates.

Outro: the noise of meaning

I think it’s really good to come up with some sort of definition like, ‘This is
what it is to be a lesbian, this is what it is to be Chinese,’ so you can go find
other people with those characteristics, and you can start this community, and
you can be strong. You know who you are, you have the definition. But then
several years down the line a lot of people will say, ‘Fuck those definitions,
they’re so rigid, I’m not going to label myself a lesbian because of the fucking
definitions.’ People see you just this one way. So, defining who you are is a
really powerful thing, but then, eventually you have to smash all those defi-
nitions, continue to rebuild it and start all over again.
–Leslie Mah, Tribe 8
The quote above could also apply to academia, theorizing, and the writing of history.
We need stories and histories to begin our understanding of how things took place and
organize our views of the world and our place in it. Yet once we have done so, we
inevitably realize that the history that we have written and the world that we thought
existed was warped by a number of distorting factors. It was not a “true” history after all,
and it will have to be re-written. Again and again. The story presented here roughly
states that punk and Islam encountered one another in three waves. In the First Wave,
religion is (mostly) “bad” or tolerated as an unavoidable obligation (Alien Kulture,
Demokhratia, etc.). This “thesis” was followed by an “anti-thesis” that religion
is or can be “good” (GUNxROSE, Fun-da-mental, Racetraitor, etc.). Ultimately,
the Third Wave allows for a punk–religion synthesis: Religion is whatever you want it to
be, and no religious authority (or scripture) can tell you otherwise.
278 Cont Islam (2012) 6:255–281

The synthesis enables (1) a radical individualization of religion, (2) a rejection of

preachers and preaching on all sides of the debates (antireligious punks, anti-Muslim
Westerners, antipunk Muslims, etc.), and (3) a community based on freely chosen and
freely revocable commonalities (i.e., “Muslim” as a cultural identity, “taqwa” as a
private matter, punk and/or Islam as common points of [p]reference, a shared
appreciation for radical individualism, etc.). Taqwacore is one American version of
“punk Islam,” and there are certainly others. In 2006, a short Indonesian art-film
(Bilal) featured a punk Muslim singing the call to prayer. Its purpose was to question
why a person’s appearance ought to make a difference when calling to prayer.
Still, we have virtually no research in regard to how a synthesis of punk and
Islam is negotiated in predominantly Muslim countries. While it is certain that this
article presents a distorted (his)story, written by a non-Muslim, and in great need of
critique and revision, the questions that may arise between the interaction between
punk and Islam may only increase in time. They may also increase in volume and
begin with the basic challenges: “What is punk?” and “What is Islam?” followed by
“What do you want them to be?”

Acknowledgements Dedicated to the memories of Poly Styrene, Adam Yauch, and Hadi al-Alawi. The
author would like to greatly thank Luk Haas, Martin Lund, Erik Hannerz, Jonas Otterbeck, Anders
Ackfeldt, Bart Barendregt, the reviewers, the other contributors to this volume for their most helpful
feedback, and the interviewees, artists in the scene, Carla Lucero and the copy editors, as well as many,
many others.

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Film

Bilal. (2006). B. Aryaningtyas. (Director). Indonesia. 3 minutes and 42 seconds.

Edge: Perspectives on Drug-Free Culture. (2009). M. Pierschel & M. Kirchner. (Directors).
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Heavy Metal in Baghdad. (2007). S. Alvi (Director). Produced by S. Jonze. USA & Canada. 84 minutes.
Les Chats Persans. (2009). B. Ghobadi. (Director). Iran. 101 minutes.
Punk in Love. (2009). O. C. Harahap. (Director). Produced by R. Punjabi. Indonesia. 90 minutes.
Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam. (2010). O. Majeed. (Director). USA. Produced by
EyeSteelFilm/ D. Cross & M. Aung Thwin. 80 minutes.
The Taqwacores. (2010). E. Zahra. (Director). USA. Produced by N. Kemmerer. 84 minutes.