Rebellious American Muslim Punk Rockers Rebel Against Everyone!

After 9/11, many American Muslims were openly ridiculed to varying degrees. An example is Hanan Arzay, 15, a daughter of Muslim immigrants from Morocco who lives in East Islip, N.Y. In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, pedestrians threw eggs and coffee cups at the van that transported her to a Muslim school, she said, and one person threw a wine bottle, shattering the van’s window.

But, there is another emotional side for many American Muslims, their treatment by other Muslims...

At school, Hanan's Koran teacher threw chalk at her for requesting literal translations of the holy book. After she was expelled from two Muslim schools, her uncle gave her “The Taqwacores.” Hanan Arzay says, “This book is my lifeline. It saved my faith.” And, after reading her comments, I might add it seems to have saved her American heritage as well.

But, what is "The Taqwacores"?

Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called “The Taqwacores,” about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo. The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

“I’m a Muslim and I’m 100-percent American,” Ms. DeWulf said, “so I can criticize my faith and my country. Rebellion? Punk? This is totally American.”

The novel’s title combines “taqwa,” the Arabic word for “piety,” with “hardcore,” used to describe many genres of angry Western music.

For many young American Muslims, stigmatized by their peers after the Sept. 11 attacks but repelled by both the Bush administration’s reaction to the attacks and the rigid conservatism of many Muslim leaders, the novel became a blueprint for their lives.

“Reading the book was totally liberating for me,” said Areej Zufari, 34, a Muslim and a humanities professor at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Fla. Ms. Zufari said she had listened to punk music growing up in Arkansas and found “The Taqwacores” four years ago.  “Here was someone as frustrated with Islam as me,” she said, “and he expressed it using bands I love, like the Dead Kennedys. It all came together.”

This is a fascinating story about Muslims rebelling against many things Muslim, and many things American, synthesizing their own experience. Quite American and refreshing, Ol Pooch Dog thinks!

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