I started thinking and writing about Taqwacore after someone at UW-Madison sent me an article from The Los Angeles Times titled “The Koran, punk rock and lots of questions.” At the time, I was blogging for a project called Inside Islam, a new media collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio and UW-Madison and set out to find some answers. After a couple of months of research, I started talking with Imran Malik, drummer for The Kominas, on Twitter, and I wrote a follow-up post based on the conversation and other articles which also described Taqx as a concept called “punk Islam.”
From then on, I had my eyes peeled for people talking about Taqwacores and found a crew on Twitter. One of the crew is a guest blogger for Mideast Youth Daniela Kantorova. Here’s a set of photos she shared online with us from a Kominas show in Oakland this summer.
My friend and co-host Britny once said that, “Twitter is basically the most punk thing on the internet.” I agree, but I also think of it as the Red Light district for ideas, a place to be open and share thoughts, regardless of how polished and complete they are. For that reason, I think it’s the perfect place for working through a more coherent understanding of Taqwacore with a bunch of different people. It has become a starting point for tour dates, a place to share blog posts and now radio shows as well. Twitter shifts the #taqwacore flag from mere concept to fluid conversation among people across the US.
The #taqwacore hashtag is a way to mark tweets about bands and events in the scene, but it has also become a way to note where we’re breaking down a concept or abstract idea about culture or politics with references and thoughts related to Taqwacore. I could be talking about Nirvana and tag it with #taqwacore so that people know I’m making the connection.
It’s also connected me with others and given me an informal way to share my perspective. The conversations I’ve had about it in real life were mostly with my mother, Ellen Foley, a Pulitzer prize finalist and journalist for the past 30 years. Not that these credentials mean much, but it is the background I inherited and how I approached the whole movement at first. Actually, that’s kind of the point of using Twitter. Taqx have inverted the way I get information from top-down to bottom-up.
The bottom line is that telling the story of Taqx has never been a perfect process, and I’ve had to bring lots of other people into the conversation – interfaith leaders, journalists, other Kominas, my mom, and whoever else is willing to talk. In my mind, it’s a new story to be told whether or not it’s a woman, man, musician, journalist, or photographer articulating or tweeting what’s important. With any other subject the “who” would matter, but in Taqwacore we’ve taken our own roles.
For this show, we took the conversation offline and talked with Imran and lead singer of The Kominas, Basim Usmani, on air. We had a great time talking about Taqwacore music, social media, Mos Def, and life imitating art. To close this post, all I’ll say is I do hope we have more shows on Taqwacore and I’d like to point to The Los Angeles Times again since they had arguably the best article about Taqwacore I’ve read to date with “Nevermind the Islam: The Kominas are Punk” by Raja Abdulrahim. The title has two, count ‘em, two punk references! Rock.
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Show Playlist
1. Sharia Law in the USA by The Kominas
2. Teree Aisee Ke Tesee by The Dead Bhuttos
3. Miskeen by Al-Thawra
4. Chaku! by The Kominas
5. An audio piece by Micropixie
6. A Dog Called Ahkira by The Kominas
7. Evil Eye (Acoutastic) by Sarmust
8. Par Desi by The Kominas
9. Poppi Fields by Vote Hezbollah
10. Kane’s Injection – Guns & Dogs by Portugal. The Man
