Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism | norient.com 30 Sep 2021 18:21:24 Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism by Wendy Hsu Taqwacore combines alternative interpretations of Islam with a punk anti-status-quo ethos, probably best known through the U.S. band The Kominas. Dusting off Wendy Hsu's dissertation chapter on artists-led struggles for justice and resistance against Islamophobia and anti-immigrant racism, this Norient four-part series deals with the band's experiences as brown-identified, South Asian Americans living in the midst of hate and fear – and could inspire creative dissent and resistance in the near future. Introduction I remember the day I sat down with the Taqwacore band The Kominas for the first time at a diner near South Station in Boston back in 2009. For four hours, members of the band ushered me into the political vortex surrounding their existence. These musicians not only changed the course of my dissertation research. They changed my outlook on the potentials of music in creating social change. They generously shared their experiences as brown- identified, South Asian Americans, living with compassion and love in the midst of hate and fear. The Kominas helped me discern nuances within the https://norient.com/academic/essay-taqwacore Page 1 of 24 Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism | norient.com 30 Sep 2021 18:21:24 liberal and conservative shades of Islamophobia and the murky racial politics surrounding minoritarian post 9/11 identities. Above all, their words and music embody much strength and community love and fuel my sense of justice. Now in 2017, some things have changed but others haven’t. The term Taqwacore has diffused into the cultural ether. Some of the affiliates are still making music but others have moved onto other projects. We have come a full circle to another repressive regime with the new presidency in the United States. The recent history of the culture of hate and fear is more present than ever. The Kominas, a South Asian American rock band spawned in the suburbs of Boston, is well-known for its association with the grassroots music culture self-labeled as taqwacore. The prefix «taqwa» is a Qur’anic Arabic term meaning «fear-inspired love» or «love-based fear» for the divine. The suffix «core» refers to the punk roots highlighting the do-it-yourself ideology and subversive attitudes central in hardcore punk music scenes. Taqwacore is conceived to reclaim a space for an alternative practice of Islam inflected with the punk anti-status-quo ethos. Michael Muhammad Knight coined the term in his novel The Taqwacores, a fictional account of a group of college-aged individuals who live in a house together in Buffalo, New York. Each character in the novel maintains a unique lifestyle and a host of ideologies that question orthodox Islam and reinvents the meaning and practice of Islam for him or herself. After the book’s publication, Knight used social media and email to reach out to various punk rockers of Muslim heritage living in North America, forming a network of friends, artists, bloggers, filmmakers, and other enthusiasts around the self- identified label of taqwacore. In this four-part series, I trace the socio-musical experiences of the Kominas through the lens of U.S. racial dynamics, with a focus on how the members of the band navigate themselves as racial and religious minorities in the post-9/11 sociopolitical terrain. In particular, I situate the band’s experiences in two disparate political contexts: the socially conservative U.S. during the George W. Bush administration and the ostensibly liberal terrain crowded by non-Muslim hipsters, indie-rockers, and other multiculturalists. Anti-Muslim Policies and Liberal Appropriation of Islamic Counter-Culture Part 1 focuses on the band’s questioning of the conservative anti-Muslim policies and practices. Part 2 foregrounds the band’s challenges against the liberal appropriation of Islamic counter-culture and strategic interventions in liberal and consumerist multiculturalism. Refusing to be boxed in by the category of «Muslim» or «American», «immigrant» or «citizen», members of The Kominas defies consumerist objectification and categorization. Using taqwacore to reframe the ideology of cultural difference to focus on a https://norient.com/academic/essay-taqwacore Page 2 of 24 Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism | norient.com 30 Sep 2021 18:21:24 collective struggle for social justice, the band take a polyculturalist (Prashad 2001) approach in forging solidarity with other racial and religious minority groups. Part 3 features a close reading of a performance that illustrates the anti- status-quo concept of taqwacore within and around the American Muslim experience. In the final and fourth part of the series, I discuss the band’s articulation of a brown-and-punk identity that the band has forged in solidarity with Latino/a immigrants. The Kominas transforms multiculturalist thinking to mobilize minoritarian politics. This critique ultimately points at the political contradiction between conservative and liberal United States to reveal an underlying race-based logic that is shared by both ends of the political spectrum. Finally, a note about my relationship to this research project. Interpreting sounds and sights of The Kominas’ performance life while participating in the scene as a music blogger and event organizer, I learned the complexities of what Islam means to each of the band members and their taqwacore associates, particularly in the shadow of race after 9/11. This article is meant as a way to open up the meanings of Islam in a pluralistic fashion. As a cultural outsider, I recount the musicians’ words and experiences of the Muslim heritage and Islamic faith, not with the intention of placing their religiosity into binary categories of «Muslim» or «non-Muslim». Instead, I consider each instance of discussion about or performance related to taqwacore, punk, and Islam, however contradictory it may seem, a productive tension. It is precisely this productive tension that has facilitated the emergence of this complex cultural space known as taqwacore. Playing in the Midst of Post-9/11 Green Menace With fans and musician friends, The Kominas were touring the U.S. the summer of 2009. To save travel expenses on their cross-country, 15-city tour, the band drove a hybrid Honda Accord while towing a trailer. In the parking lot at The Bridge PAI, a local arts space where I was hosting The Kominas’ performance in Charlottesville, I stood mesmerized by their silver boxy 5‘ x 8’ trailer, decorated with myriad stencils, stickers, drawings, and scribbles, contributed by the band and its cohort. These messages of inside jokes and symbols of idealism readily expressed aspects of their D.I.Y. Bohemian lifestyle, in solidarity over shared passion and alienation. Admiring the art on the trailer, I saw an inter-faith equation expressed as the following: «Allah= Love, Jesus = Love, Yhwh= Love». One black stencil mark, with a figure of a man pulling his facial skin, read, «My epidermal shackle» [Figure 1], a lyric from a song written by Omar Waqar, also on tour as Sarmust. Omar had been friends with the members of The Kominas since the «Taqwatour» two years ago in 2007. Standing next to the trailer, Shahj (Shahjehan) recounted to me some of their tour adventures. The story of a racist encounter at a gas station on their way from Atlanta to https://norient.com/academic/essay-taqwacore Page 3 of 24 Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism | norient.com 30 Sep 2021 18:21:24 Virginia struck me the most. A few white American men accosted the band members if their trailer was where they «keep all of (their) hate mail. Shahj told them that they were a band. The group of men replied, «Oh, that’s cool». Apparently, their animosity diminished after they found out that The Kominas was a group of musicians. How bizarre. Shahj revealed that he felt as if this interaction was race-related. But he expressed that he didn’t really understand the usage of the term «hate-mail». I thought to myself: Could this be an instance of the «epidermal shackle»? Punk anarchy is only «cool» and non-threatening, as long as it’s not related to people who appear to look Muslim, brown, or like a terrorist or an immigrant. Six weeks after September 11th, the United States government implemented The U.S.A. Patriot Act with the intention to eliminate terrorism and «unite and strengthen America» (U.S. Senate 2001). This act has mobilized laws to enforce the surveillance of terror-related activities. To enact The Patriot Act, law enforcement, military, and intelligence service officers deployed intense surveillance upon non-citizens, immigrants, and individuals of any Muslim, South Asian, and Arab affiliations. A broad range of anti-Muslim exclusions such as racial profiling and hate crimes occurred. Mass detentions and https://norient.com/academic/essay-taqwacore Page 4 of 24 Taqwacore: Punk Polyculturalism | norient.com 30 Sep 2021 18:21:24 deportations of Muslim and Arab American men as well as «Special Registration’ program requiring Muslim immigrant men to register with the government and submit to questioning» (Maira 2009, 12) took place beneath mainstream media visibility. Vijay Prashad links the post-9/11 condition to McCarthyism during the Cold War. Not a Red Scare, but a «Green Menace». This time, the enemy is Islam. Prashad observes, «All Muslims are suspects by association, but those who had come into even fleeting contact with the organs of Islamic radicalism are fair game for arrest and interrogation. Like McCarthyism, the main agent for social oppression is not the state, but it is private institutions and our neighbors» (2003, 72). Basim Usmani, the bassist of The Kominas, is not a stranger to this feeling.