Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight

Author:Michael Muhammad Knight [Knight, Michael Muhammad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2018-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

I sat on the floor of Jehangir’s room shuffling through pictures from his trip to Pakistan, Crass’ “Fuck All Government” briefly aggravating me in the background. Jehangir sat on his bed reading the back of an album cover.

He stood smiling before some landmark in almost every photo, hair covered and at least a few years younger than the Jehangir I knew. Jehangir standing barefoot in blue jeans at magnificent red-and-white Badshahi, Lahore’s Mughal glory; Jehangir ankle-deep in a stony creek in the lush valley of Swat; Jehangir haggling over the price of a goat head in a Rawalpindi bazaar; Jehangir at Buddhist ruins in Taxila; Jehangir stepping off a psychedelic Ken Kesey bus; Jehangir on the Khyber Pass looping around green mountains; Jehangir in front of Faisal—a gift from Saudi Arabia—largest masjid in the world, it looked like a sci-fi spaceship with four long rockets. Jehangir put on Roger Miret and the Disasters, starting at “New York Belongs to Me.”

“I’m really going to do it,” he said out of left field.

“Do what?”

“Put on a show.”

“A show?”

“A punk show. A Muslim punk show. Call up the taqwacore bands out West, find a date when they can all come out here. Make a big thing of it. I think it can work. We have a lot of Muslims coming to the house Friday afternoons, and a lot of kafr punks here Friday nights; if we got ’em all in one spot at the same time, that’s a lot of heads.”

“I can’t even imagine those worlds colliding, Jehangir.”

“That’s because you haven’t been to California.”

“I don’t know...”

“There’s a whole scene of it out there. Khalifornia, Jesus.” He laughed and whipped the album cover at me like a square frisbee. The front featured a portrait of Ayatullah Khumayni with eyes and mouth blocked out by ransom-note lettering like the famous Sex Pistols defacing of Queen Elizabeth. On his eyes: Salaams up the Ass. Over his mouth: the Ghilmans. “Good band,” he explained. “The Ghilmans have been around a long time. From what I understand they have a punked-out Sufi thing going on. Like they’re spiritual but it’s a ’fuck you religious assholes’ spirituality, and they’re not exactly big on the whole sociopolitical Islamic-thing.”

“I see.” I flipped it over and read some song titles on the back. “Shaykh Omar Bakri Can Suck My Cock.” “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” “Houri Gash.” “Fuck the Umma.” “Our Holy Prophet Fingered His Six-Year-Old Bride In Her Dirty Asshole.” “Where Mullahs Fear To Tread.” “Allah’s Name Was Found In A Honeycomb.” “I Twirled The Ka’ba On The Tip Of My Dick.”

“A lot of taqwacore is just to throw shit out there and really piss people off,” he explained, noting the reaction on my face. “People are so uptight and emotional about religion and take it so seriously, sometimes you need a punk to say ‘fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck everything you stand for, you’re full of shit and there’s sperm in your hair.’ Nobody needs to be on a high horse about themselves.

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