White Crane #67, Doubt - Book Reviews (original) (raw)
Non-punks are often surprised to find that punk has a deeply spiritual side. This shouldn�t be surprising, however, given punk�s traditional antimaterialist and countercultural stance. Often punks incorporate their spirituality into their lives, or even their music, and some even take the next step into a life more overtly spiritual. Hence, a former punker in California, John Marler, joined an Eastern Orthodox monastery, and has attracted other punkers to the religion. And authors Noah Levine (The Dharma Punx) and Brad Warner (Hardcore Zen) have linked punk with Buddhism.
So eventually, punk and Islam would have to cross paths, too. Michael Muhammad Knight has written what is perhaps the first Islamic punk novel. Knight�s work brims with the kind of energy that infuses punk, and yet the story unfolds in a thoughtful pace, allowing the reader to get a taste of the wide varieties of both punk and Islam. The Taqwacores ranks as one of the most interesting and enjoyable novels I have read this year.
The novel centers around Yusuf Ali, the narrator, who has recently moved into a Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, while attending the local university as an engineering student. He is a novice to the punk world, and so an excellent expositor of its variety of persons and values, as well as his own unfolding experiences. Early in the novel he says:
I stopped trying to define Punk around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren�t so far removed as you�d think....Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing can be further from the truth.
As Yusuf Ali unfolds the story for us, we follow not only the drama of household conflicts, but also his growing understanding and exploration of life.
The spiritual center of the novel, if not of the household, however, is Jehangir. He stands as a Dean Moriarty to Yusuf Ali�s Sal Paradise. Jehangir is not an exemplary Muslim in his behavior. He gets blindly drunk at least once a week. He chases after women incessantly. But he loves life and God, and has an expansive vision of Islam. He even introduces Yusuf to a little known Muslim science fiction writer, Abu Afak, whose books further broaden his vision of the possibilities of Islam.
Standing in sharp contrast to Jehangir is Umar, a wannabe Wahabi who feels called to tell everyone else what is expected, what is forbidden, and what is cutting it too close to the line. Umar strictly stays away from the alcohol and the women, but even he fails at full-fledged Wahabi�ism, since he is covered in tattoos, the most notable of which, in Yusuf�s eyes, is the tattoo of �2:219� on his neck (a reference to a Qur?anic verse forbidding alcohol). Most of the time Umar stomps through the novel acting like a religious bully, but Knight has given him a surprising depth. At the end of the month of Ramadan, for instance, he delivers the most beautiful lesson on the immanence of Allah in the world.
Rounding out the core foursome of the novel is the most enigmatic character, Rabeya. She is obviously a punk rock girl, since she has so many punk rock band patches � they just happen to be sewn onto her burqa. Rabeya is the feminist scholar of the household, deeply familiar with such texts as Amina Wadud�s Qur?an and Woman, and she performs some of the most outrageous acts of the novel. But Yusuf never sees her face, and the rationale behind her constantly wearing the burqa is a mystery Knight does not reveal to us.
There are several other colorful characters in the novel, including an Indonesian who likes to read the Qur?an while stoned, and a totally down on his luck Iranian Shia who has one of the most brutal run-ins with Umar. But of these the one I wish Knight had given more space to is Muzammil, the gay Muslim. Appearing halfway into the novel, Muzammil provides some great comic relief in the latter half�s tension with his dry wit. Muzammil is completely at ease with both his spirituality and his sexuality, and moves coolly among the housemates, providing a welcome queer point of view. I also enjoyed how Knight quickly integrates Muzammil into the scene, with Jehangir and subsequently Yusuf taking him in stride, and even Umar begrudgingly coming to accept his presence.
In bringing up Muzammil, Knight mentions two gay Muslim activist groups, Al-Fatiha and Quee
r Jihad. The latter was founded by Sulayman X, a white gay convert to Islam. Knight may have given us the first ever punk Muslim novel; Sulayman X, with his book Bilal�s Bread, appears to have given us the first ever gay Muslim novel. The novel focuses on the trials and tribulations of Bilal, a young Kurdish immigrant, who must struggle against not only the prejudices of the locals in Kansas City, but also the physical, verbal and sexual abuse of his oldest brother, and his own growing homosexual urges.
Bilal�s family fled Iraq after his father, a cleric, was tortured and murdered by Iraqi police. Now they get by on the income from the two oldest brothers, Salim and Hakim, and on the bread Bilal�s mother and sister bakes for him to distribute to local stores. But home life is not sheltering for Bilal, whose brother Hakim goes out drinking and chasing women until he comes home in a stupor, and whose brother Salim routinely rapes him, giving all manner of excuses for his behavior. Bilal escapes his troubled home life by spending time with his best friend Muhammad, the son of the local African-American imam. But even this solace is complicated by his growing feelings of lust and love for Muhammad, especially when Bilal discovers Muhammad feels the same towards him.
From the beginning of Bilal�s Bread, I was gripped emotionally by Bilal�s struggles, his run-ins with local thugs, his helplessness in the face of Salim, his passion for Muhammad, and his occasional outbursts of courage. I was caught up with his growth as a person, to the point of thinking, �What the hell are you doing?� when he looked at online porn on his Muslim school�s computers.
Sulayman X has written an interesting, and extremely fast-paced exploration of Bilal�s torturous path toward self-esteem. My one major complaint about the novel is that he could have made it four times longer. I want to know in more detail how Salim became an abuser (there is a fascinating background story, one that could have been broadened greatly). I want to peer more into the confused mind of Bilal�s mother. I wanted more on Muhammad�s exemplary relationship with his imam father. In fact, I just wanted more all around. Nevertheless, this is an emotionally evocative novel, and one that is sure to add to the growing discussion of what it means to be gay, to be Muslim and to be a spiritually developing person.
The expansion of the discussion is critical if we are to get past the religious differences that not only divide those from other religions, but also those who are our co-religionists. In Michael Muhammad Knight�s novel, Jehangir, when asked to explain why he wanted to include a group of ultra-fundamentalists in his showcase of Muslim punk bands, gave the most beautiful of rationales:
Jehangir�s vision may be optimistic, but it contains the necessary hope we must all have if we are going to build a world of inclusiveness and understanding.
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