The September 11 generation,hip-hop and human rights

Human rights in hip-hop

Hip-hop is the best way to grasp our present and future. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is less important today than DMX’s ‘It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot’. (Boyd, 2004: 12)

Issues of racism, rights and Islam form the cornerstone of Muslim hip-hop music (Gazzah, 2008; Solomon, 2005). Hip-hop’s social commentary and its antagonistic style offer ideal platforms for articulating public misconceptions of Islam as well as the everyday injustice that Muslims face locally or globally.

These causes manifest in the music of many Muslim hip-hop activists all over the world. In an interview, Australia’s Muslim hip-hop group, the Brothahood talked about their strong Muslim identity amidst their detachment from both traditional culture and an ultra-misogynistic brand of hip-hop. The group deploys their music as an attempt ‘to break down stereotypes and barriers that we face as Muslims’. ¹ In addition to expressing their everyday religiosity, the Brothahood exert their rights to citizenship in the light of the challenges they face in the post-September 11 era. Through tracks such as ‘The Silent Truth’, they articulate issues related to migration, xenophobia, media prejudice, Islamophobia and the exclusionary treatment that Muslims experience under the rubric of national security. As Miguel d’Souza (quoted in Maxwell, 2003: 115) perceptively puts it:

in the Australian context, hip-hop’s movement has come out of the ranks of suburban and migrant youth whose dissatisfaction with the isolation of suburban living, unemployment, racism and the Anglo-Saxon dominance of Australian culture has caused them to identify with similar sentiments coming from African-American rap.

Nonetheless, this is not unique to the Australian landscape as human rights activism through hip-hop has been an important arena for anti-Islamophobic mobilization for Muslims in other parts of the world. In his study on England’s Fun-Da-Mental and France’s IAM, Ted Swedenburg (2002: 16) states:

in both countries Muslims are attempting to construct cultural, social and political spaces for themselves as ethnic groups (of sorts), and are massively involved in anti-racist mobilizations against white supremacy. Hip-hop activism has been an important arena for anti-Islamophobic mobilization for both French and British Muslims.

Elsewhere, he says that: ‘Fun-Da-Mental’s expressions of pride in Islam appealed to Muslim youth who had been raised on British popular culture yet also felt wounded by British Islamophobia’ (Swedenburg, 2001: 58).

Not merely verbal mujahidin (Alim, 2006), Muslim hip-hop groups also participate in operationalizing Islam. The Brothahood, for example, performed in Free Gaza benefit concerts in offering their support to the Palestinian cause. On top of performing for the first time a specially composed track called ‘Act on It’, all funds raised on the night were donated to the Palestinians. To be sure, the hip-hop activism of some Muslim hip-hop groups goes beyond advancing the issue of human rights within the Muslim community. They present a global message and cosmopolitan stance that would occasionally be embodied in their performance such as through the manner that they dress. In a 2008 Islamic concert in Sydney, one of the singers from the Brothahood came up on stage wearing a ‘Free Burma’ t-shirt, jeans, zikr beads and a skullcap. ² The Australian Human Rights Commission has also recognized the group’s social activism. ³

Hip-hop’s popularity among non-Anglo migrants globally was in large part to do with their feelings of alienation and the oppositional image embodied in the genre (Bennett, 2000). However, this also applies to the non-migrant Muslim youth community. While specific urban multicultural contexts produce locally promulgated forms of hip-hop culture, hip-hop enables its practitioners to claim social solidarity with a global hip-hop ummah as they participate actively in addressing the concerns of Muslims post-September 11.

Hip-hop as poetic jihad

The route to human rights activism through hip-hop for young Muslims is marked by great challenges that are first played out at the intra-religious level. Muslim hip-hop practitioners looking to voice their predicament through the genre inevitably find themselves getting into conflict with the gatekeepers of religious dogma. Religious orientations and generational differences also add to the dynamic conversations concerning hip-hop among Muslim youth.

Hip-hop culture has a tenuous relationship with Islam at a fundamental level. The most important question concerns the permissibility of music in Islam. The religious fatwa on the status of music in Islam ranges from a total prohibition of music, to allowing musical instruments as long as the song complies with Islamic precepts such as the ruling against uttering profanities. ⁴ The form of music that is in line with the religious rulings of many Islamic scholars would be nasheed. Nasheed is an Islamic-oriented form traditionally sung acapella in tandem with only basic percussion. The new wave of nasheed singers, however, has included a diverse range of instruments and has opted to integrate hip-hop music to advance their craft and this has caused some debates within the Muslim community.

At an intermediate level, Muslim youth involvement in hip-hop still comes as a challenge to the religious authorities that do not see the elements present in hip-hop as being in line with Islamic values. Hip-hop is largely seen as a sign of western moral decadence and a state of normlessness. A number of social critics have also criticized what they see as a heavy emphasis on ‘bling bling’ (materialism) and ‘bagging honeys’ (sexual relations with beautiful women) in hip-hop music and culture, as hip-hop’s concern with social causes such as rights and justice, fades into the background. These factors make the fusion of Islam and hip-hop all the more controversial.

This issue of compatibility of values is also evident when we examine the performativity of hip-hop culture among contemporary young Muslims. One sphere of contention pertains to the management of the body.

Our deen is not meant to be rocked! … I see these so-called Muslim sistas wearing a hijab and then a boostier, or a hijab with their belly-button sticking out. You don’t put on a hijab and try to rock it! Or these brothers wearing Allah tattoos, or big medallions with Allah’s name – Allah is not to be bling-blinged! (Banjoko, quoted in Aidi, 2004: 37)

The notion of bodily discipline is a strong feature of Muslim and Islamic hip-hop in contemporary society. Its practitioners strive to conform to a stricter body regimen that involves performing with less aggressive gyrations during a gig or pulling a ‘hand on a crotch move’, dressing modestly with less likelihood of being ‘blinged-blinged’, avoiding tattoos or taking a shirt off, among others. As the ‘Muslim body’ is constructed as a site of moral judgement, Muslim hip-hop activists avoid the controversial performative aspects of hip-hop as a way of responding to the disciplining of the body that is embodied in traditional ‘Islamic’ music.

Although the scope of this article does not allow the author to delve into the topic in any length, it can be seen that the concepts of ‘Muslim hip-hop’ and ‘Islamic hip-hop’ are central to the contestations within the hip-hop ummah. Put simply, the latter is used in an attempt by Muslim hip-hoppers to reconcile themselves with Islamic religious requirements in music. Islamic hip-hop may restrict the types of musical instruments used, generally does not employ expletives and frequently refers to issues of doctrinal import. In this way, these hip-hop activists ‘Islamize’ their music and performance, driven by their belief that hip-hop can be compatible with Islamic convictions as it is merely a vehicle for self-expression.

While it is essential to take note of these contestations, they do not in any way diminish the increasing trend of ‘hip-hop activism’ among the September 11 generation as a collective. As a case in point, Mushaben (2008) points to the development of Pop-Islam in Berlin, spawned in Arabia around the turn of the new millennium, citing the increase in the influence of charismatic imams and the impact of Islamic satellite television in creating idols and entertainment celebrities. This has created a ‘young, chic and cool’ Islam among marginalized Muslim youth who are deprived of basic rights of citizenship and access to resources in their countries of birth. Although the elders still hold the reins of power by which the community is governed, they are increasingly challenged by a more educated youth population. It is observed that more youthful religious imams (Islamic clerics) or ustazs (Islamic teachers) are beginning to take the helm of various mosques. Mushaben posits that tensions within the Muslim community centring on generational gaps had already appeared pre-September 11. This younger generation speaks the language of their host country, which many of their migrant predecessors struggle with, and reaches out to the larger non-Muslim population through dialogue and sports. It has been documented that the urban Muslim youth see themselves as ‘genuine Berliners’ and do not want to be restrained and pigeon-holed in an insular homogeneous social group (Mushaben, 2008: 521). With the discourse of human rights having taken root in popular culture in the West, young Muslims view their participation as a way of integrating into mainstream society.

The internet then becomes a powerful medium in which these battles are fought. The growing role of the cyberspace in the everyday lives of young people, who theoretically have the freedom of space and place in the internet, has thrown into disarray the efficacy of state regulation of conventional media such as the television. Although it is precisely this fear of unknown places and spaces that has been driving states towards regulating the internet space, attempts to curtail the autonomy of the youth are all the more problematic given the nature of the internet as both ‘global’ and cutting across ‘national boundaries’ (France, 2007: 123). Gary Bunt asserts that a primary role of the internet is to carry on the dialogue where the traditional sources stop. In addition, these globalized respondents in the Digital Age also discuss their participation and the salience of the media in their lives, leading to an unprecedented awareness of their individual and collective relationships with the different forms of media available. In the context of global cities, ‘the application of the internet is having an overarching transformational effect on how Muslims practice Islam, how forms of Islam are represented in the wider world, and how Muslim societies perceive themselves and their peers’ (Bunt 2009: 3). Hence, Muslim youth living in urban cosmopolitan cities who have closed the digital divide play a crucial role in advancing the rights of their diasporic communities through hip-hop.

These vibrant conversations lead to the global rise of a social group whom I call the ‘poetic jihadis’. Whether the outcome is ‘Muslim hip-hop’ or ‘Islamic hip-hop’ they fuse hip-hop with Islamic symbolism in an attempt to integrate two seemingly conflicting cultures. Maintaining their Muslim identity, poetic jihadis defy both the reverence for misogynistic themes in hip-hop and the traditional nature of Islamic music such as the nasheed, while incorporating a heavy dose of social reality.

If Islam’s sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.… It’s about speaking out against oppression wherever you can. If that’s gonna be in Bosnia or Kosovo or Chechnya or places where Muslims are being persecuted; or if it’s gonna be in Sierra Leone or Colombia – you know, if people’s basic human rights are being abused and violated, then Islam has an interest in speaking out against it, because we’re charged to be the leaders of humanity. (Mos Def, interview with Ali Asadullah in Beliefnet.com) ⁵

As Muslim hip-hopper Mos Def states above, his music, while not devotional in the conventional sense, is driven by Islamic beliefs such as the need to respect and protect the basic rights of others, and speak out against cruelty and oppression as God’s vicegerent on earth. Muslim hip-hoppers like Mos Def consider their Islamic identity as a mandate to push for issues of social justice through socially conscious hip-hop.

The notion of poetry in the term ‘poetic jihadis’ is not coincidental. Notwithstanding the strong criticisms on hip-hop’s compatibility with Islam that are advanced by the gatekeepers of the religion, Muslim hip-hoppers tend to couch their craft within the rubric of the Islamic tradition. Suad recounts how poetry holds an exalted place in pre-Islamic Arabia and confers on those who master it both social status and symbolic power. This tradition found continuity in the Qur’an, which is generally seen by Muslims as a text of superior linguistic pedigree. Seeking to emulate the Prophet, who is regarded as endowed with the tools that are deemed most appropriate in engaging his audiences, hip-hoppers utilized rhymes and idioms of Islamic symbolism to engage the youth of today. As one prominent former hip-hopper, Napoleon, puts it: ‘Moses was sent with magic, Jesus with medicine, and Muhammad with poetry’ (2007: 130). Seen in this light, the poetic jihadis see themselves as progeny of the ‘Muhammadan mission’ as they appropriate hip-hop to galvanize the concerns of urban minority Muslim youth living as part of the September 11 generation. In addition, the incorporation of the elements of nasheed into hip-hop has facilitated some Muslim youth, who had considered music as haram and un-Islamic, to take a more sympathetic view of Muslim hip-hop groups.

Muslims as the new blacks: from civil rights to human rights

Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours is solved. You will never be fully respected as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings. Our problem is your problem. It is not a Negro problem, nor an American problem. This is a world problem; a problem for humanity. It is not a problem of civil rights but a problem of human rights. (Malcolm X, ‘Appeal to African Heads of State’, Addis Ababa, 17 July 1964, emphasis added)

As the voice of the poetic jihadis seems to echo much of the African American hip-hop lexicon, it is imperative to examine the deeper impetus for this trend. The consumption of hip-hop culture by urban minority Muslim youth gives rise to a form of homological imagination (Kamaludeen, 2012) that there exists much common lived experience with black people in America. This is taking place as young Muslims are increasingly beginning to reinterpret their everyday predicaments not so much as a problem of civil rights as one of human rights. This is part of a larger development that also saw civil rights groups reframing their struggle as one of human rights. Kitwana (2005: 11) contends that, at the rate in which the youth are absorbing hip-hop culture globally, ‘these movements may be the catalysts necessary to jump-start an international human rights movement in this generation, a movement with the potential to parallel if not surpass yesterday’s civil rights successes’. Groups saw the struggle for civil rights as inherently limiting, as citizens are left vulnerable to the state’s definition of its peoples, while a shift to human rights is deemed to be liberating as it starts from the premise that an individual possess basic rights (Ards, 2004: 321). This shift also allows criticisms to be internationalized.

Through hip-hop, the struggle for human rights among young Muslims of the September 11 generation is conflated with the symbolic status of the civil rights movements and the struggle of black people in America. Much of Muslim hip-hop has been influenced by the oratorical style of Malcolm X, an eminent civil rights leader and Islamic activist. His ‘jihad of words’, which he successfully employed as a compelling political and religious strategy (Turner, 2003) during his time, is reborn in today’s Muslim hip-hop vernacular, with many hip-hop tracks evoking his name and alluding to his speeches. A study by Turner (2006) deals with male Muslim youth who are influenced by rap music. The author dubbed hip-hop as North America’s foremost youth culture and shows how the youth are converting to Islam as a result of hip-hop’s long association with Islam. Young Muslims also talk about how Muslim rappers such as Common, Talib Kweli, Hitek, the Roots and Wu Tang Clan are popular role models for the spiritually and politically conscious black youth. Part of the influence of Muslim rappers such as Mos Def, with his references to piety in his lyrics ‘Allah, the Lord of the worlds’, and Muslim rapper Nas singing ‘Been blessed with Allah’s vision, strength and beauty’, is that it lends itself to a ‘reconstruction of Black masculinity’ that the youth find appealing. Black Muslim youth’s drawing on the image of Malcolm X as a galvanizing tool must be emphasized. Turner underlines Malcolm X’s contribution to hip-hop culture and his influence on the conversion of black youth to mainstream Islam. The cooption of his image as part of popular culture magnified his influence. Not unlike Che Guevera, we see the symbol of Malcolm X constantly being evoked as an inspirational figure who speaks truth to power. And this appropriation is occurring at a time when the youth is besieged by information through the print and digital media, more than at any other point in history.

According to Turner, rap music transcends the ‘oppositional subcultural music’ stereotype for these youth, who seek to make sense of ‘the ultimate spiritual and political concerns in their lives and their identities are paradigms for global Muslim youth’ (Turner, 2006: 41).

It is therefore important not to understand the above trend as a mere mimicking of black culture from America. Hip-hop has provided urban Muslim minority youth with a medium to access the African American experience. It has afforded young Muslims ‘a cultural vocabulary and historical experience with which to bond and from which to draw elements for local repertoires of resistance’ (Aidi, 2004: 119). Global Muslim hip-hop culture has to be seen both as a social movement that aims to uphold the tenets of multicultural living and an endeavour to represent a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ Islam. This is achieved in hip-hop through the infusion of elements of nasheed and Islamic devotional music, coupled with the negation of the Nation of Islam/Five Percenter influences in early Muslim hip-hop music. Hence, what started off as predominantly a culture that challenges the supremacy of the white man over the black male is repackaged as a global movement for Muslim youth of the September 11 generation to express their sentiments. Globalization, the prominence of black youth in popular culture and the media depictions especially of young black males reverberate with the sense of marginalization felt by young Muslims. These images are further reinforced by what is perceived as a prejudiced criminal justice system and the concerns about living in an age of Islamophobia. Social commentators have seen the glamorizing of the hip-hop lifestyle and the exposure given to black music in the MTV generation as the reasons for the adoption of black culture among young Muslims.

Hip-hop as practised by young Muslims takes on multifarious ‘glocalized’ forms that illuminate their local habitus. Bennett (2000) advocates that the process of globalization will not in fact impose homogeneity but rather will emphasize and foster the local. Bennett argues that their practices assume meaning and social, cultural or structural significance, not solely by virtue of their engagement with dominant social structures such as the state, but by their embeddedness in local politics and social relations. He contends that social actors engage critically with popular music but that they do so principally in the context of the ‘local’. This is defined throughout the text not as a demarcated physical space but rather as a set of discourses. The specific discursive practices through which the local is called into being are, Bennett asserts, intimately associated with the production and consumption of popular music. Those musical texts that originate elsewhere are routinely read through sensibilities that emerge out of a specific understanding of place. These particular sensibilities are themselves, however, heavily influenced by exposure to musical texts that originate elsewhere.

Although the African American hip-hop scene has held much clout over the genre, the nodes of cultural influence in Muslim hip-hop do not emanate from any particular center. Instead, they are dispersed across the hip-hop ummah and are made distinct as a consequence of attempts by hip-hop practitioners to glocalize their music, adapting it to local concerns. Diasporic young Muslims in urban settings are not only subjected to official doctrines of multiculturalism in their host countries but also the socioeconomic status that is intimately linked to their locality. For instance, Western Sydney, an area with a significant presence of Muslim migrants, has long been stigmatized as unrefined and is reputed to be laden with social problems. The accents of these communities are labelled as ‘woggie’ or ‘westie’ and hold less cultural capital amid a predominantly white Christian nation. An amalgamated form of language emerges out of these power relationships. As a diametrically opposed response to conventional decorum, ‘Lebspeak’ (Cameron, 2003) is born among second-generation Lebanese youth by ingesting hip-hop jargon into their everyday speech. These conversations between hip-hop and local culture lead to the formation of a glocalized jargon using terms like ‘fully sick bro’, ‘awesome, Habib’ (a form of ‘mate’), ‘Yallah’ (let’s go), other than the more colourful swearing (‘mo-fo’, for example) (Butcher, 2008). The language of hip-hop among minority migrant young Muslims and their hip-hop activism is inexorably interwoven with local flavours and draws inspiration from the antagonisms that are reminiscent of domestic conflicts.

Minority Muslim youth hip-hoppers commonly use terms like ‘outlaws’ and ‘outsiders’ to refer to their perceived estranged social position vis-a-vis the larger mainstream society. In Germany, diasporic Turkish youth in Berlin (Soysal, 2004) found their voice amid a limiting discursive space through the landscape of hip-hop that governs their stories through a ghetto narrative and hip-hop lexicon. The ‘angry street talk’ of Turkish youth in Berlin fits well with other groups such as London’s Fun’da’mental, America’s N.W.A. and Paris’s NTM. The use of these terminologies can however be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the shared social conditions with the African American experience might be precisely the factor that gives hip-hop music its appeal to the local Muslim youth but, on the other, the discursive constraints within the hip-hop vocabulary necessitates the adoption by Muslim youth of an ‘us versus them’ attitude.

Between the formation of a global Muslim youth hip-hop culture and manifestations of its glocalized forms, the notion of social justice remains central to Muslim hip-hop practitioners. It can be surmised that this theme within Muslim hip-hop is likely to thrive given the social status, real or perceived, of many Muslim minorities. Certain sections have gone as far as to contend that Muslims are now becoming the most marginalized members of society, likening their predicament to that of black Americans. According to one observer, ‘Muslims have then, ironically, become the new “black” with all the associations of cultural alienation, deprivation and danger that come with this position’ (Alexander, 2000: 15).

Conclusion

Young Muslims of the September 11 generation are faced with tough questions over what it means to be ‘Muslim’ due to the increasing securitization by nation-states and the focus of the general public on their Muslim minority populations. September 11, as a global event, has resulted in many young Muslims having to come to terms with their piety, regardless of whether they claim to be ‘devout’ adherents of the religion. For those who consider themselves ‘religious’, September 11 presents them with the ultimate challenge of defending their religion as well as religious practices such as fasting during the month of Ramadhan and performing daily prayers. Nonetheless, even among respondents who concede that they are not ‘practising’ their religion, many find themselves in the position of having to re-examine their identity amid enhanced scrutiny. Popular youth culture, hence, often becomes the common arena whereby these acts of piety, in all their diversity, are performed.

The manifestation of hip-hop culture among urban minority youth is also an expression of a dialectical relationship between attempts by moral entrepreneurs to manage the youth through music and the youth’s attempt to advance their human rights activism through hip-hop. The youth body regimen is constructed as a site of moral judgement, with policing extended to the body. The performativity of music also tends to be demonized: the sexual body that is associated with hip-hop music and the violent body that is associated both with particular dances, and crowds during public performance. In this regard, performative hip-hop can also be seen as a response to the traditional disciplined bodies of ‘Islamic music’.

Youth dispositions also have to be contextualized to the local field and attempts by the state, mass media, custodians of religious dogma and the youth themselves, not only to jostle for moral guardianship but to redraw existing moral boundaries must be taken into consideration. These practices are not simply the results of dualisms that illuminate the encounters between structure and agency, but rather highlight the consequence of the youth’s living in a structure. Youth acquire their dispositions, consciously or unconsciously, from a structural framework. The challenge remains for youth to reconcile him or herself with the apparently competing social norms. In essence, Muslim youth have bridged the gap between the seemingly colliding genres of nasheed and hip-hop, with the notion of jihad, central to their endeavours. It is undeniable that, for young Muslims, popular culture not only provides important frameworks of social identity, it also offers the space to form generational and transnational solidarities revolving around human rights.