His first book, The Taqwacores, was xeroxed and spiral-bound, but it struck a loud punk-inflected chord in a community of mostly-Islamic youth, trying to reconcile music and religion.
What do you get when you add taqwa, or God-consciousness, to the punk suffix “-core”? Can something be Islamic without being religious? As journalists try to get a handle on this genre- and culture-bending mashup, RD associate editor Hussein Rashid gets right to the source.
Has the Nation of Islam, a tradition hinged on separatism, evolved into supporters of the President of the United States? If so, how does that affect the Nation’s ground-up community networks and sociopolitical analysis of American society?
Obama’s speech marks a radical departure from the prophetically-laden, right-wing rhetoric that cast America and Israel together waiting for Armageddon at the hands of Arab countries. In fact, what if the speech were intended to deconstruct the simplistic mistrust of American Christianity towards Islam?
Conservative bogeyman? Militant black nationalist? Cool screen-print? This quintessential intellectual was so much more.
