I think I may have misinterpreted the whole Muslim thing – I didn’t realize that I had to be baptized by being thrown into a lake and have my girlish long locks hacked into a bob chop fashioned by a police chief to prove my Muslim-ness. 59 guys and 5 girls have been sent to a ten day morality camp in Bandeh Aceh, Indonesia – their crime, they went to a punk show. They shaved their heads and threw them into a lake…for a bath. This is their start to morality brainwashing.

Indonesian sharia police are “morally rehabilitating” more than 60 young punk rock fans in Aceh province on Sumatra island, saying the youths are tarnishing the province’s image.Hundreds of Indonesian punk fans came from around the country to attend the concert, organised to raise money for orphans. Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day “moral rehabilitation” camp run by police. [link]

My baptism wasn’t by lake water but by fire, avoiding the glares of the Christian fundamentalists with their barking dogs on the street corner protesting outside my American mosque, or getting pulled out by TSA in airport security lines. My Islamic baptism happens when I watch my back for hate-crimes when walking down the street defiantly brown in a white America or when I get told by drunk bigots at parties to go back to where I came from.  My boycott these days is of a hardware supply store for not supporting a reality show. That is the American Muslim punk baptism right there.

In America, being Muslim is an act of defiance. That’s punk. But what does it mean in a Muslim province with partial shahria law? If punk is relative to your environment, and the establishment is staunchly Islamic, does that act of being an anti-establishment punk push you further away from faith?

A local rights activist Evi Narti Zain said the arrests breached human rights. “What the police have done is totally bizarre. Being a punk is just a lifestyle. They exist all over the world and they don’t break any rules or harm other people,” she said. Hasan denied the accusation, claiming the rehabilitation programme was merely an “orientation into normal Indonesian society”. [link]

The irony is that the concert was a benefit to raise funds for orphans. Are fundraisers anti-Islamic now? Do we hate orphans? And what is up need for indoctrination into normalized society? No mohawks? No black clothes? Showers are mandatory? And if you disobey, you get sent to a 10 day morality camp? Diversity discouraged? This is not the Islam I was raised with.

I was facebooking with a friend in Indonesia who said, “I myself don’t like them, because they will be someday criminals. They act like punk, but actually it is nothing to do with arts, but criminals….They don’t understand the meaning to be punks and why that movement show up. They just imitate the outfit and the hair. But in the reality they are street children and no education, though some of them have parents and can afford them to have proper education. The clothes are dirty.”

Though I know it’s a different culture there, I balked at the ease at which punks are correlated with eventually being criminals – that’s harsh especially considering some of these kids have jobs according to the article. A bank too, of all places. I strongly believe freedom to express oneself in a form that is anti-establishment should never be a crime, especially if it isn’t harming anyone else.  It’s what the Occupy movement in the US is all about. At the end of the day, all is relative.

I do know that if I was raised a punk in a Muslim world, how I approached my faith would have been totally antithetical to how I’ve embraced being a Muslim now. I love my hyphenated identities in all their complicated messiness. I think the government in Indonesia needs to let these kids be kids. They are going to learn the hard way that  brainwashing camp will only serve to have these punks rebel exponentially. You feel me? Then let’s dishoom back – with a mixtape.

The mixtape is a crucial part of our subculture, and is solely responsible for the spread of punk influence worldwide.  Mixtapes have introduced myself and many others to so many amazing bands, and the act of making them is one of the most sincere forms of friendship that exist in our world.  So, we are asking our friends, our community, and anyone else who remotely gives a shit to make and donate one mixtape cassette to the kids in Aceh who were forced into detention solely for being punk. [abortedsociety]

Up the Indo Taqx and make that mixtape. You know, for the kids. I mean, the punks. See photos of them getting “baptized” here.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a punk, political organizer and writer based in California. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), curates MutinousMindState.tumblr.com and writes at www.sepiamutiny.com. Follow her at twitter.com/tazzystar

We all struggle with our own personal jihads,
She just chose to wear hers inked into skin as her sleeve,
That brave contradiction is to be admired/aspired.

We are all haramis,
struggling searching for taqwa
and seeking to live judiciously.
But she did it with balls out bravado.

This kind of mythology can only be written by the Almighty himself.
The punk with “I Am Haram” emblazoned in Arabic across her chest.
The sometimes hijab wearing pole dancer who danced to The Kominas music.
The pierced  Arabic language studies student.
The burka-ed bride at an Ashura themed fake blood soaked lesbian wedding.
The Palestinian meets Israeli meets American meets adoptee meets mother.
Crazy how self-created mythology can fold in on itself.

She was more Jehangir than anyone else in Taqwacore could ever be.
She was taqwa to the core before Taqwacore was even a term.
That’s the sign to a true Taqwacore – someone who doesn’t wait for others to define them.
Fists out, they jump into the pit of life to duke it out for themselves. Self-define.

To jannah you go, our young pious rebel,
Our tragic heroine with the untimely death.
May we all carry the light of your legacy in our lives.

If I’ve learned anything from you it is this -
don’t wait till tomorrow for the next tattoo.
Get it now.
Live life. Now.
Love recklessly. Now.

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Our world was rocked yesterday as we found out through the taqwacore grapevine that one of our very own had passed away. Ari Sa’id and her boyfriend Sergio Randel met a tragic end in a car accident Friday night.

I couldn’t say we were friends, in the conventional sense. I’d never been to her home, she’d never met my siblings, nor I her daughter. We’d met once in real life, on a Sundance Taqwacore adventure. Technically we met on the Utah streets, surrounded by snow. In the past few years, we connected over the internet, over words, over twitter. We connected because we had a love and hate relationship with the same boys/music/scensters/Islam/Allah. We may not have been “friends” – but we were cut from the same contradictory cloth with the same blasphemous struggles. We were kin. It’s just her cloth was louder.

Two months ago, she wrote me a late night drunken love letter from her phone. Little did I know then that it’d be a goodbye letter. An excerpt:

Incidentally, you are one of the most meaningful things I took from taqwacore, whatever that’s worth…. I think that probably you and me are going to be the most important ‘brown’ Muslim women of our generation. I’m happy for my daughter that you exist taz. If your work isn’t something she has to read and analyze in high school….we are going fucking Bedouin native.

Allah is huge and open and if he is going to hate me, which I don’t believe, he’d hate us together. I appreciate your commitment to the potential decline of haramis and how our god is so fucking full of love we will be okay. I love you, taz. I thought a lot about women, and Muslim women, and Muslim vs Arab vs Desi women and I’m sick of the divisors…But there are people like you and me that won’t lay down quietly. Feel me?

So, Ari Lauren Souad Said. Gaza Stripper. The only tribute I can think of is with words and to continue to live my life in a way that makes you proud. To be punk and loud and to fight for what’s right. To love Allah by being Muslim despite the contradictions and to love myself with all my contradictions. And to not lay down quietly.

I challenge everyone that reads this piece to the end to do the same.

Up the Taqx & Rest in Power, Ari. You are loved and missed. May your legacy live on.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.

When you hear the words “Orange County,” I’m sure you have an image that comes to your head very much like the ones on television shows “The O.C.” or “The Real Wives of Orange County.” The image I have, after having organized there for the past two years, is very different. The O.C. is a largely diverse county, with a “minority majority” where only 45% of the population is White and 17% of the population of Asian descent, according to the recent 2009 Census report. The largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam resides in Garden Grove in Little Saigon, and Santa Ana is an epicenter of the Latino population. And of course, the Muslims. There is a large population of Muslims scattered across the county – in fact, according to a religious study from 2000, it is the 5th most popular religion in the county, representing 1.4 percent of the population of The O.C. I’m sure the statistics on this will be different if you look at 2011 result of the region on religion.

Why am I telling you about this other perspective of Orange County? To give you context as you watch this video, released by CAIR-LA on Wednesday.

The above video was filmed at a rally in February, outside of a fundraiser for the Islamic Circle of North America, a charity driven international Muslim organization.

The event – held at Yorba Linda Community Center, a facility that has been frequented by Muslim families and businesses over the years – first became a target of anti-Muslim bigots over two of the fundraiser’s speakers, who were to speak on the importance of charity in Islam. [cair-la]

What was most disturbing to me, albeit not surprising since I’ve had to build relationships with Electeds in this region, is the statements that came from the politicians that spoke at the rally. Councilwoman Deborah Pauly clearly implied that all the Muslims should be murdered. In light of what happened with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, due to the hate sentiments fueled in the community (as well as by Sarah Palin) and a lunatic eventually retaliating with a gun shot in to head… Well. Can Deborah Pauly really be that ignorant to not make a connection that her words could have the same effect? Or maybe she knows, and simply doesn’t care.

Villa Park Councilwoman, Deborah Pauly, while addressing the crowd at the rally, appeared to threaten Muslim event-goers. Congressman Ed Royce (R-40), in a troubling trend of disparaging Islam and its followers, added fuel to the fire by encouraging protesters to continue on with their hate-mongering. The attendance of Congressman Gary Miller (R-42) was a clear surprise, since he previously has engaged with all constituents, including Muslims, toward a better America. [cair-la]

But this situation isn’t simply a one-off of crazy tea-baggers in Orange County. There have been a string of Islamaphobic stories recently in Orange County – from the protesting of the construction of mosques to a hijabi woman fighting for her job at Disneyland because she wanted to wear her hijab to work. But the biggest story currently comes from UC Irvine, with the case of the Irvine 11.

The students — 8 currently at UC Irvine and 3 UC Riverside graduates — were charged with with two misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and disturbance of the meeting by the Orange County District Attorney’s office on Friday, only a few days after a protest was staged outside of the DA’s office in support of the so-called ‘Irvine 11.’

The incident prompted the suspension of the school’s Muslim Student Union group and sparked debates on campus regarding limitations on free speech…[huffpost]

Since when did the District Attorney’s office get involved when students spoke out against a speaker on a campus? Students do this *all the time* on university campuses and they never get criminal charges. As the above video shows, this is a clear case of double standards and a racist example of selective punishment in the criminal justice system.

In comparison, none of the protesters in the first video were pressed with criminal charges. Even with Councilwoman Pauly’s veiled threats.

Racism still exists, both on the ground and in navigating the legal system. It pains me to hear people say that racism is no more when this incident just happened last month and hate was hurled at young children walking into a space, just because they were wearing hijab. I would go as far as to say that because Orange County is a minority majority now, these two incidences are a clear reflection of the fear felt by the now “minority” Whites. They are scared, and they are backlashing.

One final video, to cleanse your palette. I dedicate this one to all the bigots that stumble upon this site today. This one is for you.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.

Photo by Kim Badawi

Tahrir Square looks like a mosh pit.
At least from what I can see on the Al Jazeera live feed.
People chanting, fists in air.
The crowd moves, like the crowd in front of a stage.
Naturally, you hear Arabic, words of “Allah”, “Inshallah”, “Walahi”, “Yallah”. It is their language.
They say other things, things I can’t understand.
But it’s okay that I don’t understand their language – the expressions in their faces say it all.
It’s one of passion, energy, defiance and pride.
There is fire in their eyes.
There is blood in their tears.
There is tenacity in their fists.
It’s the dance of a revolutionary in motion.

Over 350 people have died.
Thousands more injured.
Plenty have disappeared at the hand of a cop.
Most of the people that have died are youth.
It’s always the youth, isn’t it? They ignite the fire, start the movement, risk their lives.
Initiate change.
Yet the President of Egypt refuses to step down, refuses to let go, refuses to see that his time has come to an end.
Mubarak is blinded by the power and blinded by the super powers that support him to be blinded.

Photo by Kim Badawi

I look closely on the screen, whenever Al-Jazeera shows the crowd. I know he’s there. I’m looking for Kim Badawi. He went to Cairo, soon after January 25th. He does things like that. He went with Imran to Haiti soon after the earthquake hit last year. According to Facebook, Kim was worried he wouldn’t make it into Cairo in time before they shut the airport. But he did. We weren’t sure if he was okay until the Anderson Cooper got attacked by the pro-Mubarak mobs on the street. It was Kim Badawi’s photos that were plastered all over CNN, documenting the experience. In terms of photojournalism in times of conflict, I know this was a big break for him.

Photo by Kim Badawi

I know he has a place in Cairo and is safe. I know he’s providing shelter and protection for protesters at his place. I know his family is from Egypt, so language isn’t an issue. I know this is what he does. So I shouldn’t worry. But I continue to look at the Al Jazeera live stream for a sign of his mop of frizzy hair in Tahrir pit, to make sure he is still there. I still worry.

What can I do? I want to do something. I want to show solidarity in something. I want to get on the next plane on head to Egypt, partake in what is sure to be big. But I know in my heart, it is their fight to fight. It is a peoples movement. My fight is here, to use my power here.

What we can do, is make art, the way that only punk rockers can do. Sunny Ali was inspired and wrote the song “Tahrir Square Dance” at the top of this post. Imran of The Kominas was inspired by his song, and created a video to go with it. Citizen Vex remixed the song “Never Again” and dedicated it to the people of Egypt. Marwan posted an eloquent essay on Al-Thawra’s blog talking about the build up to the revolutions in the Middle East. Our friends The Narcicyst, Omar Offendum and Amir Sulaiman wrote a song that is spreading across the internet like wildfire.

Every time I hear the man say “I will die today…” in that song, my eyes immediately well up. Every time.

Artist Samira Idroos set up a Tumblr site to collect all the forms of art inspired by the #Egypt #Jan25 at www.heart-of-the-revolution.tumblr.com

I’m sorry, youth of Egypt.
I’m sorry that the tear gas used on you was made in the U.S.A.
I’m sorry that the bullets that killed your people were probably funded by the U.S.A. as well.
I’m sorry that the pro-Mubarak supporters are being equipped with arms from Israel, arms that were likely given by the U.S.A.
I’m sorry that the president of the U.S.A. has empowered Mubarak so that in the light of millions of people on the streets of Egypt, Mubarak still doesn’t step down.
I’m sorry that my taxes went to hurting you.

The revolution may not be televised. But it is being Al-Jazeera-ed, Twittered, and Facebooked.
We are watching you.
We are standing and marching in solidarity.
We hear you.
We see you.
We feel you.
We have not forgotten you.
We believe in you.
You inspire us.

May you win.
May you succeed.
May the revolution complete.
Inshallah.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.

When I read Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel (which the feature film, directed by Eyad Zahra, is based on), my knowledge of Islam was still pretty limited. But my reaction after putting to the book was intensely positive. I thought immediately, “Punk’s not dead..” I’ve never had a religious affiliation, but the theme of disillusionment with an initially good idea plagued by fundamentalism reminded me so much of my experience with punk.

Punk is something I’ve always loved, but never felt I could use as a personal label. The music was always a big part of my childhood (my mother had me listening to “Who Killed Bambi” while most kids were still watching Bambi). But by the time I was a teenager, I wasn’t punk enough to hang out with the punk cliques in middle and high school. I liked a lot of non-punk bands. My favorite band, The Distillers, was “not punk enough.” My clothes didn’t meet the standards of the punk uniform. There was always some reason I felt embarrassed to proclaim my love of punk, even though I desperately wanted to. Eventually I said “fuck it, I don’t need this,” and up until this book, I thought punk was something I was done with.

But as I turned each page, pausing occasionally to look up the Arabic terms and Islamic references, I started getting nostalgic. Eventually, I threw on Rancid’s “And Out Come the Wolves” for the first time in maybe five years, and started browsing the net to see what “taqwacore” actually sounded like in musical form. I was officially hooked after stumbling upon The Dead Bhuttos’, a now disbanded act that included The Kominas’ Imran Malik and Basim Usmani, and their catchy-as-hell “Terri Assi Ki Tassi.”

Being a writer gave me a good excuse to actually talk to the people involved, starting with Knight when I interviewed him for LA2Day.com while the movie was being shot in Cleveland in October 2008. I always knew I wanted to do some kind of follow up on the subject after the article was published. I had originally thought it would be just one more story, though. After reviewing The Kominas’ Downtown Los Angeles show with Sarmust and Prop Anon in the summer of 2009, I got the idea to ask the band for an interview. In January of this year, after two interviews with The Kominas, and one with Al-Thawra and Omar Waqar, I headed to Sundance to cover the film’s world premiere and epic Star Bar show the following day. (I wasn’t getting paid, I just wanted to write about it.) Now I don’t even know how many articles I’ve written on “taqwacore,” off the top of my head (though you can find a lot of them on my blog).

Initially, I was eager to talk to these musicians, since their music was now becoming part of my daily routine, but I was also hyper aware of how easy it would be for me to fuck this story up. From what I’d been reading, the bands were uncomfortable with the problematic and exclusive sounding “Muslim Punk” label. But I still kept thinking, “I’m not Muslim, my heritage isn’t Middle Eastern, South Asian or North African, so how can I relate to any of this? “ In this case, I was surely running the risk of being called a poseur. But getting to know the “real life taqwacores” proved that wasn’t the case at all. When I nervously mentioned to Usmani in the first of my Kominas’ interview “I’m a super white valley girl, but I love your record,” his response was a gracious, “thanks, I’m glad!” When I talked to Marwan Kamel of Al-Thawra, he expressed delightful surprise at finally being asked questions about the band’s music. By the time I was hanging out with everyone at Sundance, I was experiencing something completely new in all of my encounters with punk. I was around people where I felt that I didn’t have to prove anything. In a group where I would last expect to fit in, I felt right at home.

I’ve kept in touch with the friends I made at Sundance, but since these writers, bands and fans are spread out across the country, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the so-called “scene” sometimes. Even if I am constantly listening to the music and am up to date with the news on all the bands, it starts to feel like it’s not “real” anymore when you haven’t actually hung out with anyone in months. But the great thing about taqwacore is that it can’t be classified just as a “scene.” It’s bigger than that. It’s an idea that’s so open to interpretation, which can only be as “real” as the individual decides it is. And it’s recently come to my attention that “taqwacore” is something I’ve managed to make very real in my close circle of friends, none of whom qualify as “Muslim Punk.”

The second time I saw the movie in April at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, I brought along two of my best girlfriends, sisters of Catholic descent. I was anxious about their reaction, especially since one of them, who I’ve known since 9th grade, considers her faith a huge part of her identity. They both loved the film, and haven’t ceased asking me when The Kominas are going to play in LA since. A few weeks ago their 18 year-old niece excitedly told me how much she “loved Muslim Punk.” I cringed at the term and told her she couldn’t call the bands that, but a few days later I found myself wondering why I thought that was such a bad thing.

On November 1, one of them asked if I was going to a special screening of the film at the Screen Actors Guild the following day. After wondering how the hell she had heard about this before me, I booked tickets, and within minutes was informed that she had to work and wouldn’t be able to make it. I called up another of my best girlfriends, who I’d burned “Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay” for this past spring, and having loved it, she was stoked when I told her I had an extra ticket. We blasted the record through the West Side of Los Angeles on our way to the screening. Before the ending credits had started to roll, she turned to me, and the words “That was brilliant!” burst out of her mouth. She told me a few days later, at the after party at the Velvet Margarita following the November 10 special screening sponsored by the Levantine Center, that the past week of “taqwacore” made her feel “connected to my Moroccan side.” (she’s half Moroccan Jewish). These are just two examples of the many favorable responses I’ve witnessed after introducing my friends and family to taqwacore.

Each screening I’ve been to since Sundance has been followed by a question and answer session with members of the cast and crew, and the reactions exhibited at the three recent LA screenings varied. The audience at SAG seemed to respond positively, probably because we were in a crowd of people in film. Some asked about the editing and sound; a kid from Alaska on his 5th day in LA asked what techniques an actor can use to play characters that contradict a strict upbringing. When one woman asked what audience this movie was exactly for, Noureen DeWulf, the actress who brilliantly portrays Rabeya, the badass burqa wearing riot grrrl, responded that the film’s lack of a target audience is why it was a low budget independent production, and not a studio film.

The discussions at the screenings this past week were not as tame. At Friday;’s premiere, one man referred to the foreboding intensity in the dialogue about the upcoming Taqwacore show at the film’s climax as foreshadowing of a “terrorist act.” Actor Tony Yalda, whose performance as Muzzamil (or “Miss Muzzy”) reminds me of the best friends I made at punk shows in my teen years, boldly asked why he would make that association, when building up to a climax is part of every film, and there were no planes exploding in this movie. I didn’t hear my favorite question during any of the Q and A’s, though. Before the film started at the Harmony Gold Theater last Wednesday, I started chatting with a kid four seats down from me who was there because he was a fan of the book. Eventually he inquired about if I was “in the scene,” and when I responded “kind of,” he eagerly asked, “Where do you guys hang out?!”

I can’t begin to predict how this movie will be widely received, but I do know that not everyone who sees “The Taqwacores” will find it as thrilling as my friends and I do. Maybe it’s because I’ve been anticipating the film’s release for so long, but while I was trying to figure out exactly how to answer this kid’s last question, I couldn’t help but think, “It’s all happening…”

I will not discredit taqwacore for connecting me with people that now mean a lot to me. I also will not discredit taqwacore for making me think a little bit more about identity and questioning my place in the world. But it started as a fictional novel, no? A very well written novel, in my opinion, but still a fictional one. I think what took the depth out of taqwacore for me is the fact that people are trying to create this world that Michael Muhammad Knight painted through his words but often overlooked are the complexities (that are actually exposed in the book itself) of such an intense group of people. There is an absurd fixation on being a bunch of outsiders who have come together to unite. It seems like it’s cool to be the different one and have people try to decode your life story. But of course, people get fucking rowdy. Hello, human beings. People get jealous, greedy. People get on each other’s nerves. I guess the media didn’t help either with its bullshit headlines and ego-feeding but then again, it’s almost impossible for mainstream media to support and go hand-in-hand with social movements that are supposed to create some kind of progression and provide food for thought. Hello, dollar signs.

This is what taqwacore is to me: a very good starting point for everybody, not just brown kids or Muslim kids or punk kids, to explore what peoples’ beliefs and backgrounds are and how they align with who they’ve grown to become. It is a platform for everyone who feels displaced to engage with each other and encourage honesty towards ourselves as human beings. By the same token, I feel as though it should not end there. When trying to discover what lies in our hearts and minds, I think we have to ride every vehicle available towards understanding. Staying within a movement that seems to have become so exclusive, to me, seems pointless. We need to hold a constant hunger in our bellies for unadulterated information and to uncover aspects of the current state of the world that are unheard of in our day-to-day lives.

As for one of my closest friends being in a band that is constantly being associated with the hype, well, they’re kind of in another league. The reason I admire and respect Al-Thawra is obvious: their music is phenomenal. More than that, they represent everything I feel is important in music i.e. honesty and compassion. You can tell they take their time to compose their notes to perfection but it is not contrived at all. What I mean is it remains organic and real but it is well thought-out and skilfully crafted. Of course, to deny any association with the scene, shows, feature film or documentary would be to erase a significant part of the bands development but Al-Thawra are beyond taqwacore and it’s about time they start getting recognised for their stand-alone talents, perseverance and integrity.

Anyway, what would I know? I’m a nineteen-year-old nerd who decided to ditch university, go to a technical college and study audio and then fly away to live on my own here in Chicago. I’ve never been on a “taqwa-tour” and I’m only friends with a few people that have been linked to the “scene”. I arrived too late anyway. It was only just over a year ago when I really started looking into it properly. Most of my friends I grew up with back home were white and I grew up surrounded by Aussie flags and green and gold paraphernalia but I wasn’t casted out – I was and still am an Aussie just like the white kids. My dad lets me do almost anything I want and I have a beautiful relationship with my whole family who have always been a part of the working class. I suppose if we’re going by what taqwacore seems to have become, I am not even eligible to be a part of it.

The challenges I’ve come across in my life include making my own parents understand why I chose to wear the hijab; falling into the wrong crowd and physical violence and drugs; being shunned for having divorced parents; the heartache that comes with an influx of deaths of family members and friends; putting up with a psychologist that seemed crazier than me; watching my father get taken away by immigration and detained when I was ten; having my mother move to another country when I was eleven; fighting for my father and brothers rights to stay in the country; having my heart broken time and time again; getting my first job at fourteen to help support my family; constantly being the middleman between my brothers and brother-in-law who have hated each other for years; growing up in the shadow of a beautiful, talented older sister; and moving to another country on my own with no previous experience living out of home.

It may not seem like anything to anybody but that is what has shaped me. No aspect of what I have gone through in my life is taqwacore and I’ll tell you why – everything that I have gone through is what everyone goes through in one way or another. What the fuck is the point of using these struggles to set yourself apart from the rest of the world? Being brown or Muslim or punk doesn’t make you a fucking hero for having juggled such identities. We all go through shitty ordeals and learn how to pick ourselves up. We’ve all felt stupid and broken and misunderstood.

I guess in the same way some people viewed it as a gigantic social movement that would attract attention from all corners of the world, the taqwacore I knew and wanted was a place beyond this physical world that absolutely everybody and anybody could go to, to deconstruct their thoughts and feel comfortable in doing so. I swear to you now, I really am pretty disappointed about what it has become. Alas, like I said, I was the new kid that may not have understood it to its full extent but I sure do feel sorry for anyone who would like to be a “new kid” and suddenly feels as though they cannot partake.

I picked up a punk in Fremont, in a neighborhood that reeked of Indian food at 11 in the morning. A family friend, we knew each other as toddlers and reconnected as grown-ups when we realized that we had both been that other Muslim kid at the punk show. He had read all of Knight’s books, heard/read all of my stories, downloaded all the songs by all the bands. He took off a week of work to ride down with me to The Taqwacores Motion Picture Los Angeles premiere screening. It was showing in Los Angeles and Irvine all week.

As we got in the car he suspiciously asked if we were going to listen Florence and The Machines. I looked at him side-eyed. He said anytime he got into a girl’s car, that was the anthem of the moment. In the 90s version, it would have been The Cranberries or Fiona Apple or Alanis Morisette. I told him that I did have some songs on the iPod, but that we could skip it for sure. Instead, we played a playlist titled “Rasika’s Punk Education.” When I heard Rasika Mathur was looking for a punk girl education for her role as Fatima before heading to The Taqwacores set in Ohio, I had created a mixed CD of all my favorite punk music to give to her. Yes, I made her a mixtape. As a So Cal straight-edge punk that went through it in the 90s, of course I had to include Goldfinger, Homegrown, Save Ferris, MXPX, NOFX, Mad Caddies, The Ataris, and Bouncing Soul. And after that playlist was complete, we moved on to Lisa Loeb and Cyndi Lauper.

Click clack went the heels of the tall Persian woman in the bright purple mini-dress. I looked at her shoes. They had the iconic red soles. Louboutins. “I can’t believe she wore those shoes to a punk movie!” I whispered to the girl I was with.

“Those are $700 shoes!” she whispered back. I couldn’t help but think how that contrasted with how broke the bands were living these days. At least the director, Eyad Zahra, had kept it real with his shoes. He was rocking the Converse with his suit.

We were at The Taqwacore premiere and it was clearly a different crowd. It was the type of crowd that as an L.A. girl, I tried to avoid. The Hollywood types. But more – it was the Hollywood Muslim have-lots-of-money types. Totally not gutterpunk types.

It didn’t really bother me until we got to the question and answer portion of the film. It was my third time watching the movie, and this time, it felt different than the first time. The movie to me was no longer a fiction, it had become reality. And in the reality of taqwacore, so much had changed in the “real scene.” Taqwacore folks were rejecting the term “taqwacore”, there was squabbling and what was once a cuddly bunch had seemingly dispersed. Or grown up. I guess. If the storyline were to parallel reality, I’d say we were at the point where the fight in the moshpit had just ended. As the credits rolled on the movie, that was all I could think about, and how none of the real punks bothered (or could afford) to show up to this screening.

As the lights came on after the show, I looked around. I was the only one rocking the colored hair. No mohawks, no punk gear, no buttons. The moderator began by saying people had walked out on the movie. they hadn’t expected it to be so “controversial” and “offensive.”

But as Eyad said later, “It’s a punk movie. If people aren’t walking out of the movie that means that it’s watered down. And then we weren’t being true to the essence of being punk. It’s a good thing.”

The questions from the audience though, were so….indirect and circular. So academic, in-genuine and ivory tower. There was the question of how the movie didn’t reflect the older generation. Questions about how this movie would be perceived differently in a Muslim country and how we wasn’t representing that. Questions about American Muslim identities and how this was “the exaggerated characterizations.” Questions about how Rabeyah’s character ended on her knees. (“Actually, she was standing up at the end.”)

“I just wanted to give that guy with the question that just didn’t end,” my friend told me later, “I just wanted to hand him a Black Flag album and tell him to go listen to it. That all his answers were there.”

But what bugged me the most is how the characters in the movie were “othered” by the audience. The idea that there could be Muslim kids out there that actually went to punk shows and went to Friday prayer, a muted version of what happened in the movie/book, seemed outlandish. The idea that there was a “real” version of this, never came up. It was simply a fiction.

It made it feel exotified. Hot Topic-ified.

Because the thing is, for me, whatever this is. This scene, gang, virtual twitter/facebook posse or whatever it is, it is real. And though it may have publicly revolved around a couple of the bands, there’s a whole mess of punks that are in the scene that aren’t in bands, much like the archetypes of the book. It has been fascinating to meet and document the many many people that Taqwacore has made my life path cross with. You have the exotic dancer covered in tattoos with hijabs that she rocks sometimes too; the pediatrician that rocked the Goldfinger pit regularly leading prayers on cardboard boxes at punk venues; the photographer that intersperses his (photo-/vodka-) shots with “yallah” and “wallahi”; the kilt wearing tattoo artist motorcycle enthusiast; the Lebanese guitarist Cal student with a penchant for pro-Palestine protests; the fashionista with clothing line; and you even have the Hindu Bengali guitar playing phD student that I proudly prayed my Eid prayers behind even though he wasn’t Muslim. But what does that really mean, anyways…

I guess my point is, that we, the punks that just happened to be Muslim in this country, we exist, whether we had the book (or the documentary, or the photo book, the music) or not. And as we grapple with what it means to be an American Muslim, whether spiritually, politically, or culturally, we would have still brought in elements of punk sensibility. It’s just that Mike Knight’s creation of the book The Taqwacores helped us find each other.

What I had hoped for the audience to have gotten out of the Q&A but I didn’t, was that. That it was real. That there were people that struggled with being boxed in and were struggling to create their own box. That the movie, book, scene, people were folks who had gone through that same experience too. And what I really hope to come out of this movie getting out there, is that there will be teenage versions of myself – Muslim kids going punk shows on Saturday nights and Sunday school the next morning – that are able to meet other like minded folks and not give up on life. That they don’t see themselves on the margins. That they have a punk house they belong to, as virtual it may be.

I do wonder though if everyone moves out of the taqwacore house in the book, and the reporter comes looking to glorify Jehangir and finds nothing but remnants – I can’t help and think what the parallel reality of that is. Or if this is it.

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But fuck it. I’m going skateboarding on the beach with Amazing Ayyub tomorrow and there’s something punk as fuck about that. And maybe the blurred lines with reality and fiction aren’t really that bad. And maybe when all the glitter and glam of Hollywood dust settles, connections will still exist. Inshallah.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.

Finally, the movie is out. Last month the movie had it’s NYC debut and on November 12th the movie will be released in Los Angeles and Irvine for the big screen west coast screening. And it’s not just the movie that came out – the soundtrack for the movie also was released. Available on iTunes, The Taqwacores Original Motion Picture Soundtrack has our favorite bands like The Kominas, Noble Drew, Diacritical, Al-Thawra as well as Sagg and The Fanaa Fish. But it’s The Taqwacores Original Motion Picture Score (also on iTunes) that not only created shaped the sound space to the film but is also the brainchild of Omar Fadel. Here’s what he had to say.

In a punk book turned to movie, punk music plays a crucial role. In some ways, the music in itself is a different character. You created the score for the movie – how did you go about preparing to work on this movie? Did you read the book first? Or did you get a draft of the movie and just jump right in?

I was involved from day one.  Eyad called me up after he finished reading the book and told me about this amazing story of Muslim punks.  I read the book and was blown away…  Aside from reading the book and watching the film over and over, the majority of my preparation was trying to think of cool sounds that would work with the film.  From the very beginning Eyad and I  knew that the score couldn’t sound traditional and had to use a non traditional palette of sounds and instruments.

So both The Taqwacores score AND the Taqwacores soundtrack are for sale on iTunes. Why did the production team decide to release them both?

The were several reasons why we decided on two releases rather than on one combined score/soundtrack.  One reason was that we felt that some buyers would want one or the other but necessarily both score & soundtrack.  And the other reason is that we wanted the listener to be able to listen to the score in it’s entirety without it being broken up by the soundtrack songs.  The same idea goes for the soundtrack.

Have you always listened to punk music or was this your first foray?

Yes, I have always listened to punk, but never really played or wrote any.  Operation Ivy’s self titled album and The Clash’s London Calling are in my top 20 favorite albums list.

The moshpit scene is one of the most crucial crux point in the movie – how did you choose the song that you did for it?

I believe Eyad had stumbled on the Bad Brains song early in the editing process.  I never watched a rough cut of the film without that song. One thing that did change is that Eyad originally wanted the Bad Brains song to continue throughout the whole mosh pit scene.  At a screening of the film with Eyad, Justin & Zach (Snap Sound, the did sound design and mixed the film), Josh (the editor) and myself, we decided that we needed to help point out what was happening to Jehangir and the how the emotion of the mosh pit changes after the fight begins with Bilal’s Boulder.  So I wrote a piece of music that was mixed in with the Bad Brains song, and when the fight begins, the Bad Brains song gets lower and the score gets louder.  It ended up being very effective, in great part to the amazing mix that Snap Sound did.

What was your experience like working on this film?

This film was very different then most other films I work on.  Normally when a film is being edited, the editor will place temp music into the film.  Temp music is a pre-existing piece of music (from another film or album) that is essentially a place holder for where the actual score will go.  After the editing is complete, the composer replaces the temp music with what becomes the real score.  Using temp music is a very common practice and in many ways it is a double edged sword.  The good part of it is that the temp music helps establish what the director is looking for.  The bad part is that a lot of times the director becomes attached to the temp and replacing it without blatantly ripping it off can be difficult.

For The Taqwacores, there was no temp music used at all.  Neither Eyad nor myself had any idea of what the score should sound like and in the beginning it was very much trial and error until we figured out what would work.

What was your favorite scene to score for?

Jehangir’s khuttba.  From the very beginning in the book, and then in the film, it was always my favorite.  Trying to capture both the emotion of Jehangir as he gives the khutbba as well as the inner turmoil of Umar was a very fulfilling process.

When we were in Sundance, it was your first time meeting a lot of the musicians on the soundtrack, such as The Kominas and Sagg. What was that experience like?

The night I arrived in Park City, I went out to a party and drank up a storm.  Maybe it was the altitude, who knows, but I ended up taking a little nap in the living room of the apartment where all of the bands were staying.  I remember waking up in the middle of night to a raging party.  It was like a scene in the movie.  Very surreal.

What do you think is the draw and the magic to this so-called scene?

I think there is a whole generation of young muslims who are looking for an alternative to the rigid interpretation of the Quran that has become the norm in Shia and Sunni Islam.

Do you consider yourself Taqwacore?

Well, if you consider Taqwacore to be a rejection of standard modern Muslim dogma, then yes.  Without a doubt.  Taqwacore has always existed.  We just didn’t have a name for it or a community to rally around.

Be sure to check out Omar’s website – he’s released two albums (Hotpress for Leopold and Tuktuks to Tanta) and I”m sure whatever is next on his plate, it will be worth following. And of course, go to iTunes to purchase your copy of The Taqwacores Score and Soundtrack.

Nav Mann, Imran Malik, Taz Ahmed, Bobby Naderi, Ian Tran, Omar Fadel, Volkan Eryaman and Dominic Rains on Main St. at Sundance.

As for the rest of you – I’ll see you on the red carpet in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.

So I kept driving.

A couple blocks away I pulled over to the side of the road next to Mama Buzz. I’d never been before, and was desperately in need of coffee. As I parked a stunning woman stared down at me from the wall. It looked like her mouth was in mid-ecstasy, mid-enthralled, mid-life shattering. Oakland is full of graffiti, but this one was stunning in a way that made me gaze at the mural from my car for a good minute as I slowly parked.

As I got out of the car, I noticed a guy watching me as he leaned against the windowsill across the street from where I parked. He was wearing green leggings, a black leather kilt and a wild unkempt hairdo to match his beard. He was completely tattooed with branches creeping up his neck out from his collar, eyes lined with tattoo as if with kohl, and legs inked in Arabic scripts.

“Kazem?” I asked hesitant as I walked towards him.

“I knew you’d eventually find me,” he responded firmly, taking a drag on his brown cigarette.

The only time I had met Kazem was at Mike Knight’s bachelor party. Well, it wasn’t as much a bachelor party as much as it was a punk show. It was the night before Knight’s wedding and The Kominas & Sarmust were touring across the country to the wedding and were doing a show at the Stork Club in Oakland, just a block away from Mama Buzz. Kazem had organized the show, created the flyer for the night and was the opening act. It was the first night I met most of the Taqwacore family.

When Kazem took the stage, no one really knew what to expect. It was the first time most everyone in the Taqx crew had heard of Kazem. He took the stage with rigged classical instruments that he had modified with metal work. His band’s name was the Mujahideen Bernstein Affair. He played a set, a mix between classical sounds and a punk rock edge. By the end of the set, all the punk kids were mesmerized, sitting on the floor of the sticky punk venue and hypnotized by the ethereal sounds.

“How’s it going?” I asked hesitant. I grabbed a seat next to him on the ledge.

“Sleepy. Just woke up after going to bed at noon yesterday,” he replied. I couldn’t help but think about what an incredible coincidence it was that he just happened to be awake after a 24 hour sleep span and on this street corner on my one day off. “How are you liking Oakland?”

“I like it…” I said. “Well, I love Oakland. It’s just the job. It’s tough.” I tried to change the subject. “Who’s that?” I nodded at the woman on the wall.

“Well, they were modeling it after Etta James, kind of. But trying to make an abstract woman to represent a voice,” he said. “The mural is actually seven different artists, local taggers. The Baptist Church there commissioned them to make the art. You can tell the difference of who did what art work.” It was true – the woman may have been the best thing about the artwork – the sea turtle in the corner was the second best – everything in between looked cartoonish at best.

As we looked at the art work, an old 80′s white Cadillac parked in front of us. The two guys inside started casually rolling a joint with pot pulled out of a cookie tin. On the sidewalk across the street a transvestite in hot pink hot pants and her pimp walked by arguing. Down the street white hipster kids sat drinking coffee. This was West Oakland.

We caught up, if you could call it that. I hadn’t really spoken to him before – at most we  had talked about tattoos at the chicken and waffle place where we had all gone after The Kominas show. What really ended up happening as we sat on that ledge was that Kazem started to share stories. Stories about the history and politics of the area, stories about his Persian ancestry, stories about Section 8 housing around the corner, stories about the disco “girls” that now give $20 blow jobs around the corner since their party place was shut down by the City, stories about the Trustafarians that took over the neighborhood and drink alcohol openly during art walks.

The stories started pouring. What is it about finding a Taqwacore that makes the stories start pouring?

As he talked I noticed a tattoo on his right arm that caught my attention. “I like that one,” I said, pointing it out. It was a black rectangle with a empty shape imposed in the middle. Inside that was Persian script. It was crisp.

“It’s a body bag, can you see it?” I looked again. I could see the outline of the body inside the black rectangle. “It’s in honor of Black Friday – the day in Iran where hundreds of student revolutionaries were murdered. They had these body bags that were lined up evenly, so straight.”

I had heard about it. Probably watched it in Persepolis. It reminded me to how Bangladesh’s revolution was similarly started by the students, and how students had been body bagged in that revolution too.I was reminded of all the monuments I had just seen in my recent trip to Bangladesh honoring these students. I had forgotten about it until that very moment. Right, I was meant to remember.

It all felt serendipitous.

I asked him about his music. They hadn’t put out anything new, he had been putting his creative energy into a motor bike that he was building. It was his latest muse, teaching him to enjoy life for what it was and that everything in life didn’t need to have a cause. That some things can just be and that can be a joy in itself. “We are playing next week though…”

“Where?”

“At a pyramid grand opening.”

“A pyramid? Like in front of a pyramid?”

“My friend of mine built a pyramid, so he wanted us to play at the grand opening. Inside the pyramid. You should come!”

“I can’t… I probably have to work. How big is it? The pyramid?”

“Big enough to play in it. So it must be pretty big.”

“Hmm… next time.”

Before I left, he took me to his studio. He wanted to show me his muse. In the basement of an art space, it looked like an epic hovel. Musical instruments hung from the ceiling, bits and pieces of metal and wood were organized on every inch of the wall, a work bench was littered with working tools. His bike was resting in the back, red and Islamo-green. It was embellished with brass skulls and arabic script. It was everything you would think a Taqwacore motor bike would look like, basically. Before I left, he showed me the flyer on his computer from last year’s punk show. I had been asking about it. He was turning it into a shirt. And on the back of the shirt design, in Arabic script – “Oaklandistan.”

My order for the shirt is in.

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Serendipity. Magical. A story. A moment. A pause. A breath. It was the slap in the face that I needed to get my head out of being worried about money, the campaign, and where my next meal was coming from. Have faith in Allah. He is after all, the master storyteller. Trust in the universe. Serendipity happens when you let it. Don’t lose focus with the day to days of reality – there is more. Every now and then pause. Pause. Pause. Thank Allah and pause.

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Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is an activist and writer living in Oakland. She is the Founder of South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY), an aspiring novelist and a long-time blogger for the popular South Asian blog Sepia Mutiny.