Before this review devolves into my musings on the meaning of it all, the most important thing to say about The Taqwacores is that Michael Muhammad Knight has filled the book with a group of young engaging characters. They don’t do much, and nothing much happens, but I liked the characters so much I didn’t care. A house full of young American muslims struggles to reconcile their religion with their personal values. Mostly not very devout, the youth are into the punk scene. One of them regales his housemates with tales of taqwacore bands from his days on the west coast as he tries to set up a giant punk show played by the legendary taqwacores. The punk ethos collides with islamic tradition and theology.
The narrator is Yusef Ali. He’s from Syracuse, attending college in Buffalo where his parents think living with muslims will innoculate him from the sins of the non-muslim school body. Yusef is a follower. The house is filled with ne’er-do-well ringleaders, Jehangir Tabari chief among them. He’s the former west coaster. Mohawk. Alcohol. Marijuana. Girls. Punk. Jehangir rejects most of muslim culture but proudly claims it’s mantle. He believes that the United States will be the center of a new islam. Punk is a new mystic sufist islamic tradition to him. The important part of islam is belief in allah along with occasional ritual prayer, conducted very much not in accordance with older tradition that is.
Other members of the household: The most devout of the group is Umar, who continually blows up over the rest of the household not following religious rules. Rabeya is the only woman living there. She wears a burqa 100% of the time so the house has never seen her face. Rabeya will lead prayers, or cross out portions of her q’uran with which she doesn’t agree. Her reasons for wearing the burqa remain unsaid the whole book, but it certainly not because she feels it denotes a woman’s lesser status. Fasiq Abasa mainly exists to smoke marijuana on the roof, where he’s joined by Amazing
Ayyub and Rude
Dawud. Fasiq and Ayyub are couch surfers, and Umar kicks Ayyub out of the house for a time after he catches the amazing one having sex in his bed.
The second strong points of the book is it’s depiction of the culture clash. I can’t speak to the authenticity of either culture, as I’m neither punk nor muslim. Perhaps it’s all made up, but it’s imagined superbly. Islam is submission. Punk is quite the opposite, rebellion. Most of the house tenants don’t struggle with claiming both mantles, but they run into practical problems all the time. Rabeya leads prayer, which is normally forbidden. The direction of Mecca is marked by a hole in the wall created with a baseball bat. While they continually question what it takes to be muslim, they also occasionally challenge their own punk status means anything, once noting that a wallet chain could suffice to be punk.
I think it’s a little ludicrous to ignore or reject 99% of the precepts of a religion yet still identify oneself as an adherent. But such cognitive dissonance is certainly not limited to muslims. Christians have been following that outline for centuries. Some catholics do little more than attend mass on christmas and easter. Even while rejecting the tenets and social structure, the near apostates still derive some measure of comfort from their membership. In the book, being muslim is part of who they are
even if it means little.
For those who are squeamish, The Taqwacores is full of muslims behaving badly. If sex, drugs, or poor treatment of q’urans will offend you, stay away from the book. One of the closing scenes contains a sex scene that I would classify as must read, but it’s crude and dirty and not for the faint of heart.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: The Taqwacores
Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Cover creator: Goodloe Byron
Imprint / publisher: Soft Skull / Counterpoint
Format: Paperback
Length: 254 p.
Publication date: January 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59376-229-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-59376-229-2
I’ve added this to my To Read list.
Thank you!