The Taqwacores (15 page)

“For real?”

“Yeah, must’ve been some Muslims brought over here.”

“My dad would be real interested in hearing that—if he doesn’t know about it already.”

Pulling out of the diner’s parking lot, Hannibal popped out the Brand Nubian and asked, “want to pray?”

“Pray?” repeated Jehangir. “Is it time?”

“Should be time for Asr.”

“Cool.”

“Wait,” I said, “I thought you were
kuf—
I mean, I thought you weren’t Muslim.”

“I’m not, but I can pray.”

We went back to the house and Hannibal ran upstairs to make wudhu. Waiting for my turn I watched him, trying to make sense of the situation. He
wasn’t
Muslim, right? Just his dad. Why was Hannibal making wudhu? Why was he praying with us? Why did-n’t he have bacon, sausage or ham in his 2-2-2? Why did he and not Jehangir or even I notice that it was Asr time?

Jehangir put one rug in front for the imam, with two behind it.

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!” he said from one of the rear rugs, immediately removing himself from consideration for imam. “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, la ilaha illa Allah...” Hannibal motioned for me to lead. I shook my head and stood by Jehangir, just then realizing what it meant.

“Allaaaaaahu Akbar,” said Hannibal facing qiblah, and the prayer was on. I did the same and folded my hands over my navel. When I should have been silently reciting
al-Fatiha,
I contemplated all our previous transgressions of fiqh. When we did manage to pray, we prayed with men and women standing side by side, even with feet and shoulders touching! We prayed behind female imams and even menstruating female imams. We prayed behind a Shi‘a when Amazing Ayyub led, and often behind a stoned hashishiyya higher than the Ghurafs. This, however, went off the chart. I was praying behind an imam who wasn’t even Muslim at all. As he went through each position something ugly swelled inside me. With hands on my knees, I stared at the floor feeling the ugly thing bubble up and get mean in my gut. Rising up—
sami Allahu-liman hamidah
—I looked at Hannibal’s back and felt the ugly thing rise too, right up to my lungs. Then I put my forehead to the floor,
Subhana Rabiyal’Ala, Subhana Rabiyal‘Ala, Subhana Rabiyal’Ala
and before we had even finished the first rakat I hated him. I felt the brushing of Jehangir Tabari’s body against my left side and I hated him too because I knew it didn’t bother him to pray behind a kafr. I wanted to storm out of the house and run down the street until coming across a Muslim who prayed right, ate right, dressed right and said things that made you feel good about Islam—
real
Islam, not this punked-out Jehangirism for which I sold out my parents and culture. I had removed myself so far from everything that mattered that I had a naked girl in my bed with big breasts and nasty dreadlocks trying to get me to stick it in
her but
al-hamdulilah
I refused. From what people told me, I had received “contact highs” from sitting in smoke-filled rooms with Jehangir, Fasiq Abasa and Rude Dawud the Sudani who one day had just decided that he would completely flip his life over to the point that girls think he’s Jamaican—which he probably doesn’t even discourage because the Caribbean is sexier than the Sudan, right? Even his accent was changing from hanging out with Rastafarians all day. And I associated with every undesirable element at Jehangir’s parties which I allowed to occur in a house that was just as much
my
home as his.
Booze and girls,
as he would say. People throwing up on each other and fornicating. Girls with no idea of what it means to have dignity. Men with no concept of self-control. Jehangir Tabari, whose
romanticism
just equaled a spiritual, cultural and ideological laziness: in all things the path of least resistance. Allah wills, right?

As a mumin I was ruined. How long had it been since I had attended a real jumaa? In a masjid, with men and women separate and khutbahs from qualified imams? Had I journeyed into apostasy? What did that even mean? We lived in a non-Muslim state where I had no fear of shari’a’s penalty, but there’s more than one way to chop off a head. What would it do to my parents to find out how this house really functioned?

“It’d be better for you than living in the dorms,” Abu told me. “There are very bad things there.”

“You live with Muslims,” said Ummi, “and stay focused.”

And there I was in my living room, praying behind a kafr, next to a stupid punk-rocker, before us a green Saudi flag with its shahadah marred by a spray-painted anarchy-symbol. And qiblah distinguished by a hole in the wall smashed with a baseball bat.

I was not an apostate, I reasoned, because I still had faith.
La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadu rasullullah.
There. I had gotten close, however, listening to Jehangir Tabari whose version of Islam was
only a sell-out to the seductions of Americanism. It appealed to me, sadly, because no matter how hard Abu and Ummi tried to raise me right, we were still stuck in the abode of kafr, surrounded by it at all times even in our own house when the television was on. Each of us had, in our own ways, allowed a little shaytan in our lives. A little leads to more; then more still, until how much shaytan you allow is no longer your decision but Shaytan’s himself. I felt like a furnace burned inside me.

I then realized I was sitting on my legs. Hannibal, also sitting on his legs, turned his head to the right and said “as-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,” then did the same while turning left. I had gone through the motions, without even noticing, for three whole rakats. Immediately after salaams I stood up and went out on the porch.

Leaned back in the recliner, shoving away any empty brown bottles within my reach. Women really do need to be restrained, I thought. They don’t know what’s good for them. Look at Lynn. She went up to my room wanting to have sex with me. She let me see her breasts and tried to put my hand in her pants. I wasn’t her husband. It wasn’t mine. And what of Rabeya who kicked some guy’s ass—rightly so—but she wouldn’t have had to if she really practiced purdah, which is more than just a way to dress. Or Fatima, who would have let Jehangir stick his finger in her if he pursued it enough. Imagine, dirty Jehangir with his dirty fingers. How many girls had he done that to? She would have been tight, and it would have hurt. And Jehangir with all his charm would tell her it was alright and then try to hurt her more. Jehangir, the drunk. Jehangir, who I had seen passed out and Jehangir who I had watched throwing up with his face in a toilet. Jehangir who thought American Islam would be the best in history; Jehangir, nothing more than a cultural nationalist. And me, me conditioned in the same Western secular thought almost bought it. I had been
raised in this society where one individual carries the same value as an entire community, and all that matters is whether or not you feel good—screw everything else, screw your values and families. I was studying to be an engineer—you know what? If it were up to me, I would have been a painter. I used to enjoy art class back in elementary school. Now, the typical American response: if you like to paint, if that’s what makes you happy, then go ahead and do it. Someday my children would be starving and I’d have no security but what does that matter? I’d be doing what I like. And for suggesting I do something else with my life, all of a sudden my parents were these horrible insensitive people. Who’s to say that back at eighteen I knew what was right for me? I hadn’t lived at all or experienced anything. Just out of high school, was I qualified to know about careers or finding the right girl? What’s wrong with a little help from your parents? I didn’t know anyone who had a great time dating; according to all my kafr friends, it offered little more than anguish and inconvenience mitigated by occasional feelings of goofy weightlessness. To hell with that.

Was Umar really so awful? All he had done was practice his religion, make no bones about it and refuse to allow anything else to filter in. Islam says, don’t drink. So he didn’t drink. Islam says, don’t fornicate. So he didn’t fornicate. And this house made him out to be the bad guy, that’s how perverse everything had become.

Western civilization was rapidly killing itself; not hard to see. Drug and alcohol addiction, teen pregnancy, AIDS, skyrocketing divorce rates. What happens when people don’t live by any set of rules? Couldn’t anyone see where we were headed? Why wouldn’t we look back at those nations that came before us? Great empires like Babylon and Rome, wiped out for their decadence with barely a trace of having ever existed at all. Search the land; where’d they go?
Aoudhu billah
.

Then a car pulled up to the curb and let Umar out. I recognized
the guy driving and girl in the back seat from earlier. I wish I had gone out with MSA kids instead of Jehangir and his kafr boy.

“As-salaamu alaikum,” I called out.

“Wa alaikum as-salaam,” replied Umar.

“How was it?”

“Did you hear what happened?” he asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t hear what happened in Saudi?” He looked ready to cry.

“No, brother. What happened?”

“A school caught fire, and the mutaweens wouldn’t let girls out if they didn’t have their
abayas.
Two died.” His voice trembled, so he repeated it. “Two died.”

“Oh God.”

“A burning
fucking
building, y’akhi. Kids running, screaming, trying to get out, trapped inside by the motherfucking police.”

“The mutaweens, you said?”

“Yep. Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.”

“If that’s virtue.”

“I wonder if Rabeya’s heard yet.” With that he opened the screen door and went inside.

 

 

I sat on the floor of Jehangir’s room shuffling through pictures from his trip to Pakistan, Crass’ “Fuck All Government” briefly aggravating me in the background. Jehangir sat on his bed reading the back of an album cover.

He stood smiling before some landmark in almost every photo, hair covered and at least a few years younger than the Jehangir I knew. Jehangir standing barefoot in blue jeans at magnificent
red-and-white Badshahi, Lahore’s Mughal glory; Jehangir ankle-deep in a stony creek in the lush valley of Swat; Jehangir haggling over the price of a goat head in a Rawalpindi bazaar; Jehangir at Buddhist ruins in Taxila; Jehangir stepping off a psychedelic Ken Kesey bus; Jehangir on the Khyber Pass looping around green mountains; Jehangir in front of Faisal—a gift from Saudi Arabia—largest masjid in the world, it looked like a sci-fi spaceship with four long rockets. Jehangir put on Roger Miret and the Disasters, starting at “New York Belongs to Me.”

“I’m really going to do it,” he said out of left field.

“Do what?”

“Put on a show.”

“A show?”

“A punk show. A Muslim punk show. Call up the taqwacore bands out West, find a date when they can all come out here. Make a big thing of it. I think it can work. We have a lot of Muslims coming to the house Friday afternoons, and a lot of kafr punks here Friday nights; if we got ’em all in one spot at the same time, that’s a lot of heads.”

“I can’t even
imagine
those worlds colliding, Jehangir.”

“That’s because you haven’t been to California.”

“I don’t know...”

“There’s a whole scene of it out there.
Khalifornia,
Jesus.” He laughed and whipped the album cover at me like a square frisbee. The front featured a portrait of Ayatullah Khumayni with eyes and mouth blocked out by ransom-note lettering like the famous Sex Pistols defacing of Queen Elizabeth. On his eyes:
Salaams up the Ass
. Over his mouth:
the Ghilmans
. “Good band,” he explained. “The Ghilmans have been around a long time. From what I understand they have a punked-out Sufi thing going on. Like they’re spiritual but it’s a ’fuck you religious assholes’ spirituality, and they’re not exactly
big
on the whole sociopolitical Islamic-thing.”

“I see.” I flipped it over and read some song titles on the back. “Shaykh Omar Bakri Can Suck My Cock.” “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” “Houri Gash.” “Fuck the Umma.” “Our Holy Prophet Fingered His Six-Year-Old Bride In Her Dirty Asshole.” “Where Mullahs Fear To Tread.” “Allah’s Name Was Found In A Honeycomb.” “I Twirled The Ka’ba On The Tip Of My Dick.”

“A lot of taqwacore is just to throw shit out there and really piss people off,” he explained, noting the reaction on my face. “People are so uptight and emotional about religion and take it so seriously, sometimes you need a punk to say ‘fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck everything you stand for, you’re full of shit and there’s sperm in your hair.’ Nobody needs to be on a high horse about themselves.”

“How are these guys Muslims, though? Totally disrespecting the Prophet and everything—”

“I don’t know but they are. You can say
Muhammadu rasullullah
and then still own up to the fact that he was a pedophile, right? The guy was human and capable of evil and sickness as much as anyone. Nothing special. His shit smelled just as bad as yours. In fact, Muhammad being a sicko is totally punk rawk. Tears down any chance of him being a Christ or sacred cow. You don’t need to condone his hanker for that itty-bitty-titty. And forget about Qurayza. Don’t come off like a mealy-mouthed fundamentalist weirdo for trying to defend that shit. Just accept that Muhammad had his darkness. He had demons, temptations, compromises; look at the shaping of Islam as he rose to power.

“Anyway, the Ghilmans... they’re as generous with what they have as the fuckin’ Tabligh Jamaat. They have the talent to be big but instead they commit commercial suicide by playing taqwacore. What a fuckin’ demographic: gay Muslim punks. Not just gay, not just Muslim, not just punk. Gay Muslim Punks. Not exactly a gold mine but it’s what they want to do, so at least they’re devoted.”

“You think they would play your show?”

“Insha’Allah, I’d love to have those guys out here. The Ghilmans, are you kidding me?” I tossed the album sleeve back and resumed looking at his photos.