A stirring, exultant horn loop echoes through the alleyways of Shepherd’s Bush Market as Muneera Rashida proclaims her commitment to Allah. Rashida and Sukina Abdul Noor are Poetic Pilgrimage, a Bristol-based Islamic hip-hop and spoken word duo well-established in the emergent genre. Their 2010 song “Land Far Away” samples the Abyssinians’ roots reggae standard “Satta Massagana,” pronouncing a rich cultural inheritance drawn from their Jamaican migrant parents. The video’s description identifies Shepherd’s Bush as a place of “historical significance to many Caribbean migrants that came to London in the 1950's, who endured much hardship so we wouldn't have to,” and indeed a number of commenters pointing out their favorite stores and their owners indicates that the community significance persists today. The majority of the comments, however, concern the divisive hybridity of Islamic hip-hop, and the field of issues that surround Muslim identity and representation in the contemporary West. While many commenters praise the duo’s “dope” da’wah and communicate blessings, others still deploy Islamophobic hate-speech and assert that music is haram, citing passages from the Quran to support their interpretation. The various religious, political, and ethical issues that encircle Islamic hip-hop take on particular significance when considered through Stuart Hall’s understanding of identity as not a stable, unchanging fact, but a continuous “production” constituted within practices of representation (Hall 222). In a modern era characterized by uninterrupted and permanent change--fragmented on the cultural and individual level by a fleeting multiplicity of possible articulations of identity--the acts of producing and engaging with Islamic hip-hop exceed the framework of consumer culture, becoming a constitutive partnership that allows young Muslims to work through issues of concern to them and “discover places from which to speak” (237). “Unlikely MCs” like Poetic Pilgrimage and the “message in the music” that they produce exhibit complex collective negotiations of Islam and Islamic cultural identity (Poetic Pilgrimage Music). By analyzing these cultural artefacts and the range of circumstances and intentionalities that encourage their creation, we can better understand the continuous transformation of Islam by the new generation of Muslim youth in the West.

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Of the several terms that warrant clarification in this project, the most pressing is ‘Muslim’. This label can never be taken as a given, as to do so would affirm the same homogenizing category that participants in hybrid Islamic youth culture contest. When I refer to Muslim youth, I follow the definition advanced by Maruta Herding--and a number of the sociologists cited throughout--by looking at “practicing Muslims” who express their religiosity in public by affiliating themselves with youth organizations, attending religious events, or engaging with youth cultural artefacts online (Inventing 11). Though any person with a Muslim family background is theologically considered a Muslim, to use this definition would at once universalize people of various religious and cultural convictions and exclude converts to Islam, who have been essential contributors to the development of Islamic hip-hop. In this vein, when I refer to Islamic youth culture, I do not mean the cultural engagements of all young Muslims, but rather a particular religiously-oriented subculture that has become popular amongst Western Muslims seeking further engagement with Islam. The social and political contexts that condition the creation of Islamic youth culture affect all Western Muslims within and beyond these two definitions, but they do so with tremendous variety. This variety is the nature of the modern era, particularly late modernity.

‘Modernity’ is another term that cannot be employed without deliberation and specification. I use ‘modernity’ to signify the conditions of life in our contemporary context--the late-modern era. When I refer to this context, I mean to emphasize a character of boundless, rapid, uninterrupted fragmentation and reorganization of our cultural landscapes and society as a ‘whole’. This perpetual division and revision can be largely attributed to the Western model of modernity composed in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Renaissance subject’s unification within himself (Renaissance and Enlightenment subjects were typically described as male), coupled with the primacy afforded to the application of empirical reason for determining ‘truth’ provided the foundation for a self-consciously modern project--a way of living-in-the-world that subjects social practices to constant scrutiny in light of new information. The transmission of this modern project across the world through colonial force and cultural hegemony means that international universalizing ‘modernization’ is by default ‘Westernization,’ as it imposes the classification systems and ideals that served as the foundation for Western society onto dissimilar contexts.

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The position of ‘religion’ in the modern project is a major contributor to the subversive power of Islamic hip-hop. The seventeenth century political philosophers who devised the modern nation-state--particularly John Locke--drew on the lineage of vera religio (true religion) that passed from Lactantius to Lord Herbert as they attempted to address religion in a way that would ensure the stability of the state (Nongbri 94). Locke and his peers sited ‘true religion’ in internal belief, thereby conscribing ‘religion’ to a protestant religious syntax and isolating it from the public sphere entirely (103). By imbuing a prominent cultural form of the dominant discourse with conservative religious values, Islamic rappers transgress this normative plurality, pointing out the categorization systems that uphold inequality. As I employ the term, hybrid cultural productions are ‘modern’ as they act with reference to the boundaries of acceptable behavior in a modern context and reconfigure their traditional inheritance to suit and alter their position within it. Modernity, then, is the experience of living within a dislocative modern project and drawing on the cultural resources at hand to create meaning within one’s particular situation. In this, there are as many modernities as there are distinct subjectivities produced by the fragmented cultural landscape of the late modern era.

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With the democratization of Islam, prompted largely by the resources available on the Internet, American and Western European Muslims no longer inherit the religion of their parents and are instead tasked with producing and consuming Islamic identity (Zaman 473). The heightened reflexivity and proliferation of identities available to the late modern subject have resulted in a virtual umma constituted by “a thousand communities based on interpretation.” (466). These hermeneutic identities are at once deterritorialized and highly local, as young Muslims develop on globally traveling religious sentiments with local meanings, suiting them for the consumer’s immediate needs (Herding, “The Borders of Virtual Space” 561). Young, religious Muslims additionally use the Internet to negotiate cultural identity and relations with their respective dominant societies--issues which had, until recently, been addressed by elder generations (Herding, “The Borders of Virtual Space” 552). Though diffuse and idiosyncratic, the hermeneutic identities of Western Muslims are conditioned by shared local context; Alessandro Cavalli explains that cognitive maps--or orientation systems and perceptions of the world--are common amongst peer groups due to the collectivizing effect of frequent interaction (159). Still, the individuals of a particular age group do not inherently belong to the same generation. To create a generation, a “generational connection” must occur; a historical event must be dissonant and impactful enough to “cause a restructuring of the subject’s cognitive maps,” repositioning a group into a common perspective on their historical context (157-58).

Berlin-based rapper Sahira describes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as a critical moment in her life. Born in Germany to two Palestinian immigrants, Sahira felt excised by the wave of suspicion and intolerance that came over Muslims and shocked by the widespread depiction of Islam as a religion of terror (Cizmecioglu 1). Without a “homeland” to provide her with sense of belonging, Sahira began studying the Quran to form her own opinion on Islam, gradually developing a practice before donning a headscarf and formally ‘reverting’ in 2003 (Jacobsen and Vestel 70-71)(Herding, Inventing 91). Sahira’s turn to the faith is one of many stories that compose a ‘visible process of Islamization’ underway in Western Europe and America--Herding observes that roughly two thirds of popular Islamic rappers have had a conversion of reversion experience (Zaman 466)(Inventing 83). The proliferation of Islamic youth cultural artefacts in the early 2000s might be understood as a collective reorganization and reconstitution of identity among Western Muslims in post 9/11 environments. The essentializing labels and stereotypes that pervaded the public discourse resulted in “reactive identity formation” through the combination of Islamic messages and new information technologies, elements that had previously been regarded as “incompatible” (Zaman 465)(Herding, “The Borders of Virtual Space” 558). These deliberate hybrid forms function variously in the reinvigorated virtual umma, at once supporting the fashioning of individual hermeneutic religious identities, challenging ‘othering’ by participating in the public discourse, and presenting new, accessible, and enjoyable ways for Western Muslims to negotiate issues of concern to them. Pnina Werbner describes the subversive potential that lies in Islamic youth culture, writing, “What is felt to be most threatening is the deliberate, provocative aesthetic challenge to an implicit social order and identity, which may also be experienced, from a different social position, as revitalizing and ‘fun’.” (Werbner 5).

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“Yesterday we met Bambaataa and Kool Herc. I thanked them personally for what they have done for us Muslims in France--they gave us a language, a culture, a community.” (Aidi xi). Before taking the stage at the 2003 Crotona Park Jams, DJ Rebel of French Islamic hip-hop trio 3ème Œil (Third Eye) voiced his gratitude for the opportunity to visit the Mecca of hip-hop and meet some of the genre’s pioneers. Despite the hotly contested permissibility of music amongst scholars, Islamic hip-hop has emerged as one of the premier manifestations of Islamic youth culture. While this can be attributed to a number of factors--not the least of which being the tremendous global popularity of hip-hop and African-American culture--the ways in which artists and listeners have transformed hip-hop into a medium for pious cultural representation and making da’wah speak to the participants’ commitment to the emergent genre. Though the debate about music is founded on a few verses from the Quran that mention musical instruments and amusement and a small portion of the Hadith that describes the Prophet’s attitudes towards music, the fatwa-shopping encouraged by the democratization of Islamic resources online ensures that those on either side can reliably support their position with authoritative interpretations (Herding, Inventing 93)(Zaman 471). Though interpretations vary considerably, two reasons regularly cited for the unacceptability of music are that it distracts from religion and is regularly consumed in conjunction with other proscribed acts, such as the consumption of alcohol (Jacobsen and Vestel 55). Artists and audiences acknowledge these reservations but argue that Islamic hip-hop is preserved as a legitimate means of religious education through governing “intentions and rules” (Herding, Inventing 94). ‘Intention’ is a common justification for making music, particularly amongst artists that converted or reverted to Islam following the beginning of their hip-hop career; Poetic Pilgrimage’s Myspace profile states that following their conversion to Islam in 2005, the duo took a hiatus and “purified their intentions until they felt the time was right.” (Herding, Inventing 88). To demonstrate these perfected intentions, Islamic rappers emphasize the pious and proselytizing content of their lyrics over other musical qualities. Hip-hop lends itself to this purpose, as the practice of ‘speaking out’ is typically regarded as the genre’s central feature (Sobral 259). The ‘rules’ followed by Islamic rappers are the opposite side of the same coin; the artists’ efforts to use their medium to make da’wah means first stripping it of its haram fixations by declining to reference sexuality, substances, and having fun without a greater end (Herding, Inventing 95). In the absence of these defining features of hip-hop, Islamic rappers insert conservative religious values, personal narratives of Islamic life in the West, and relevant political topics. In these adaptations, it’s clear that the hybridity of Islamic hip-hop runs deeper than a simple Western form filled with Islamic substance. Rather, the content is deeply involved with the experience of minority life in the West, and the medium is reshaped as according to the needs of this particular subjectivity. Islamic hip-hop balances a new generation of Western Muslims’ needs to create and respect boundaries by which they can live a meaningful life and to express--and thereby constitute--their cultural identity through generation-specific mode of representation.

Alongside its utility as a means of making da’wah, Islamic hip-hop serves the important function of ‘giving voice’ to young Muslims, allowing them to integrate and articulate cultural identities and negotiate issues that are significant to their subject positions (Jacobsen and Vestel 49). By unrepentantly asserting their Islamic faith and sharing their personal experiences of life in a minority context, Islamic rappers allow young Muslims to confidently express a wish for integration and national belonging “without making excuses for being Muslim.” (48). Stuart Hall opens up a space for this shared articulation in his description of “positions of enunciation”; though the speaker and the subject who is spoken of are never identical, the identity that is constituted within representation becomes a new possible identity for the listener (Hall 222). This dynamic is clear in the narrative and reception of Norwegian hip-hop duo Karpe Diem’s “Identitet som Dreper” (“Identity that Kills”) (Jacobsen and Vestel 65). Through the song’s first verse, Magdi, whose parents are Egyptian and Norwegian, divulges the tensions between the cultural expectations of his Norwegian contrast--including casual drinking, whiteness, and affluence--and the Egyptian aspects of his life--including abstaining from alcohol, brown skin, and living in a high rise; the pain that he experiences from the resultant duality in his life is described in the refrain, where he states, “And here where he lives, he is called a foreigner, / And over there, he is called a foreigner. / But we agree that our kind increase / Even if identity kills with a hyphen in-between.” (Jacobsen and Vestel 60-61). Magdi’s assertion that “our kind increase” might be understood as a hopeful allusion to the emergence of a new, collective identity amongst young Norwegians with immigrant family backgrounds. This notion is reflected in a series of interviews conducted by Christine Jacobsen and Viggo Vestel at a Muslim youth organization in Oslo, where several members who were asked about their relationship with music specifically mentioned “Identitet som Dreper,” stating that it spoke directly to them and their situations as immigrant youth (65). Magdi’s ability to ‘give voice’ to a wide range of Muslim youth through a description of his personal situation is emblematic of the ability of hybrid forms of representation to participate in public discourse and challenge ‘othering’ not just within the “categories of knowledge of the West”, but also within the ‘knowledge’ of subjects invented as the ‘other’ through “inner compulsion and subjective con-formation to the norm.” (Hall 225-26). By publicly negotiating their Islamic cultural identities and contexts, Islamic rappers give their listeners a position to speak from, subverting the perpetually apologetic stance towards Islam common among Western Muslims and instilling self-confidence (Zaman 471).

Despite the contested permissibility of music in Islam, many young Western Muslims engage with Islamic hip-hop as a new mode of continuously producing Islamic cultural identity and hermeneutic identity and advancing their religious practice. For these young Muslims, listening is not merely cultural consumption, but rather an ethical practice of self-constitution--an active tuning of the ear to the “Islamic sound” to fortify moral sensibilities and cultivate bodily aptitudes that incline the individual towards right actions (Hirschkind 10)(Jacobsen and Vestel 67-68). This kind of listening, oriented towards the application of received wisdom to the continuous production of religious and cultural identity, entails a kind of creative partnership with the speaker; by accepting the speaker’s “position of enunciation” as a new articulation of identity that challenges the social order, listeners endow hybrid cultural forms with their subversive power (Jacobsen and Vestel 52)(Hall 222). Embracing a public da’wah and rejecting their classification at ‘other,’ young Western Muslims use Islamic hip-hop and other forms of “halal fun” to “subvert categorical oppositions and hence... create the conditions for cultural reflexivity and change” (Herding, Inventing 119)(Werbner 1). Many of the hybrid cultural productions circulating in Muslim youth culture--particularly Islamic hip-hop and its web presence--are rather short lived. In my research, I encountered far more defunct social media pages than active posters. However, that’s not to say that Islamic subculture is diminishing; Rather, the transitory nature of these examples reminds us that cultural identity is in ceaseless progress--constantly being deferred and reconstructed for new contexts.