Hip Hop and Islam

WIENER ZEITSCHRIFTFÜR DIE

KUNDE DES MORGENLANDES

HERAUSGEGEBEN VON

MARKUS KÖHBACH, STEPHAN PROCHÁZKA,GEBHARD J. SELZ, RÜDIGER LOHLKER

REDAKTION:VERONIKA RITT-BENMIMOUN

104. BAND

WIEN 2014

IM SELBSTVERLAG DES INSTITUTS FÜR ORIENTALISTIK

Von RÜDIGER LOHLKER (Wien) “Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. This is the phrase Rap artist Mos Def whis-pers to open his solo album ‘Black on Both Sides’. His invocation of this Qur’anic verse follows an Islamic tradition that encourages Muslims to re-cite this phrase in order to purify their intentions and actions. While some may hold notions of ‘Islam’ and ‘hip hop’ that position the two phenomena as polar opposites, Mos Def’s recitation is not an anomaly in hip hop music and culture, but rather an example of a rapper drawing on an Islamic tradi-tion in the reciprocal relationship between American Muslims and hip hop.”1 This may be an accurate factual statement about Hip Hop. Usama Kahf describes the general impact of Hip Hop as follows: “Hip hop is a unique form of expression that has crossed social, cultural, and national boundaries in the last couple of decades, from Europe and South America to Africa and the Middle East. [...] While it was brought to life by the African-American community in the United States, hip hop’s ruptures into different cultures around the world were not driven by any of the homogenizing [...] forces of western culture that usually seek to take over local and indigenous heritages [...] Instead, hip hop continues to locate its narrative space in the margins of each society.”2 Hip Hop is not a phenomenon of US pop culture alone. Kahf continues: “Hip hop is appropriated and transformed by local artists in different parts of the world who are searching for emancipatory and empowering avenues of expression in the midst of a reality that continues to shut doors in their faces.”3 The newly created genres take “on the beats and rhythms of western hip hop as well as unique flavors of the local culture, including its language, dialect, musical instruments, and local issues, and transforms itself beyond imitation to invention and cultural creativity.”4

1 Suad Abdul Khabeer, “Rep that Islam: The Rhyme and Reason of American Is-

lamic Hip Hop”, in The Muslim World. 2 Usama Kahf, “Arabic Hip Hop: Claims of Authenticity and Identity of a New

Genre”, in Journal of Popular Music Studies 19 (2007), 359-385, here 359. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 359-360.

116 R. Lohlker

How to define this “unique form of expression”? The best available def-inition may be: “Hip Hop is an aspect of Black culture that has its roots in the African-American tradition, rising out of New York to conquer more or less the entire world. It initially consisted or the four elements of MC-ing (formerly MC meant Master of Ceremonies, but within a hip hop context it has come to mean a ‘rapper’ – someone who uses a speaking voice to artic-ulate a message rhythmically, with or without music); DJ-ing (‘disc jockey-ing’ or spinning records for the backing music); writing (graffiti); and b-boying (breakdancing). It is common to hear people use the terms ‘rap’ and ‘hip hop’ interchangeably, but the legendary MC and hip-hop artist KRS-One was right when he suggested that ‘rap is something you do, hip-hop is some-thing you live’. As a consequence, hip hop has moved beyond the initial four elements to embrace a whole lifestyle.”5 Research discussing Muslim Hip Hop and Rap as a culture performed by young Muslims has been done for many national, regional, and local frames of reference.6 This study focuses at one aspect of this diverse subculture(s): Hip Hop performed with explicit reference to Islam. So we might say we are discussing primarily Islamic Hip Hop or Hip Hop related to Islam, not Mus-lim Hip Hop as a musical genre performed by Muslims.7 We are looking at this specific sector of Hip Hop music and lifestyle and will not discuss if this aspect of lifestyle is truly Islamic or not.8 It is the emergence and reality of religious cultures in the context of contemporary cultural industry and the role of technology. As to this aspect we may regard Hip Hop in its Islamic and other contexts as one of the most pertinent examples for the cultural role of technology.9

5 Richard S. Reddie: Black Muslims in Britain: Why are a growing number of young

Black People converting to Islam? Oxford: Lion Hudson 2009, 196. 6 For a general overview of literature on Hip Hop until 2008 see Tarshia L. Stanley

(ed.), Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Literature, Westport, CT/London 2008. Recom-mended for the recent developments in the context of the Arab uprisings and be-yond see the writings of Ted Swedenburg and especially the blog “Revolutionary Arab Rap” (http://revolutionaryarabrap.blogspot.co.at/).

7 Khabeer adopts a similar change of terminology, in his case to denote a con-science project of creating a genuine American Islamic hip hop (Khabeer, Rep that Islam, 125sq.). His project may be described as a normative one, trying to force Hip Hop into a framework that is constructed as orthodox.

8 Even Ted Swedenburg seems somewhat tinged by the quite orientalist question about authenticity (http://comp.uark.edu/~tsweden/5per.html) (accessed March 31, 2014).

9 This relationship has been discussed in extenso by Friedrich A. Kittler. For a short example of his approach we may hint at his video lecture “The Relation of Art and Techne” of 2005 (http://www.egs.edu/faculty/friedrich-kittler/videos/the-relation-of-art-and-techne/) (accessed March 31, 2014).

Hip Hop and Islam 117

The pertinent questions to these developments of contemporary religious cultures also refer to the relation of human actions to technology. The na-ture of the relation of human and non-human actors – to bring Bruno Latour in – is difficult to grasp. As Galloway and Thacker put in their ground-breaking The Exploit: A Theory of Networks referring to computer networks: “The nonhuman quality of networks is precisely what makes them so diffi-cult to grasp. They are – we suggest – a medium of contemporary power, and yet no single subject or group absolutely controls a network. Human subjects constitute and construct networks, but always in a highly distrib-uted and unequal fashion. Human subjects thrive on network interaction (kin groups, clans, the social), yet the moments when the network logic takes over – in the mob or the swarm, in contagion or infection – are the moments that are the most disorienting, the most threatening to the integ-rity of the human ego. Hence a contradiction: the self-regulating and self-organizing qualities of emergent networked phenomena appear to engender and supplement the very thing that makes us human, yet one’s ability to superimpose top-down control on that emergent structure evaporates in the blossoming of the network form, itself bent on eradicating the importance of any distinct or isolated node. This dissonance is most evident in network accidents or networks that appear to spiral out of control – Internet worms and disease epidemics, for instance. But calling such instances ‘accidents’ or networks ‘out of control’ is a misnomer. They are not networks that are somehow broken but networks that work too well.”10 Similar networks and the sometimes conflictual interaction and co-evolu-tion of human and non-human actors can be detected in the offline world. The history of Hip Hop is one of the most instructive chapters of this co-evolution of technology and music.11 The incredible history of Hip Hop started not in the United States but in Jamaica. In the 1950s sound systems, a kind of mobile disco mounted on back of a truck dominated the music scene on the island. The sound system operator or DJ was both technician and selector able “to manipulate or distort the records to their own ends: boosting the bass and volume, conjuring spaced-out special effects, adding verbal commentary and between songs patter. Verbal introductions, an-nouncements, segues, and slang could be supplied by a sidekick, also known as a DJ, or toaster.”12

10 Alexander R. Galloway/Eugene Thacker, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Min-

neapolis/London: The University of Minnesota Press 2007, 5-6. 11 I am following the presentation of Mark Coleman in his Playback: From the

Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press 2005, 135sqq.

12 Coleman 2005, 136.

118 R. Lohlker

Combining this innovations on the artistic side – dependent on the tech-nical equipment as they were – and innovations of record engineering has started in the 1960s. The dub plates, specialized records as raw material for the dance floor, were test runs for the revolution in the field of sound engi-neering. “The dub plate was usually a 10-inch acetate. Think of these chunky discs as stepping-stones, as formative pauses on the way to the fin-ished product. Dub plates introduced the idea of an unfinished record, re-casting pop music as a work in progress (for the technologically capable). Perhaps the science of record mixing begins with the dub plate. Working with just two tracks, the sound system engineer took songs and pared them to a basic rhythm piece – just drums and bass with most of original vocals removed. Songs then could be refit with different singers or lyrics and preexisting rhythms with different songs.”13 Fluid and multiplying variations of songs, reshuffled and rearranged, were possible. The next step resulted from a “happy accident” (Coleman) in 1967 or 1968, reminding us of the role of contingency for evolutions of every kind. “A sound system operator, Rudolph ‘Ruddy’ Redwood, happened to hear a tape on which the engineer forgot to add the vocals and liked the eerie quality of the instrumental version. Ruddy asked […] to put it on the back of a record and took it to a dance that night […] The instrumental version […] was raw (or half-cooked) wax, a template; successive singles cut be cut from the same backing track, or rhythm.”14 Another sound system DJ broke new grounds using the shortcomings and defects of his recording equipment willfully to create new sound ef-fects.15 His mix was characterized by “overdubs, abrupt silences, an abun-dance of echo and distortion, and ghostly, half spoken and chanted vocal snatches.”16 Turning to New York and the colony of Caribbean migrants of the 1960s and 1970s we meet DJ Kool Herc17, a Jamaican moved to New York in 1967.18 He tried to import the sound system experience to a New York audi- 13 Coleman 2005, 137. 14 Coleman 2005, 137-138. 15 Developing musical effects, even creating new genres based on technology in-

tended for other purposes seems to be a characteristics of music using technolog-ical devices to produce sounds, cf. Friedrich A. Kittler, “Rock Musik – ein Miß-brauch von Heeresgerät”, in id. Die Wahrheit der technischen Welt: Essays zur Ge-nealogie der Gegenwart, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013, pp.198-213 describing the genea-logy of the technology of rock music going back to WW II military technology.

16 Coleman 2005, 138. 17 Mickey Hess (ed.), Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and

Culture, Vol.1, Westport, Conn./London: Greenwood Press 2007, 1-25. 18 There is a sustained between Hip Hop and Reggae – and an Islamic variant of

Reggae. But that is outside the scope of this article.


ence. But soon certain changes emerged: “Like the disco Djs, Herc employed two turntables to insure nonstop dance floor action. […] Herc deployed abrupt, attention-grabbing transitions. He noticed that certain sections of records – usually percussive breaks or isolated breaks – always elicited a strong response from his audiences. So why not people give what they want? Spinning on two turntables allowed Herc to cut to the chase, literally. With two copies of the same record, he could play one section over and over, returning the needle to start one record while the other played through. Thus, he could extend a record’s peak indefinitely, working the crowd into a frenzy. The term for his manual edits became break beats.”19 Having reached the birth of a core element of Hip Hop the breakdance, created by the B (for break) boys20 – and also B girls – using break beats for their hyper athletic dance moves21, we may summarize our short sketch of the co-evolution of technical objects and Hip Hop music and culture again with Coleman lucid insights: “Hip-hop arose from recording technology, a pure product of the turntable. In turn, the new music sparked the next gen-eration of changes in that industry. After hip-hop, records could never be made the same way again.”22 We may see the history of the technology of Hip Hop as an illuminating illustration of the basic idea of the Latourian approach that objects too have agency and have to be regarded as parts of assemblages in their own right.23 For reasons of space, we will not follow the further development of the basic techniques of DJing and of other roles like the toasters turned MCs. A look into the theory of remix would be interesting, but we will just hint at a discussion of this aspect by Eduardo Navas: “Remix, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, informs the development of material reality depending on the constant recyclability of material with the implementation of me-chanical reproduction. This recycling is active in both content and form.”24

19 Ibid., 139-140. 20 We may add that Latinos from Puerto Rico, were an integral part of Hip Hop and

especially breakdancing, another aspect of marginality in the emerging Hip Hop culture (see below).

21 An interesting story of this aspect of Hip Hop culture is told in Joseph G. Schloss, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York, Oxford et al.: Ox-ford University Press 2009.

22 Coleman 2005, 140. 23 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory,

Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press 2005. 24 Eduardo Navas, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling, Wien: Springer 2012, 3

– italics by me (R.L.).

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We will now turn to another element of Hip Hop and its global appeal: Marginality.25 We have traced the pre-history of Hip Hop along the lines of its technological evolution until it reached via Jamaican migration New York and its Afro-American (and even Latino) audience: a musical technol-ogy emerging from the usage in marginalized contexts meeting marginal-ized communities in the US and producing a new (sub-)culture. And then it became part of mainstream culture, impressive case of inclusion and appro-priation by cultural industries. This marginal technology met with marginalized people and the neces-sity of these people of express themselves – even in a very impolite manner: “To understand hip hop as a cultural movement we must explore the roots and the reasons for its explicit nature. Rap often specifically intends to of-fend polite sensibilities. After all, it is an art form born on the street corner, speaking a language of the corner, as well. It has evolved, to borrow hip-hop historian William Jelani Cobb’s phrase, from the “shunned expressions of disposable people.” In that way, it is no different from a host of earlier expressive traditions that came from the bottom of the social spectrum. “Each poet creates his own language from that which he finds around him,” Ralph Ellison explained to an interviewer in 1958, speaking about the dis-tinctive language of black American poets. “Thus if these [vernacular] poets find the language of Shakespeare or Racine inadequate to reach their own peoples, then the other choice is to re-create their original language to the point where they may express their complex emotions.” Hip hop’s first gen-eration did exactly this, forging a language responsive to the needs of its creators, reflecting their own complex emotions. Rap’s perception as a revolutionary spirit lies in the force of necessity behind so much of its expression. “When I was young,” recalls the pioneer-ing female rapper MC Lyte, “I was like, how else can a young black girl of my age be heard all around the world? I gotta rap.” The rapper Common echoes Lyte’s assertion of rap’s necessity. “Hip hop has so much power,” he explains. “The government can’t stop it. The devil can’t stop it. It’s music, it’s art, it’s the voice of the people. And it’s being spoken all around the world and the world is appreciating it. And it is helping to change things.

25 Being aware that hip hop as a product of the music industry has been overpow-

ered by the influence of the industry. Religions other than Islam may be related to hip hop. Gadet discusses the interesting case of the relation of Rastafarianism and hip hop taken up the Jamaican trace (Steve Gadet, La fusion de la culture hip hop et du mouvement rastafari, Paris: L’Harmattan 2010).


It’s definitely uplifting the ghetto and giving the ghetto a chance for its voice to be heard.”26 The “revolutionary spirit” may be the most important reason for the attractiveness of Hip Hop music and culture for marginalized young people – or those who like the feeling of being marginal. Looking at the global flows of hip hop the aspect of marginality is focused in several studies, e.g., we read for Brazil: “Brazilian youth try to take control and refashion bur-densome cultural categories such as Brazilian (brasileiro) and Brazilian-ness (brasilidade), often defined vis-à-vis gringo, ideas and people from the United States, Europe, and to a lesser extent anywhere outside of Brazil. Further-more, Brazilian hip hoppers attempt to redesign social categories of race, class, and gender as well as sociogeographical categories such as periferia and marginality (marginalidade). They do this explicitly through a range of material (image and sound) and ideology (discourses, narratives, network-ing practices).”27 Unlike the official politics of strengthening the Brazilian Islamic and African ties of Brazilian culture the Brazilian Hip Hop communities, taking root especially in São Paulo, produced a discordant voice in the periphery of Brazil’s cities using Islam as the bass line to this discordant voice: “Hip-hop and funk exposed rifts in Brazilian society and brought a note of discord into the national harmony samba was supposed to broadcast. Hip-hop artists were more political, though, building organization and working with party officials. The Posse Hausa28 activists genuinely believe that through an Is-lam-inflected hip-hop […] they can draw attention to racial inequality, ‘convert the funkeiro29 tribe’, and even challenge the evangelicals in the favelas and prisons.”30 So in Brazil again the periphery of the society gave birth to a specific form of Islam, understood as a religion of resistance, an obvious contrast to the Sufi inspired official idea of middle class Brazilian Islam.

26 Adam Bradley, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Philadelphia, PA: Perseus

2009, 86-87. 27 Derek Pardue, Ideologies of Marginality in Brazilian Hip Hop, New York: Palgrave

MacMillan 2008, 3. 28 A collective of artists. 29 Brazilian funk grew out of two other music styles, one of them Miami bass rap,

and was blamed by the media “for civil unrest and social breakdown.” (Hisham D. Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture, New York: Pantheon Books 2014; Pos. 914 of 7105, Kindle-Edition).

30 Aidi 2014; Pos. 927 of 7105, Kindle-Edition.

122 R. Lohlker

The Senegalese situation is another case of marginalized communities merging their voices with Islam.31 Along other trends of conscious rap in Senegal a specific Islamic form emerged, dubbed by Abdoulaye Niang rap prédicateur32, is expressing a kind of secularization of the sacred, building a hybrid combination of global trends, i. e., hip hop, and particular, local cultural heritage, i. e., Islam. This form of Islam is critical towards local Marabout traditions but also towards societal developed that are interpreted as westernization, e.g., in what is regarded by some artist as not Islamic behavior – especially when talking about women wearing mini-skirts, smoking, leaving the house, etc. (Bill Diakhou, Maman none). This has been classified as moral conservatism inspired by Islam33 – not always consonant with the life of the artists. But: Some critiques tell that Islamic Hip Hop simply means jumping on a religious bandwagon to sell their music.34 A particular trait of Senegalese Hip Hop music industry is the control of Marabouts, i. e., religious teachers, over the production of rap music, own-ing important music production companies.35

The Brazilian and Senegalese examples give credibility to the claim that Islam is “Hip-Hop’s official religion.”36 Although this may be somewhat overstated, there is a grain of truth to it. Let us look into the history of US Hip Hop! Afrika Bambaataa37 has been one of the pioneers of Hip Hop and is said to have been Muslim in his ear-lier days but later on he never mentioned Islamic references – besides growing up in a family with partly Nation of Islam members.

31 For an overview on Hip Hop in Africa see Eric Charry (ed.), Hip Hop Africa: New

African Music in a Globalizing World, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 2012.

32 Abdoulaye Niang, “Hip-hop, musique et Islam : le rap prédicateur au Sénégal”, in Cahiers de recherche sociologique 49 (2010), pp. 63-94.

33 Frank Wittmann, HipHop als Religion – Religion im HipHop, posted August 5, 2007 (http://norient.com/de/stories/hiphopundreligion/) (accessed January 26, 2014).

34 Islamic Rappers storm Senegal charts, posted February 2, 2004 (http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/africa/3321771.stm) (accessed January 26, 2014).

35 Caroline Maraszto, “Sozialpolitische Wende? Zur Entwicklung des Rap im Sene-gal”, in Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 2iv (2002), pp. 81-104, 97.

36 E.g., http://www.mujahideenryder.net/2006/05/16/islam-hip-hops-official-religion/ (accessed January 27, 2014).

37 For a history of Hip Hop not focussed on religion cf. Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, won’t stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, London: Ebury Publishing 2007, for Af-rika Bambataa ibid., p.2 passim.


But even in the time of Kool Herc an Islamic connection was detectable: In his autobiography, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money, and God, Russell Sim-mons, a founding father of the rap music industry, labels the Nation of Gods and Earths as an “important influence” in the history of Hip-Hop that has been overlooked. In her study, Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message and Black Muslim Message, documenting that Kool Herc reported a heavy Five Percenters presence at his parties, Professor Felicia M. Miyakawa ob-served: ‘Even in the earliest days of Hip-Hop, the Five Percenters were regarded as an integral part of the Hip Hop scene.’ The fact that an entire book has been published on the topic of Five Percenters influence on rap is a testimony to the strength of the impact. It has also been reported that two of Hip Hop’s founders Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa personally studied Five Percent teachings, as well. The foundational lessons of the Zulu Nation, the spiritual core of early Hip-Hop, were directly derived from the Supreme Mathematics and Alphabets. The Gods and Earths being a factor in the switch from street wars to street jams gels with what Russell Simmons further records in his autobiography: “During the period when the gangs I hung with in the 70’s gave way to 80’s Hip Hop culture,” writes Simmons. “It was the street language, style and con-sciousness of the Five Percent Nation that served as a bridge.”38 This bridge was crossed by many rappers, who studied the teachings of the Nation of Gods and Earths, known as Five Percenters: “Jay-Z39, Nas, Rakim, Busta Rhymes, Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teach-ers, Gangstarr, Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J, Big Pun; even Erykah Badu40 and the Digable Planets whose Grammy-Award winning ‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’ contains a line alluding to the Five Percent.”41 Michael Muham-mad Knight writes: „Hip Hop is filled with […] secret Five Percenter refer-ences, even from MCs who aren’t Five Percenters. Listening to Jay-Z’s free-style with Big L, I would geek out on the part where J says, ‘Just like the Gods, I start with Knowledge and follow with Wisdom, for greater Under-

38 http://www.hhse.biz/?option=com_content&view=article&id=1028:the-influ-

ence-of-the-five-percenter-on-hip-hop&catid=116:1&Itemid=545 (accessed April 28, 2014) 39 Jay Z was recently said not to be an active member of the Nation of Gods and

Earths when he was wearing a medallion with a symbol of the NGE (http://allhiphop.com/2014/04/07/jay-z-catching-heat-for-five-percent-nation-%C2%ADmedallion/) (accessed April 28, 2014); see also several postings on http://www.allahsnation.net.

40 http://hollowverse.com/erykah-badu/ (accessed April 28, 2014). 41 http://www.hhse.biz/?option=com_content&view=article&id=1028:the-influ-

ence-of-the-five-percenter-on-hip-hop&catid=116:1&Itemid=545 (accessed April 28, 2014).

124 R. Lohlker

standing.’ Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding correspond to 1, 2, and 3. In ‘Jigga my nigga’ when J-Z boasts. ‘The god send you back to the earth from which you came,’ there’s a double meaning for Five Percenters ears, since ‚Earths’ represent women.”42

To give a short definition of the Nation of Gods and Earths, we may hint at the sometimes very heterodox history of Muslims in the Americas. The Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE) may be called a legitimate offspring of this history, going back – like the Nation of Islam – to the Moorish Science Tem-ple of Noble Drew and further back to the Muslim slaves.43 Both, the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE), share some common traits. The NOI emerged in the 1930s. Central concepts include the idea that the “white race” has been created by a “black” scientist – called Yacub – 6000 years ago on the Greek island of Patmos. This “white race” is under-stood as the incarnation of evil. The original man is black or Asian. This idea is turning the traditional paradigms of the USA upside down: “The black man is God and the white man is ‘colored’.”44 It is to be understood as part of the history of Afro-American self-empowerment. Important person-alities of the history of the NOI are Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the NOI, Elijah Muhammad, leading the movement to some importance, Malcolm X45, one of the most important spokesmen, breaking with the or-ganization and turning to Sunni Islam, and the current head of the organiza-tion, Louis Farrakhan.46 The biography of Malcolm X and the biopic about him is often mentioned as a crucial influence by members of the Hip Hop communities. The founder of the NGE, Clarence Edward Smith, known as Clarence 13 X47 and (Father) Allah, broke away from the NGE and formed the NGE in 1964. Connecting himself to the tradition of the NOI, he created neverthe-

42 Michael Muhammad Knight, Why I am a Fiver Percenter, New York: Jeremy Tar-

cher/Penguin 2011, 4. 43 See, e.g., Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Islam: African Muslim Enslaved in the

Americas, New York/London: New York University Press 1998 and Allan D. Aus-tin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Strug-gles, New York/London: Routledge 19972.

44 Knight 2011, 23. 45 As a Sunni Muslim he called himself El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; on him, e.g.,

Robert Terrill (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press 2010.

46 For the religious aspect of the NOI see Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press 2006.

47 His NOI name, the X indicates the original name of the Afro-Americans lost dur-ing enslavement and replacing the name given by the slaveholders.


less a theology of his own.48 Central to this theology is the idea that there is a chosen 5% of mankind: “We are the five percent of the planet that is wise and know who God is, and teaches that God is the Original Black Man. The Nation of Gods and Earths is part of the Five Percent Nation, however, all of that Five Percent Nation is not part of the Nation of Gods and Earths.”49 Male members of the NGE are called Gods, female members Earths, and children Seeds. The concept of concept of God or Allah may be illustrated by a dialogue between Clarence X and a member of the NOI: “‘Who is the Original Man?’ […] ‘The Original Man is the Asiatic Blackman,’ replied the Muslim, reciting his lessons by heart, ‘the Maker, the Owner, Cream of the Planet Earth, Father of Civilization, God of the Universe.’ ‘I am an Original Man,’ Clarence shot back, ‘and the Original Man is God and that makes me Allah.’”50 Another aspect of the ideas of the NGE is called “supreme mathematics”, a system of numbers used as a way of attaining self-awareness to be con-nected to the “supreme alphabet”, a similar system of letters.51 The sense of self-empowerment implied in the theologies of the NOI and NGE explains their appeal for marginalized communities in the USA seeking a cultural expression of their quest for acceptance and self-respect. The growing importance of the Hip Hop communities in the USA forced the NOI to change their negative stance towards Hip Hop. The popularity of Hip Hop has had a certain impact on the NGE, too. From a Five Percenters view, the success of Hip Hop music becoming attractive especially to white young men is seen as Michael Muhammad Knight puts it as selling it out to white male consumers. But: “What would this mean for black religious and cultural movements? […] The secret references in hip-hop lyrics have been decoded. Supreme Mathematics, Supreme Alphabets, and even the 120 are online, the community’s history can be found in my work The Five Percent-ers: Islam, Hip-Hop, and the Gods of New York, and Five Percenters are pub-lishing their own books. It’s possible for someone to have all their textual tools needed to be a Five Percenter without even meeting a Five Percenter in real life, let alone experiencing the traditional Five Percenter transmis-sion of knowledge. This opening up of the Five Percent has already im-pacted the culture, and will not decrease with time.”52 Mainstream Sunni Islam is followed by a smaller group; some of the rap-pers turned from the Nation of Gods and Earths to Sunni Islam; some conver-

48 For a history of the NGE see Michael Muhammad Knight: The Five Percenters:

Islam, Hip Hop and The Gods of New York. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007. 49 Pen Black: Gods, Earths and 85ers. New York: Tru Life Publishing, 2007, 1. 50 Knight 2007, 35-36. 51 Knight 2011, 158sqq. 52 Knight 2011, 88-89.

126 R. Lohlker

sions are not confirmed, e.g., the case of Busta Rhymes. In the case of Amir Muhadith (formerly known as Loon), it is confirmed. Sunni rappers include Mos Def, Scarface, Freeway, Brother Ali, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Lupe Fiasco.53 An example for a group that promotes a genuine Islamic image is the group Native Deen. Native Deen was born out of MYNA54 Raps, a musical project encouraging young Muslims to send in their raps to be published as mixed tapes.55 MYNA raps started in the early 1990s and its intention has been described as follows: “The songs and raps from MYNA raps were uniquely American but spoke of a believer’s perspective, hopes, and dreams.”56 Native Deen was formed in 2000 and became of the most influen-tial Islamic Hip Hop groups, transgressing the narrower confines of Hip Hop.: “Native Deen uses only percussion instruments and synthetic sounds during their performances, in line with one of the opinions on the use of musical instruments in Islam. This has not hindered the group’s musical creativity but has resulted in evocative audio efforts that have resulted in sounds that are a fusion of street rap, Hip-hop & R&B.”57 The group may be seen as exemplary in the use of Internet platforms to promote their music and message: homepage58, an online entertainment channel – described as the first halal online entertainment channel”59 –, a MySpace profile60, a Facebook profile with about 217.000 likes61, a Twitter account with about 7.400 followers62, a YouTube channel63. The lyrics are available, e.g., at songlyrics.com64, the music at, e.g., last.fm.65 This kind of

53 http://www.machetemag.com/2010/08/04/man-as-god-five-percent-nation-of-

islam-nation-of-gods-and-earths/#update (accessed April 28, 2014). 54 Referring to Muslim Youth of North America, a youth organization close to the

Islamic Society of North America (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/print groupProfile.asp?grpid=6705) (accessed May 11, 2014).

55 For a sketch of the history of Myna Raps see Samana Siddiqui, MYNA Raps turn 20 (http://issuu.com/isnacreative/docs/ih_mar-apr_13/41)

(accessed May 11, 2014). 56 http://issuu.com/isnacreative/docs/ih_mar-apr_13/41 (accessed May 11, 2014). 57 http://nativedeen.com/bio/ (accessed May 11, 2014). 58 http://nativedeen.com/ (accessed May 11, 2005). 59 http://deen.tv/ (accessed May 11, 2014). 60 https://myspace.com/nativedeen (accessed May 11, 2014). 61 https://www.facebook.com/nativedeen (accessed May 11, 2014). 62 https://twitter.com/NativeDeen (accessed May 11, 2014). 63 http://www.youtube.com/user/nativedeen (accessed May 11, 2014). 64 http://www.songlyrics.com/native-deen-lyrics/ (accessed May 11, 2014) with a

link to Native Deen ringtones. 65 http://www.last.fm/music/Native+Deen?setlang=en (accessed May 11, 2014).


multi-platform activity hints at the necessity to do research into the ways the structured media of the web are productive (see below). Every aspect of Islam can be related to Hip Hop, e.g., the blog rap genius talked about the “sacred nexus of hip hop and Islam” in the month of Ram-adan.66 Even when artists claim, they are not religious, we learn, they refer to the month of Ramadan: “From the housing projects I found my niche, you better find yours / I used to run with a lot of crime lords / Ramadan taught me use my mind more / Though I’m not religious.” (Bliss n Eso, feat. Nas)67 These few remarks may give an impression how diverse the universe of Islamic Hip Hop in the context of the USA and in the music industry is, in-cluding marginal and mainstream positions.

Muslim women in hip hop are still an underresearched phenomenon.68 In an article in 2008 Anaya Mcmurray writes: “At the juncture of religion and culture there are often moments of improvisation that are ignored in dis-courses around Islam, which thus marginalize the experiences of particular groups of Muslims, such as black Muslim women. The ways in which black Muslim women have become agents in negotiating Islamic faith and hip-hop culture in their music is of great significance when considering issues of power and representation that work to define and control black Muslim womanhood. […] When I refer to black Muslim women and hip-hop, I do not consider black Muslim women and rap music, but black Muslim women who create music and who are a part of the hip-hop generation”.69 As examples (besides herself) she discusses the rhythm & blues, rap and soul artist Erykah Badu, a “well established and accomplished singer and songwriter.”70 She shares the Five Percenter or Nation of Gods and Earths religious belief fusing it with Hip Hop culture. Ideas about the roles of women and men in the Nation of Gods and Earths are key in the lyrics:

66 http://rapgenius.com/posts/514-Hip-hop-islam-the-sacred-nexus (accessed Janu-

ary 27, 2014). 67 http://rapgenius.com/Bliss-n-eso-i-am-somebody-lyrics (accessed January 27, 2014). 68 Sylvia Chan-Malik, “Music: Hip Hop, Spoken Word and Rap: United States of

America”, in Souad Joseph (ed.), Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, Lei-den et al.: Brill 2011 (via http://www.brillonline.nl/) (accessed April 27, 2014).

69 Anaya Mcmurray, “Hotep and Hip-Hop: Can Black Muslim Women Be Down with Hip Hop?”, in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 8 (2007), pp. 74-92, here pp. 75sq.

70 Mcmurray, Hotep, p.77.

128 R. Lohlker

Busta Rhymes (BR) What I’m gonna do with Erykah Badu / I’m gonna have some fun / What do you consider fun? / Fun, natural fun Erykah Badu (EB) I said what I’m gonna do with my man Buster Rhymes / I’m gonna have some fun / What do you consider fun / Fun, natural fun. (Badu and Rhymes 1997) Though the average listener may not attribute such lyrics to the influ-ence of Islam, those who have knowledge of the guiding principles of Five Percenters may offer an alternative interpretation. In the above lyrics a sim-ple reference to having “natural fun” can be seen as a proclamation that Islam is the natural way of life, which is one of nine principles that Five Percenters live by. In fact, the title of the song “One” and the following content, which is concerned with building a family unit that acts as one, reflects another principle, that “the unified Black family is the vital building block of the Nation [...]”.71 The other example of Mcmurray is Eve, a successful rap artist, who de-scribed herself as really interested in Islam but not being able to live up to it: “The improvisation zone that Eve has created presents an interesting case because ideas about religion are not as explicit as those in Erykah Badu’s lyrics. In fact, the only explicit clue that speaks to Eve’s identity as a Muslim in her music is the occasional use of Allah. As stated earlier, Monson argues that improvisation is communal, therefore meaning is created not only by the musical artist but also by audience perception.”72 Mcmurrays article can be read as an attempt to challenge common mis-conceptions about Muslim women and hip hop and as an intervention in this contested field. As a blogger states: “McMurray makes some very im-portant points worth consideration about the space for Black Muslim women in hip hop. Muslims don’t see Black Muslim women in hip hop as Muslim because of what they wear and/or their controversial lyrics; many rappers don’t see them as Muslim because they would rather see women in hip hop as objects; mainstream doesn’t see them as Muslim because Christi-anity has been so important to the mainstream Black community. Therefore, Black Muslim women in hip hop are left in a difficult position where they have to struggle to create and maintain a space.”73 There are other female rappers wearing Hijab in Islamic Hip Hop, e.g., Tavasha Shannon aka Miss Undastood from New York a charismatic and

71 Ibid. 72 Mcmurray, Hotep, p. 82. 73 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mmw/2008/04/the-muslim-women-of-hip-hop/

(accessed April 27, 2014).


courageous rapper from New York.74 Sister Haero from California is another example.75 Poetic Pilgrimage, a Hip Hop duo from the United Kingdom. They are fusing Afro-Caribbean roots, with elements from Jazz, Afrobeat, Soul, etc. with Hip Hop.

Recent research on European Islamic Hip Hop has shown that Islamic Hip Hop is a still rather small musical trend in Germany and France, but has established itself significantly in the UK:76 “While the similarities among the French, German and British scenes facilitate the outline of the new genre, a closer look on the differences will help to understand better its role in a particular context and how rap is used as ‘a tool for reworking local iden-tity’ (Mitchell […]). Indeed, the major themes of the songs resemble each other across borders when linked by the commonalities of Islam and with the global ummah in mind. However, ignoring the conscious differences among the three countries in context, the artists’ background, the commer-cial structure or in fact some locally specific content of songs would mean ignoring the genre’s potential for identity negotiation and would disregard the fact that, without doubt, the artists fully engage with their national framework.”77 The three trends are different in many respects: the use of language, the switching of language, the social background, varying from marginal to middle class, or ethnic background. “Many of the artists […] are converts to Islam or have had a reversion experience: About one-third of the bands […] either speak of continuous religious upbringing or do not comment on it.”78 In the British context there are several women who perform (see above), in France and Germany the numbers are lower than in the United Kingdom. To name some artists from German speaking countries: In Germany in the first Hip Hop artists referred to Islam sometimes as a provocation, others introduced some Islamic elements without thinking of themselves as a gen-uine Islamic Hip Hop group. Ethnically the first wave had a Turkish back-

74 E.g., https://www.facebook.com/pages/MISS-UNDASTOOD/129613207050024

(accessed April 27, 2014). 75 http://muslimhiphop.com/Stories/7._Sister_Haero_Interview (accessed May 7, 2014). 76 Maruta Herding, “Hip-hop bismillah: Subcultural worship of Allah in Western

Europe”, in Kamal Salhi (ed.), Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World: Per-formance, Politics and Piety, London/New York: Routledge 2014, pp. 230-260.

77 Herding, Hip-hop, p. 249. 78 Herding, Hip-hop, p. 252.

130 R. Lohlker

ground, then artists with an Arabic background became more and more important. Some artists converted to Islam and show this religious conviction in at least part of their musical performance (e.g., Manuellsen or the female rap-per Lady Scar, voicing a socially marginalized position). A pioneer of Ger-man Islamic hip hop may be Ammar 114, a rapper converted to Islam and changed his given name to the name of a companion of the prophet and the number of the suras of the Qur’an as his name. Other artists to be men-tioned are Sayfoudin114 or the Austrian Nasihat Kartal, starting as a German speaking group but then changing to Turkish.

A giant step forward for internet music delivery was the introduction of the MP3 format. This format for digital encoding for supercompact storage and easy retrieving. MP3 superseded the data formats available in the early 1990s, WAV and MIDI, allowing only a slow download, hours for mere minutes of music. The supercompression also the volume of discs; a single CD-ROM could store dozens of music albums. We will not delve into the turbulent history of music on the Web, the Napster wars, etc. up to the in-troduction of iTunes and its competitors.79 What is important for our discus-sion is again the intricate relationship of technology and music production. An increased download speed, enhanced freedom of choice for consum-ers by file exchange services, the inability of the music industry to create technological answers (who still knows about DVD Audio or SACD?), in-creasing bandwidth, etc. changed the ways music is consumed. This does not necessarily mean that musicians or the audience live in a world of en-hanced freedom.80 But we have to remind us of an older insight from the times of less developed exchange of data than nowadays. Symbolic creativ-ity, to use Paul Willis’ concept, may be understood as a necessary part of everyday activity producing meaning and identity.81 This kind of creativity uses technological devices and products of the content industry in a way not intended by the creators of these devices and products and results in a criti-cal reception of the technological realization of these products.82 As Willis puts it: “Young TV viewers, for instance, have become highly critical and

79 Mark Coleman gives interesting insights into this process in his book Playback

quoted above. 80 Galloway/Thacker, The Exploit, 124. 81 Paul Willis, “Symbolic creativity”, in Raiford Guins/Omayrah Zaragoza Cruz

(eds.), Popular Culture: A Reader, London et al.: Sage Publications 2005, pp. 241-248.

82 Paul Willis, Jugend-Stile. Zur Ästhetik der gemeinsamen Kultur, Hamburg: Argu-ment-Verlag 1991 (referring to the use of micro-computers!).


literate in visual forms, plot conventions and cutting techniques [emphasis mine, R. L.].”83 Reading the use of technological products as a mere re-striction of human activity is a misunderstanding of human creativity.84 As Ramón Reichert puts it, we should understand that new network media deconstruct the usual concept of power. They are neither instruments to push data on people for commercial, social or political aims, neither neutral channels to transport information through them. If we see them as “modal relations”85 we will understand that networked media are structured media enabling specific activities.86 What does this mean for Islamic hip hop online?87 At first we have to talk about online platforms relevant for Islamic Hip Hop: muslimrap.com offers Islamic merchandising (t-shirts, hoodies, Palestinian scarfs), music downloads, information, lyrics, videos etc.; muslimhiphop.com covers Hip Hop, nasheed, pop, and other genres. The Facebook profile discussed here, called Muslim Hip Hop, has as its motto: “Starting a movement – post your favorite Muslim Hip-Hop artists and tracks.” It has accumulated (April 27, 2014) 8360 likes, a modest success since the profile is on Facebook since 2009. Muslim/Islamic Hip-Hop is defined here as “conscious hip-hop.”88 There are other platforms, e.g., MySpace, offer other venues into the life of the Islamic Hip Hop communities not to be explored here. A new develop-ment in Islamic and Muslim hip hop is to use YouTube as a channel for dis-tribution of the music. Even videos featuring “Underground Muslim MCs” are published on YouTube creating an own sub-category and exploiting the gangsta cliché of hip hop when calling the artists “the illest Muslim rappers in the underground.”89

83 Paul Willis, “Symbolic creativity”, here p. 243. 84 Cf. the analysis of photography as a form of cultural production Pierre Bourdieu

et al. in in Pierre Bourdieu et al., Photography: A Middle-brow Art, Cambridge: Polity Press 1998 (reprint of the edition 1996).

85 Kurt Röttgers, Spuren der Macht. Begriffsgeschichte und Systematik, Freiburg/ München: Alber 19902, p. 63.

86 Ramón Reichert, Die Macht der Vielen. Über den neuen Kult der digitalen Vernet-zung, Bielefeld: transcript 2013, p. 39.

87 A thorough analysis would have to include approaches from, e.g., Critical Code Studies (http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress/) or Software Studies (see Nick Montford et al., 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press 2013 or Mathew Fuller (ed.), Software Studies: A Lexicon, Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press 2008). We provide just an analytical descrip-tion of collective media practice among the Islamic hip hop communities.

88 https://www.facebook.com/muslimhiphop?fref=ts (accessed April 27, 2014). 89 By order of appearance: Prince Ali, Omar Offendum, Oddisee, Narcicyst,

Blakstone, Cilvaringz, Phonetikz, and Quest-Rah (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zsMQcxGWB7I) (accessed April 24, 2014).

132 R. Lohlker

Another new trend may be described as combination of classic nasheed with hip hop, country and pop music elements, sometimes called hip hop nasheeds, distributed over iTunes and YouTube.90

A very interesting case in terms of transformations of Hip Hop in an Islamic context is the German rapper Deso Dogg. As a rap singer with local fame at least in Berlin he turned to Islam changing his name to Abu Malik (often written as Abu Maleeq) and was nicknamed Abu Talha al-Almany. First of a mere Salafi creed he recently turned to jihadism and joined the Syrian jihadi fighters – at least claiming he had. After converting to Islam (or reverting in his parlance) he turned to anasheed, Islamic a capella hymns, sometimes enriched with other musical elements.91 Deso Dogg is of interest because he is an example for a male, gangsta-style rapper turned Muslim and leaving the Hip Hop subculture to turn to other forms of musical expression. There are examples of artists being perceived as using Hip Hop to ex-press a pro-jihadi stance. The most notorious example may have been the British Jungle/Hip Hop formation Fun^Da^Mental. Fun^Da^Mental sampled a speech by Che Guevara and on the other side of the disc one by Usama bin Ladin in Arabic sparking a hot debate on “jihad rap.”92 Ted Swedenburg writes in his article on Fun^Da^Mental: “Fun^Da^Mental intervenes in charac-teristically complicated and multi-dimensional ways. All Is War makes no effort to ‘reassure’ the Western listener. It declines to adopt the posture of ‘moderate’ Islam that mainstream commentators so insistently demand of Britain’s Muslims [...], and instead responds aggressively, hurling accusa-tions, with punk bravado.”93 We may understand this kind of lyrics as a way of reflecting the marginality of Muslims in Britain and worldwide. A similar case is the group Soldiers of Allah from Los Angeles with their most popular album “1924” referring to the abolition of the caliphate. They offered their songs free through the internet believing there is no copyright

90 Smietana, Bob, Young Muslim Musicians marry Faith, Hip-Hop, Rock’n’Roll, posted

July 3, 2013 (http://www.religionnews.com/2013/07/03/young-muslim-musi-cians-marry-faith-hip-hop-rock-n-roll/) (accessed January 27, 2014).

91 With further details Nico Prucha, “Who let the Dog out? A Note on the German Side of “Jihadism””, August 27, 2013 (http://www.jihadica.com/) (accessed Sep-tember 8, 2013).

92 Lars Eckstein, “Spiel mit der Angst: Britischer Hip-Hop nach 9/11”, Florian Nied-lich (ed.), Facetten der Popkultur: Über die ästhetische Kraft des Populären, Biele-feld: transcript 2012, pp. 175-196.

93 Ted Swedenburg, “Fun^Da^Mental Islamophobic Fears: Britain’s ‘Suicide Bomb Rappers’”, in vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, Vol. 9, pp. 123-132, here p. 127.


in Islam.94 The group became controversial after 9/11 and despite a massive popularity was disbanded.95

Since a thorough discussion of the role of Hip hop in the Arab Uprisings – not as important as many observers have proclaimed – lies outside the scope of this article, a quote of one of the most prolific bloggers on these issues may give an impression: “Islamist rappers like Psycho M and RTM, though, are exceptional within Arabic hip hop. El Général, like most prominent rev-olutionary Arab rappers, is a devout Muslim who emphatically rejects Is-lamist politics. ‘I’m Muslim, but El-Nahda doesn’t represent me,’ he told Lauren Bohn. ‘I’m against people who use religion to realize their political goals. Politics has a lot of dirty games. Religion needs to be away from these games. I’m very scared that Islam will be manipulated by El-Nahda.’ El Gé-néral and RTM did release one unsettling song with a militant, Islamist vibe named ‘Allahu Akbar’. The song’s anti-democratic Salafi rhetoric – e.g. ‘The Quran is our only law’ – comes from RTM. While El Général avoids any anti-democratic messages and focuses on fighting imperialism and reviving Islam’s glory, he still embraces the video’s militant, Islamist vibe despite his hatred of Islamist politics. Why is that? Here’s my best guess. Revolutionary Arabic hip hop has little scope for an American-style ‘gangsta’ sensibility like that found in the hip hop of the Ivory Coast. Revolutionary Arabic rap-pers must therefore demonstrate their toughness in one of two ways: by challenging the regime’s secret police (the popular choice for most leading rappers, including El Général usually) or by expressing a desire to fight and even die with the Middle East’s resistance movements (which can lead rap-pers to adopt the language of militant Islamism). Since El Général took on Ben Ali’s secret police and won, he needs to find a new target. Whatever Général’s motivation behind the video, though, it’s a good reminder that political transformation in the Middle East will not always be amenable to liberal sensibilities. At the same time, El Général, like most other revolu-tionary Arab rappers, never swears gratuitously, talks about sex, or talks about women in a disrespectful way – a refreshing break with most current genres of popular music.”96 Other styles of Arab Hip Hop (or: arabo-maghrébin) with an Islamic tinge appear in the context of the Moroccan rap subculture, emerging since the

94 http://www.muslimrap.net/soldiersofallah/ (accessed April 24, 2014). 95 They used an image often to be found on jihadi websites playing with ambiguity.

Videos of their songs are still available online. 96 “El Général, Hip Hop, and the Arabian Revolution”, October 22, 2011, Revo-

lutionary Arab Rap (http://revolutionaryarabrap.blogspot.co.at/) (accessed Octo-ber 10, 2013).

134 R. Lohlker

1980s. This hybrid style merges local music and Hip Hop into a distinctive remix combined with multilingual lyrics (Moroccan Arabic, Tamazight, French, English). Mohamed Mezouri alias Muslim includes many Islamic elements in his music.97 His new album Al Rissala Tamarrod Vol 2 2014 gives a nice impression from this specific Moroccan Islamic Hip Hop style.98

Another aspect outside the scope of this article is the interaction of politics and Islamic or Muslim hip hop are the programs of US cultural policy trying to integrate hip hop into the “war on terror”.99 Another intervention into the ongoing debate on Islam and hip hop comes from the Salafi side. Aidi describes in Antwerp where Napoleon, a former member of the group Tupac Shakur’s100 friends and family, called the Outlawz, “used his hip-hop credentials to dis the music and promote Salafism. His tour wrapped up in early 2011 just at the protests were spreading from Tunisia to Egypt, and he would soon return to his base in Riyadh and began speaking – and tweeting – against the uprisings and in support of the Saudi regime.”101 The many trajectories of the field of Islamic hip hop allow an investiga-tion into less researched aspects of contemporary Muslim culture(s). Look-ing on this phenomenon including the technical aspects of hip hop in gen-eral seems to be justified since the technical framing of musical activity cannot seen as a mere coincidence. The technical preconditions shape the way hip hop music is produced. Here we do not advocate a technical deter-minism, we are talking about the structure of the field enabling and re-stricting cultural production. This is not restricted to pop culture, it applies to other forms of music, too: “Artist, writer or scientist, each one, when she sets about her work, is like a composer at her piano, which offers apparently unlimited possibilities to invention in writing – and in performance – but at the same time imposes the constraints and limits inherent in its structure (for example, the range of the keyboard), itself determined by its manufac-ture – constraints and limits which are also present in the dispositions of the artist, themselves dependent on the possibilities of the instrument, even if

97 https://ar-ar.facebook.com/Muslim.Roi.du.rap.Marocain (accessed May 7, 2014). 98 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLRZxmchRsc (accessed May 7, 2014) and

http://www.musicme.com/Muslim/biographie/ accessed May 7, 2014). 99 For a detailed description of this aspect see Aidi 2014. Native Deen participated

in US foreign office sponsored tours. 100 A biographical narrative has e.g., Armond White, Rebel for the Hell of it, London:

Quartet Books 1997; cf. also Carlos D. Morrison/Celnisha L. Dangerfield, “Tupac Shakur”, in Hess 2007, 391-415.

101 Aidi 2014, Pos. 1137.


those dispositions are what reveals them and brings them to more or less complete existence.”102

Islamic Hip Hop, “the transglobal Hip Hop Umma”103, has to be regarded as a vital contribution to contemporary Islam – even if sometimes very hetero-dox – deserving thorough research if Islamic Studies do not want to cut itself off from vital currents of the religion it claims to study. The scope of this research goes beyond research on musical trends: “As verbal mujahidin, artists also engage in jihad of the hand and fight in the way of Allah (jihad fi sabil Allah) to help improve their local communities. My research reveals that not only are these artists studying Islam (as demonstrated by their abi-lity to quote and vividly describe Qur’anic passages) and applying it to their everyday lives, but they are also operationalizing Islam, that is, acting upon what they have learned in order to help build a nation. Mos Def does not only rap about issues like consciousness and justice, he lives them. His Isla-mic consciousness moves him and partner Talib Kweli to rescue Nkiru Bookstore, a Black-owned bookstore in his home community of Brooklyn, from shutting down. It guides him to actively participate in the creation of a HipHop album (Hip Hop for Respect) dedicated to obtaining justice for po-lice brutality victims and the immoral murder of Amadou Diallo, a Muslim immigrant from Guinea who was murdered by the NYPD in 1999. Mos pa-raphrases the Qur’an and expresses his faith in Allah at a public rally against the acquittal of the officers who fired 41 shots at the brother.”104 So there are also social dimensions of the transglobal Hip Hop communi-ties to be studied to produce a meaningful analysis of these communities.

102 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press

2000, 116. 103 H. Samy Alim, “A new Research Agenda: Exploring the Transglobal Hip Hop

Umma”, in miriam cooke/Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.), Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop, Chapel Hill/London: The University of North Carolina Press 2005, pp. 264-274.

104 H. Samy Alim, “Re-inventing Islam with Unique Modern Tones: Muslim Hip Hop Artists as Verbal Mujahidin”, in Souls 8 (2006), pp. 45-58, here p. 56.

Documents

Hip Hop and Islam