Good thing I wore my Doc Martens! Upon sauntering up to the powerHouse Arena on Saturday night, I came across a group of dark-eyed young folks smoking outside. With their tight clothing, pink locks running through otherwise black hair and olive skin, I knew I was at the right place for Taqwacore Night—a book reading celebrating the American Muslim punk movement.
Taqwa, an Arabic term for “higher consciousness,” is synonymous with this punk movement thanks to Michael Muhammad Knight’s celebrated novel, The Taqwacores.The 32-year-old American writer and journalist essentially dreamed up a Muslim punk movement in Buffalo in the early aughties that became a reality.
Knight, who is pursing a master’s degree at Harvard, read passages from his new novel Osama Van Halen, in which, among other things, an Iranian Shi’ite skinhead and a burqa-wearing riot grrrl kidnap Matt Damon to get Hollywood to portray Muslims in a less polemic fashion (“Show us that Muslims are reasonable people or we kill Matt Damon,” he quoted). He also read a poem by 13th-century Sufi poet Jalal Ad-Din Rumi about a woman who fucks a donkey and is killed when the animal’s “penis rips through her body and ruptures her liver”—if only to prove to haters and orthodox Muslims that it is their tradition to discuss sex and violence.
Seated, the author drank from a carton of Tropicana orange juice and listened as a heated discussion about racism and sexism within the punk community ensued. “Punk is Patti Smith!” yelled one incredulous 40-something woman dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. “I don’t know where you were in the 1970s, I was in CBGBs; [punks of different races] did not work together and they still don’t!” “I actually worked with The Ramones, and I’m a Muslim punk!” shouted Cihan Kaan, a writer, film director and electronic music producer who creates his tunes under the name Eightbit.
“I lived next door to Joey Ramone in Coney Island,” Kaan later told me over the screaming of Omar and the Kaminas—a Muslim punk band performing specially for the event. “Well, actually they were in Marine Park and Marky had a studio in Rockaway.We used to play together. It was never important to them that I was Muslim.”
