The September 11 generation, hip-hop and human rights

493029 JOS0010.1177/1440783313493029Journal of SociologyNasir: The September 11 generation 2013 Article The September 11 generation, hip-hop and human rights Journal of Sociology 2015, Vol. 51(4) 1039–1051 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1440783313493029 jos.sagepub.com Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir Nanyang Technological University Abstract This article examines the global human rights activism of young Muslims through their participation in hip-hop culture. The increased awareness of their Muslim identity in the post-September 11 era inadvertently influences and permeates the consumption of popular youth culture. The article contends that there is an attempt by the hip-hop ummah to draw from the struggles of the African American experience to articulate the human rights concerns facing respective communities. The right to appropriate hip-hop as a means to express their predicaments also brings its young practitioners into conflict with moral entrepreneurs who act as gatekeepers to the religion. However, the human rights activism of young Muslims is bridging the seemingly irreconcilable gap between hip-hop and piety, serving not only as an important framework of social identity but also providing the space to forge generational and transnational solidarities. Keywords generation, hip-hop, human rights, Muslim youth, popular culture In comparison to fields such as law, philosophy and theology, sociology’s contribution to the field of human rights can be argued to be largely indirect and negative. The discipline’s attention has been focused more on ‘the study of social citizenship in specific (capitalist) societies than with the study of human rights as a normative framework for international political action’, and this is peculiar given much sociological interest in the study of globalization (Turner, 2002: 602). After all, human rights can be aptly scrutinized through the lens of globalization to delineate the category of ‘humanity’ (Robertson, 1992). In this article, I propose that examining the sphere of popular culture enables sociologists to observe the vibrant human rights activism in both a transnational and generational framework. Corresponding author: Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive HSS-05-25, Singapore, 639798, Singapore. Email: [email protected] Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1040 Journal of Sociology 51(4) Two prevailing trends within the scholarly community make the exploration of the relationship between human rights and hip-hop a timely one. First, there has been much debate on whether Islam is capable of accommodating and advancing human rights (Mayer, 1995; Sachedina, 2009). In this discussion, scholars have turned to the writings of both classical Islamic thinkers and contemporary reformers, noting the role of Islam throughout history in human rights advocacy. Second, there has been burgeoning work of late on the relationship between popular music and human rights (Fischlin and Heble, 2003; Peddie, 2011). Studies have accentuated the social movements and protest traditions within popular music. These works demonstrate popular music’s response to matters of human rights. Hence it is not far-fetched to examine the hip-hop activism of young Muslims in urban settings and how the latter are operationalizing these ideals in the realms of everyday life. Youth participation in the hip-hop genre calls for particular attention as hip-hop culture among youth has often been utilized as a sphere of contestation for government institutions, political parties, media and religious groups to claim moral guardianship over their societies against the corrupting influences of the youth. This is understandable, given that hip-hop was born in the age of post-industrial malaise. Hip-hop originally refers to an African American urban youth culture with its origins in the South Bronx of New York and manifests itself in the form of rapping, graffiti, a particular way of dress and so forth. The hip-hop generation has been defined as ‘those young African Americans born between 1965 and 1984 who came of age in the eighties and nineties and … share a specific set of values and attitudes’ (Kitwana, 2002: 4). Kitwana delineated six major driving forces behind the hip-hop generation: ‘the visibility of black youth in popular culture, globalisation, the persistent nature of segregation, public policy surrounding the criminal justice system, media representations of black youth, and the general quality of life within the hip-hop community’. Since the nascence of the genre in the streets of the Bronx, hip-hop culture has been harnessed as a powerful tool of social critique. Today, hip-hop continues to be one of the most common expressions of youth culture; even being touted as the ‘“Black folks” CNN’ (according to a rapper from Public Enemy, quoted in Gilyard, 2008: 98). Such expressions attest to the role of hip-hop music in representing a fragment of social reality, and also serve as a response to the conventional media’s distorted portrayals of these groups. The universal appeal of hip-hop largely stems from its ability to give a voice to those who are at the margins of society and to offer a form of social critique on issues such as unemployment and lack of attention given to the youth. Todd Boyd postulates that, despite its African American origins, hip-hop can be the vehicle for the rest of America to assimilate with black culture (Boyd, 2004: 12). In fact, Boyd’s predictions may be considered rather modest. As I will argue later in this article, even beyond the American context, Muslim youth can assimilate with black culture when they perceive their predicament to be similar to that of black people in America. Such homological imagination can be seen in the way hip-hop is commonly appropriated by these urban minority youth to advance human rights (Kamaludeen, 2012). This article is necessarily an exegesis of the culture and consciousness of a particular generation of Muslims, termed the September 11 generation (Edmunds and Turner, 2005). As Karl Mannheim (1952) proposes, members of a generation galvanize Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1041 Nasir themselves by the experience of historical events from similar vantage points, and a particular generation can influence society by challenging conventional norms as well as offering new cultural visions when faced with traumatic experiences. Edmunds and Turner (2005) argue that while generations identify themselves in terms of historical and cultural traumas, these are produced by a diversity of social processes by members of national, social or global groups. They contend that generations act strategically to bring about change and shift from being a passive age cohort to a self-conscious one when they utilize their economic, political and educational circumstances to innovate in the cultural, intellectual and political spheres (Edmunds and Turner, 2005: 562). Young Muslims of the present generation find themselves increasingly constructed as a transnationalized category of risk and danger and at the same time subjected to greater securitization (Humphrey, 2010). Therefore, it is important to examine the Muslim youth as a unique generation in itself. This offers a broader perspective to their status and identity that goes beyond a nation-state narrative, allowing us to see connectivity on a global platform. Heightened Islamophobia and ethnic profiling in the post-September 11 era have led to a myriad practical implications for Muslim youth (Poynting and Mason, 2008). Youth respondents frequently lamented about how their Muslim identity and ethnic appearance can affect their life chances. Globalization plays a great part in generating the apprehension of the larger society towards Muslim migrants. Documenting his findings on Australian youth, Moran posits that the conflation of concepts such as ‘the illegal migrant’ and ‘Muslim’ as ‘one symbolic threat to the nation’ arises even among those who are not against migrants of other social groups (Moran, 2005). Among the reasons his interviewees cited are the perceived incompatibilities with Christianity, the Muslims’ alleged lack of loyalty, as well as the Muslims’ desire to change Australian society and not leave it as it is. Although Moran’s work is specific to Australia, similar tensions exist in global cities with a significant presence of Muslim migrants. My research also uncovered a significant number of youth going by pseudo-English names as they are hesitant to publicly declare themselves as Muslims. Hence, it is common for one to encounter ‘Bob’, the Iraqi electrical appliances manager or ‘Michael’, the Indonesian convenience store owner. Only when relations had gone beyond the professional, and upon learning that the researcher is Muslim, did they reveal their real identities. Some youth also changed their names and residential addresses in their job applications in order to disguise their Muslim identity. When probed, they talked about their discomfort at being labelled a terrorist. In addition to the everyday discrimination that these Muslim youth had been experiencing, such manipulations of identities had caused the September 11 event to be entrenched in the consciousness of the Muslim youth in an unprecedented way. Although the manner in which these dynamics unfold may vary for Muslim youth in different parts of the world, a large part of their responses can be collectively understood as a form of activism for their basic rights. Human rights in hip-hop Hip-hop is the best way to grasp our present and future. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is less important today than DMX’s ‘It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot’. (Boyd, 2004: 12) Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1042 Journal of Sociology 51(4) Issues of racism, rights and Islam form the cornerstone of Muslim hip-hop music (Gazzah, 2008; Solomon, 2005). Hip-hop’s social commentary and its antagonistic style offer ideal platforms for articulating public misconceptions of Islam as well as the everyday injustice that Muslims face locally or globally. These causes manifest in the music of many Muslim hip-hop activists all over the world. In an interview, Australia’s Muslim hip-hop group, the Brothahood talked about their strong Muslim identity amidst their detachment from both traditional culture and an ultra-misogynistic brand of hip-hop. The group deploys their music as an attempt ‘to break down stereotypes and barriers that we face as Muslims’.1 In addition to expressing their everyday religiosity, the Brothahood exert their rights to citizenship in the light of the challenges they face in the post-September 11 era. Through tracks such as ‘The Silent Truth’, they articulate issues related to migration, xenophobia, media prejudice, Islamophobia and the exclusionary treatment that Muslims experience under the rubric of national security. As Miguel d’Souza (quoted in Maxwell, 2003: 115) perceptively puts it: in the Australian context, hip-hop’s movement has come out of the ranks of suburban and migrant youth whose dissatisfaction with the isolation of suburban living, unemployment, racism and the Anglo-Saxon dominance of Australian culture has caused them to identify with similar sentiments coming from African-American rap. Nonetheless, this is not unique to the Australian landscape as human rights activism through hip-hop has been an important arena for anti-Islamophobic mobilization for Muslims in other parts of the world. In his study on England’s Fun-Da-Mental and France’s IAM, Ted Swedenburg (2002: 16) states: in both countries Muslims are attempting to construct cultural, social and political spaces for themselves as ethnic groups (of sorts), and are massively involved in anti-racist mobilizations against white supremacy. Hip-hop activism has been an important arena for anti-Islamophobic mobilization for both French and British Muslims. Elsewhere, he says that: ‘Fun-Da-Mental’s expressions of pride in Islam appealed to Muslim youth who had been raised on British popular culture yet also felt wounded by British Islamophobia’ (Swedenburg, 2001: 58). Not merely verbal mujahidin (Alim, 2006), Muslim hip-hop groups also participate in operationalizing Islam. The Brothahood, for example, performed in Free Gaza benefit concerts in offering their support to the Palestinian cause. On top of performing for the first time a specially composed track called ‘Act on It’, all funds raised on the night were donated to the Palestinians. To be sure, the hip-hop activism of some Muslim hip-hop groups goes beyond advancing the issue of human rights within the Muslim community. They present a global message and cosmopolitan stance that would occasionally be embodied in their performance such as through the manner that they dress. In a 2008 Islamic concert in Sydney, one of the singers from the Brothahood came up on stage wearing a ‘Free Burma’ t-shirt, jeans, zikr beads and a skullcap.2 The Australian Human Rights Commission has also recognized the group’s social activism.3 Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1043 Nasir Hip-hop’s popularity among non-Anglo migrants globally was in large part to do with their feelings of alienation and the oppositional image embodied in the genre (Bennett, 2000). However, this also applies to the non-migrant Muslim youth community. While specific urban multicultural contexts produce locally promulgated forms of hip-hop culture, hip-hop enables its practitioners to claim social solidarity with a global hip-hop ummah as they participate actively in addressing the concerns of Muslims post-September 11. Hip-hop as poetic jihad The route to human rights activism through hip-hop for young Muslims is marked by great challenges that are first played out at the intra-religious level. Muslim hip-hop practitioners looking to voice their predicament through the genre inevitably find themselves getting into conflict with the gatekeepers of religious dogma. Religious orientations and generational differences also add to the dynamic conversations concerning hip-hop among Muslim youth. Hip-hop culture has a tenuous relationship with Islam at a fundamental level. The most important question concerns the permissibility of music in Islam. The religious fatwa on the status of music in Islam ranges from a total prohibition of music, to allowing musical instruments as long as the song complies with Islamic precepts such as the ruling against uttering profanities.4 The form of music that is in line with the religious rulings of many Islamic scholars would be nasheed. Nasheed is an Islamic-oriented form traditionally sung acapella in tandem with only basic percussion. The new wave of nasheed singers, however, has included a diverse range of instruments and has opted to integrate hip-hop music to advance their craft and this has caused some debates within the Muslim community. At an intermediate level, Muslim youth involvement in hip-hop still comes as a challenge to the religious authorities that do not see the elements present in hip-hop as being in line with Islamic values. Hip-hop is largely seen as a sign of western moral decadence and a state of normlessness. A number of social critics have also criticized what they see as a heavy emphasis on ‘bling bling’ (materialism) and ‘bagging honeys’ (sexual relations with beautiful women) in hip-hop music and culture, as hip-hop’s concern with social causes such as rights and justice, fades into the background. These factors make the fusion of Islam and hip-hop all the more controversial. This issue of compatibility of values is also evident when we examine the performativity of hip-hop culture among contemporary young Muslims. One sphere of contention pertains to the management of the body. Our deen is not meant to be rocked! … I see these so-called Muslim sistas wearing a hijab and then a boostier, or a hijab with their belly-button sticking out. You don’t put on a hijab and try to rock it! Or these brothers wearing Allah tattoos, or big medallions with Allah’s name – Allah is not to be bling-blinged! (Banjoko, quoted in Aidi, 2004: 37) The notion of bodily discipline is a strong feature of Muslim and Islamic hip-hop in contemporary society. Its practitioners strive to conform to a stricter body regimen that involves performing with less aggressive gyrations during a gig or pulling a ‘hand on a Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1044 Journal of Sociology 51(4) crotch move’, dressing modestly with less likelihood of being ‘blinged-blinged’, avoiding tattoos or taking a shirt off, among others. As the ‘Muslim body’ is constructed as a site of moral judgement, Muslim hip-hop activists avoid the controversial performative aspects of hip-hop as a way of responding to the disciplining of the body that is embodied in traditional ‘Islamic’ music. Although the scope of this article does not allow the author to delve into the topic in any length, it can be seen that the concepts of ‘Muslim hip-hop’ and ‘Islamic hip-hop’ are central to the contestations within the hip-hop ummah. Put simply, the latter is used in an attempt by Muslim hip-hoppers to reconcile themselves with Islamic religious requirements in music. Islamic hip-hop may restrict the types of musical instruments used, generally does not employ expletives and frequently refers to issues of doctrinal import. In this way, these hip-hop activists ‘Islamize’ their music and performance, driven by their belief that hip-hop can be compatible with Islamic convictions as it is merely a vehicle for self-expression. While it is essential to take note of these contestations, they do not in any way diminish the increasing trend of ‘hip-hop activism’ among the September 11 generation as a collective. As a case in point, Mushaben (2008) points to the development of Pop-Islam in Berlin, spawned in Arabia around the turn of the new millennium, citing the increase in the influence of charismatic imams and the impact of Islamic satellite television in creating idols and entertainment celebrities. This has created a ‘young, chic and cool’ Islam among marginalized Muslim youth who are deprived of basic rights of citizenship and access to resources in their countries of birth. Although the elders still hold the reins of power by which the community is governed, they are increasingly challenged by a more educated youth population. It is observed that more youthful religious imams (Islamic clerics) or ustazs (Islamic teachers) are beginning to take the helm of various mosques. Mushaben posits that tensions within the Muslim community centring on generational gaps had already appeared pre-September 11. This younger generation speaks the language of their host country, which many of their migrant predecessors struggle with, and reaches out to the larger non-Muslim population through dialogue and sports. It has been documented that the urban Muslim youth see themselves as ‘genuine Berliners’ and do not want to be restrained and pigeon-holed in an insular homogeneous social group (Mushaben, 2008: 521). With the discourse of human rights having taken root in popular culture in the West, young Muslims view their participation as a way of integrating into mainstream society. The internet then becomes a powerful medium in which these battles are fought. The growing role of the cyberspace in the everyday lives of young people, who theoretically have the freedom of space and place in the internet, has thrown into disarray the efficacy of state regulation of conventional media such as the television. Although it is precisely this fear of unknown places and spaces that has been driving states towards regulating the internet space, attempts to curtail the autonomy of the youth are all the more problematic given the nature of the internet as both ‘global’ and cutting across ‘national boundaries’ (France, 2007: 123). Gary Bunt asserts that a primary role of the internet is to carry on the dialogue where the traditional sources stop. In addition, these globalized respondents in the Digital Age also discuss their participation and the salience of the media in their lives, leading to an unprecedented awareness of their individual and collective relationships with the different forms of media available. In the context of global cities, ‘the application of the internet is Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1045 Nasir having an overarching transformational effect on how Muslims practice Islam, how forms of Islam are represented in the wider world, and how Muslim societies perceive themselves and their peers’ (Bunt 2009: 3). Hence, Muslim youth living in urban cosmopolitan cities who have closed the digital divide play a crucial role in advancing the rights of their diasporic communities through hip-hop. These vibrant conversations lead to the global rise of a social group whom I call the ‘poetic jihadis’. Whether the outcome is ‘Muslim hip-hop’ or ‘Islamic hip-hop’ they fuse hip-hop with Islamic symbolism in an attempt to integrate two seemingly conflicting cultures. Maintaining their Muslim identity, poetic jihadis defy both the reverence for misogynistic themes in hip-hop and the traditional nature of Islamic music such as the nasheed, while incorporating a heavy dose of social reality. If Islam’s sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.… It’s about speaking out against oppression wherever you can. If that’s gonna be in Bosnia or Kosovo or Chechnya or places where Muslims are being persecuted; or if it’s gonna be in Sierra Leone or Colombia – you know, if people’s basic human rights are being abused and violated, then Islam has an interest in speaking out against it, because we’re charged to be the leaders of humanity. (Mos Def, interview with Ali Asadullah in Beliefnet.com)5 As Muslim hip-hopper Mos Def states above, his music, while not devotional in the conventional sense, is driven by Islamic beliefs such as the need to respect and protect the basic rights of others, and speak out against cruelty and oppression as God’s vicegerent on earth. Muslim hip-hoppers like Mos Def consider their Islamic identity as a mandate to push for issues of social justice through socially conscious hip-hop. The notion of poetry in the term ‘poetic jihadis’ is not coincidental. Notwithstanding the strong criticisms on hip-hop’s compatibility with Islam that are advanced by the gatekeepers of the religion, Muslim hip-hoppers tend to couch their craft within the rubric of the Islamic tradition. Suad recounts how poetry holds an exalted place in preIslamic Arabia and confers on those who master it both social status and symbolic power. This tradition found continuity in the Qur’an, which is generally seen by Muslims as a text of superior linguistic pedigree. Seeking to emulate the Prophet, who is regarded as endowed with the tools that are deemed most appropriate in engaging his audiences, hiphoppers utilized rhymes and idioms of Islamic symbolism to engage the youth of today. As one prominent former hip-hopper, Napoleon, puts it: ‘Moses was sent with magic, Jesus with medicine, and Muhammad with poetry’ (2007: 130). Seen in this light, the poetic jihadis see themselves as progeny of the ‘Muhammadan mission’ as they appropriate hip-hop to galvanize the concerns of urban minority Muslim youth living as part of the September 11 generation. In addition, the incorporation of the elements of nasheed into hip-hop has facilitated some Muslim youth, who had considered music as haram and un-Islamic, to take a more sympathetic view of Muslim hip-hop groups. Muslims as the new blacks: from civil rights to human rights Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours is solved. You will never be fully respected as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings. Our problem is your problem. It is not a Negro problem, nor an American problem. This Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1046 Journal of Sociology 51(4) is a world problem; a problem for humanity. It is not a problem of civil rights but a problem of human rights. (Malcolm X, ‘Appeal to African Heads of State’, Addis Ababa, 17 July 1964, emphasis added) As the voice of the poetic jihadis seems to echo much of the African American hip-hop lexicon, it is imperative to examine the deeper impetus for this trend. The consumption of hip-hop culture by urban minority Muslim youth gives rise to a form of homological imagination (Kamaludeen, 2012) that there exists much common lived experience with black people in America. This is taking place as young Muslims are increasingly beginning to reinterpret their everyday predicaments not so much as a problem of civil rights as one of human rights. This is part of a larger development that also saw civil rights groups reframing their struggle as one of human rights. Kitwana (2005: 11) contends that, at the rate in which the youth are absorbing hip-hop culture globally, ‘these movements may be the catalysts necessary to jump-start an international human rights movement in this generation, a movement with the potential to parallel if not surpass yesterday’s civil rights successes’. Groups saw the struggle for civil rights as inherently limiting, as citizens are left vulnerable to the state’s definition of its peoples, while a shift to human rights is deemed to be liberating as it starts from the premise that an individual possess basic rights (Ards, 2004: 321). This shift also allows criticisms to be internationalized. Through hip-hop, the struggle for human rights among young Muslims of the September 11 generation is conflated with the symbolic status of the civil rights movements and the struggle of black people in America. Much of Muslim hip-hop has been influenced by the oratorical style of Malcolm X, an eminent civil rights leader and Islamic activist. His ‘jihad of words’, which he successfully employed as a compelling political and religious strategy (Turner, 2003) during his time, is reborn in today’s Muslim hip-hop vernacular, with many hip-hop tracks evoking his name and alluding to his speeches. A study by Turner (2006) deals with male Muslim youth who are influenced by rap music. The author dubbed hip-hop as North America’s foremost youth culture and shows how the youth are converting to Islam as a result of hip-hop’s long association with Islam. Young Muslims also talk about how Muslim rappers such as Common, Talib Kweli, Hitek, the Roots and Wu Tang Clan are popular role models for the spiritually and politically conscious black youth. Part of the influence of Muslim rappers such as Mos Def, with his references to piety in his lyrics ‘Allah, the Lord of the worlds’, and Muslim rapper Nas singing ‘Been blessed with Allah’s vision, strength and beauty’, is that it lends itself to a ‘reconstruction of Black masculinity’ that the youth find appealing. Black Muslim youth’s drawing on the image of Malcolm X as a galvanizing tool must be emphasized. Turner underlines Malcolm X’s contribution to hip-hop culture and his influence on the conversion of black youth to mainstream Islam. The cooption of his image as part of popular culture magnified his influence. Not unlike Che Guevera, we see the symbol of Malcolm X constantly being evoked as an inspirational figure who speaks truth to power. And this appropriation is occurring at a time when the youth is besieged by information through the print and digital media, more than at any other point in history. According to Turner, rap music transcends the ‘oppositional subcultural music’ stereotype for these youth, who Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1047 Nasir seek to make sense of ‘the ultimate spiritual and political concerns in their lives and their identities are paradigms for global Muslim youth’ (Turner, 2006: 41). It is therefore important not to understand the above trend as a mere mimicking of black culture from America. Hip-hop has provided urban Muslim minority youth with a medium to access the African American experience. It has afforded young Muslims ‘a cultural vocabulary and historical experience with which to bond and from which to draw elements for local repertoires of resistance’ (Aidi, 2004: 119). Global Muslim hiphop culture has to be seen both as a social movement that aims to uphold the tenets of multicultural living and an endeavour to represent a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ Islam. This is achieved in hip-hop through the infusion of elements of nasheed and Islamic devotional music, coupled with the negation of the Nation of Islam/Five Percenter influences in early Muslim hip-hop music. Hence, what started off as predominantly a culture that challenges the supremacy of the white man over the black male is repackaged as a global movement for Muslim youth of the September 11 generation to express their sentiments. Globalization, the prominence of black youth in popular culture and the media depictions especially of young black males reverberate with the sense of marginalization felt by young Muslims. These images are further reinforced by what is perceived as a prejudiced criminal justice system and the concerns about living in an age of Islamophobia. Social commentators have seen the glamorizing of the hip-hop lifestyle and the exposure given to black music in the MTV generation as the reasons for the adoption of black culture among young Muslims. Hip-hop as practised by young Muslims takes on multifarious ‘glocalized’ forms that illuminate their local habitus. Bennett (2000) advocates that the process of globalization will not in fact impose homogeneity but rather will emphasize and foster the local. Bennett argues that their practices assume meaning and social, cultural or structural significance, not solely by virtue of their engagement with dominant social structures such as the state, but by their embeddedness in local politics and social relations. He contends that social actors engage critically with popular music but that they do so principally in the context of the ‘local’. This is defined throughout the text not as a demarcated physical space but rather as a set of discourses. The specific discursive practices through which the local is called into being are, Bennett asserts, intimately associated with the production and consumption of popular music. Those musical texts that originate elsewhere are routinely read through sensibilities that emerge out of a specific understanding of place. These particular sensibilities are themselves, however, heavily influenced by exposure to musical texts that originate elsewhere. Although the African American hip-hop scene has held much clout over the genre, the nodes of cultural influence in Muslim hip-hop do not emanate from any particular center. Instead, they are dispersed across the hip-hop ummah and are made distinct as a consequence of attempts by hip-hop practitioners to glocalize their music, adapting it to local concerns. Diasporic young Muslims in urban settings are not only subjected to official doctrines of multiculturalism in their host countries but also the socioeconomic status that is intimately linked to their locality. For instance, Western Sydney, an area with a significant presence of Muslim migrants, has long been stigmatized as unrefined and is reputed to be laden with social problems. The accents of these communities are labelled as ‘woggie’ or ‘westie’ and hold less cultural capital amid a predominantly white Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1048 Journal of Sociology 51(4) Christian nation. An amalgamated form of language emerges out of these power relationships. As a diametrically opposed response to conventional decorum, ‘Lebspeak’ (Cameron, 2003) is born among second-generation Lebanese youth by ingesting hip-hop jargon into their everyday speech. These conversations between hip-hop and local culture lead to the formation of a glocalized jargon using terms like ‘fully sick bro’, ‘awesome, Habib’ (a form of ‘mate’), ‘Yallah’ (let’s go), other than the more colourful swearing (‘mo-fo’, for example) (Butcher, 2008). The language of hip-hop among minority migrant young Muslims and their hip-hop activism is inexorably interwoven with local flavours and draws inspiration from the antagonisms that are reminiscent of domestic conflicts. Minority Muslim youth hip-hoppers commonly use terms like ‘outlaws’ and ‘outsiders’ to refer to their perceived estranged social position vis-a-vis the larger mainstream society. In Germany, diasporic Turkish youth in Berlin (Soysal, 2004) found their voice amid a limiting discursive space through the landscape of hip-hop that governs their stories through a ghetto narrative and hip-hop lexicon. The ‘angry street talk’ of Turkish youth in Berlin fits well with other groups such as London’s Fun’da’mental, America’s N.W.A. and Paris’s NTM. The use of these terminologies can however be a doubleedged sword. On the one hand, the shared social conditions with the African American experience might be precisely the factor that gives hip-hop music its appeal to the local Muslim youth but, on the other, the discursive constraints within the hip-hop vocabulary necessitates the adoption by Muslim youth of an ‘us versus them’ attitude. Between the formation of a global Muslim youth hip-hop culture and manifestations of its glocalized forms, the notion of social justice remains central to Muslim hip-hop practitioners. It can be surmised that this theme within Muslim hip-hop is likely to thrive given the social status, real or perceived, of many Muslim minorities. Certain sections have gone as far as to contend that Muslims are now becoming the most marginalized members of society, likening their predicament to that of black Americans. According to one observer, ‘Muslims have then, ironically, become the new “black” with all the associations of cultural alienation, deprivation and danger that come with this position’ (Alexander, 2000: 15). Conclusion Young Muslims of the September 11 generation are faced with tough questions over what it means to be ‘Muslim’ due to the increasing securitization by nation-states and the focus of the general public on their Muslim minority populations. September 11, as a global event, has resulted in many young Muslims having to come to terms with their piety, regardless of whether they claim to be ‘devout’ adherents of the religion. For those who consider themselves ‘religious’, September 11 presents them with the ultimate challenge of defending their religion as well as religious practices such as fasting during the month of Ramadhan and performing daily prayers. Nonetheless, even among respondents who concede that they are not ‘practising’ their religion, many find themselves in the position of having to re-examine their identity amid enhanced scrutiny. Popular youth culture, hence, often becomes the common arena whereby these acts of piety, in all their diversity, are performed. Downloaded from jos.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on December 21, 2015 1049 Nasir The manifestation of hip-hop culture among urban minority youth is also an expression of a dialectical relationship between attempts by moral entrepreneurs to manage the youth through music and the youth’s attempt to advance their human rights activism through hip-hop. The youth body regimen is constructed as a site of moral judgement, with policing extended to the body. The performativity of music also tends to be demonized: the sexual body that is associated with hip-hop music and the violent body that is associated both with particular dances, and crowds during public performance. In this regard, performative hip-hop can also be seen as a response to the traditional disciplined bodies of ‘Islamic music’. Youth dispositions also have to be contextualized to the local field and attempts by the state, mass media, custodians of religious dogma and the youth themselves, not only to jostle for moral guardianship but to redraw existing moral boundaries must be taken into consideration. These practices are not simply the results of dualisms that illuminate the encounters between structure and agency, but rather highlight the consequence of the youth’s living in a structure. Youth acquire their dispositions, consciously or unconsciously, from a structural framework. The challenge remains for youth to reconcile him or herself with the apparently competing social norms. In essence, Muslim youth have bridged the gap between the seemingly colliding genres of nasheed and hip-hop, with the notion of jihad, central to their endeavours. It is undeniable that, for young Muslims, popular culture not only provides important frameworks of social identity, it also offers the space to form generational and transnational solidarities revolving around human rights. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 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