As a global phenomenon appealing to people across ethnic, linguistic, and class lines (Alim Reference Alim, Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook2009), hip-hop is associated with youth culture and resistance against oppression. Rap music's focus on ‘realness’ and cultural ownership also makes it a powerful tool for positive self-image (Alim Reference Alim, Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook2009). Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir's Representing Islam argues that hip-hop is for the September 11 Muslim generation a route to freedom of expression, looking at how ‘young Muslims […] have embraced and appropriated hip-hop music as their anthem in response to the surging Islamophobia following September 11’ (p. 2). ‘Hip-hop as practiced by these young Muslims’, Nasir writes, ‘takes on multifarious, glocalised forms that illuminate their local condition’ (p. 32).
That ‘route’ is not however without its difficulties, and Nasir dwells on the tensions between Islam and hip-hop's associations – with overt sexuality, violence and profanity, for example. Despite the fact that Islam has had a strong influence on hip-hop throughout its history, Muslim hip-hoppers, even those who live in ‘First World’ countries, as Nasir notes, struggle to reconcile their craft with their Islamic piety. While some artists attempt to ‘Islamicise’ the genre, others prefer to present a more global outlook, providing a form of halal-entertainment that adheres to the conventions of hip-hop music.
One can no longer address the topic of Muslim identities without the mention of the 9/11 terrorist attack of 2001. As Nasir notes, Muslims, particularly those of Arab and South Asian descent, have been transformed from ordinary citizens into national security threats through state policies, securitisation and media representation (Volpp Reference Volpp and Dudziak2003). In this context, Nasir examines how Muslim artists use hip-hop to challenge discourses that represent Islam as inherently violent, opposing Islamophobic stereotypes and, in the process, offering alternative Islams, uniting Muslims globally.
Nasir builds on Sohail Daulatzai's Black Star, Crescent Moon (Reference Daulatzai2012), and the ‘Muslim international’ as the intertwining of experiences of black Islam and the Muslim Third World. ‘Muslim hip-hoppers outside of the US’, Nasir writes, ‘sometimes express frustrations with what they perceive as double standards when it comes to the #BlackLivesMatter movements’ selective champagning of human rights […] [I]t is easier to speak about racial discrimination than to speak about Islamophobia’ (pp. 80–81). With the new mantra that ‘Muslims are new blacks’ (p. 83), one can also understand why Muslim hip-hoppers advocate for human rights conversations; they want bigger spaces to represent the marginalised and invisible. However, this can fail when youth become co-opted by the larger public sphere. The exceptional few stand out, leaving the rest to endure marginalisation and remain invisible. This is especially true for hip-hop ‘Hijabs’ (Muslim hip-hop women).
The struggle for human rights amongst Muslim hip-hoppers is not merely external, Nasir notes, there is also a backlash within Muslim communities where artists are scrutinised by virtue of being young, artistic or female. Nasir refers here to Muslim countries where freedom of speech is not a given. ‘The internet then becomes a main platform for exchange between these hip-hop groups and the wider hip-hop ummah’, or community (p. 143). There is also a hip-hop diplomacy advocated by the US and Australian governments that allows different platforms for Muslim artists to do hip-hop, the contradiction being that those who own the means of production always want to have control: it is the US and other Western countries that, at the forefront of state control policies authorising the Islamophohic scrutinisation of Muslims, are promoting Muslim hip-hop in countries of the Middle East, such as Palestine. Representing Islam exposes the tensions of Muslim artists riding this liberation wave, and those refusing commercial success.
Two features of the book are striking. The first is the concept of representation, and what it means in a globalised neoliberal world. Nasir grapples with the ways Muslim artists attempt to ‘keep it real’ (p. 167), which entails the relation between aesthetic and political representation. Like Blacks, Muslim artists seem to be burdened with having to save and to represent their own, struggling to reconcile being able to simply do their art in whatever way they want, and needing to carry a political message.
The second is the way Nasir revisits the experiences and voices that remain neglected, marginalised in both Muslim communities and hip-hop culture, and here questions of gender prove to be critical. Although women are mentioned throughout, Chapter 4 is dedicated to hip-hop ‘Hijabs’ and the double bind they are continuously having to navigate: hip-hop contravenes the religious and cultural expectations of Muslim women, and, at the same time, hip-hop itself also marginalises them. Much of this chapter focuses on the ways that men represent women. While necessary, there is also a need for conversations where women artists can exist outside of male-dominated patriarchal capitalist systems, including the underground. Unfortunately, there is a lack of literature moving beyond the idea of women's art as a derivative version of the masculine norm. For example, there is limited research on hip-hop produced by women, and songs that bypass the perception of women by men, such as the work of Mona Haydar.
Despite this limit against which Representing Islam brushes, one can only rejoice at the plurality of possibilities the book offers for future research. This is a solid contribution to hip-hop and popular music studies within Muslim culture and beyond.
