Slam Dancing for Allah

Check out The Kominas, a Muslim punk band based in Boston, MA.

Muslim punk rockers call their unique brand of music taqwacore--a blend of the Arabic word for piety, taqwa, and 'hardcore,' the English word for politicized musicians who write songs that are loud, brutish and short. The Kominas, a Punjabi punk band from the Boston suburbs, write songs that speak to the band’s frustrations with both fundamentalist Islam and how devout Muslims are portrayed in the American media. Their funk-infused Bollywood songs--with titles such as 'Rumi Was a Homo,' 'Sharia Law in the USA' and 'Suicide Bomb the Gap'--have been on rotation on BBC Radio. Here, photographer Kim Badawi followed the band's frontman and bassist, Basim Usmani, and snapped a series of photos that took us from the 'burbs to a nightclub, and a dorm room to a mosque.

Check out The Kominas' MySpace page and download their latest songs.
Listen to a clip of 'Suicide Bomb' here.
Audio clip of 9000 here.

MTV Desi - News story on the "boston-based taqwacore/punjabi punk band)

MTV Desi - News Video on The Kominas

More on their official website!

Newsweek Article on The Kominas

Slam Dancing for Allah

Muslim Punk Rock - it's not as bizarre as it sounds.

By Matthew Philips

Newsweek

June 11, 2007 issue - It's near midnight in a small Fairfax, Va., bar, and Omar Waqar stands on a makeshift stage, brooding in a black tunic and brown cap. He stops playing his electric guitar long enough to survey the crowd—an odd mix of local punks and collared preps—before screaming into the microphone: "Stop the hate! Stop the hate!" Stopping hate is a fairly easy concept to get behind at a punk-rock show, and the crowd yells and pumps its fists right on cue. But it's safe to say that Waqar and his band, Diacritical, aren't shouting about the same kind of hate as the audience. Waqar wants to stop the kind that made people call him "sand flea" as a kid and throw rocks through the windows of the Islamic bookstore he worked at on 9/11. Waqar, 26, the son of a Pakistani immigrant, is a Muslim—a punk-rock Muslim.

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