Hip Hop & Muslims

Rajae el Mouhandiz

I just finished reading this wonderful article by Shanon Shah on The Nut Graph about (hip hop) music and muslims, based on three issues of The Platform Magazine which he had read. I think it does bring up some good questions, such as the ease with which we dismiss The Other (in this case, hip hop culture, which is too easily identified with guns, hunnies, and the benjamins), and the questioning of fatwas (music, among some muslim communities, is very iffy).

Basically, the magazine becomes a platform to discuss and re-assert the need to not always take the easy way out. An article in the magazine has the author, Dawoud Kringle, saying: “Yet simply pointing to it (hip hop music) and saying ‘THIS IS HARAM!’ is only a first step; and rather a clumsy and ham-fisted step at that. The Muslim authorities, who ban such music and whatever else, are putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. They can make all the bans and fatwas they wish. It will amount to nothing.”