Less than 2%:

On June 24, 2021, Al Jazeera’s TV show The Stream featured several prominent Muslim filmmakers, critics, and scholars to discuss Muslim representation in Western film and media. The episode (404), titled “What Will It Take to Boost Muslim Representation in Film,” focuses on the negative stereotyping and erasure of Muslims and follows with what is being done by various organizations to intervene. Host Femi Oke opens by reminding viewers that “there are almost two billion Muslims in the world, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Hollywood productions.” Oke invited Kashif Shaikh, co-founder and president of the Pillars Fund; Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, scholar, artist, and activist; and Jenna Mahmoud Bosco, writer, actor, and filmmaker; to join the conversation, and they pointed out a harsh truth: less than 2 percent of speaking roles in 200 popular films were Muslims (Al Jazeera English 2021). 

Khabeer’s work Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States (2016) presents a complex portrait of young Muslims in the United States and, in particular, foregrounds a contemporary Muslim identity defined by Blackness and hip hop. This work has helped focus my own theorizing around Muslim subjectivity and music. As a Nigerian American scholar raised in a family of both Muslims and Christians, I have always been interested in the relationship between the listening habits of my Muslim family members while growing up in a post-9/11 world and their sense of visibility in an American society that did not depict their lives in TV and film. Indeed, after September 11, 2001, Muslims in the United States faced discrimination tied to stereotypes of Islam and Muslim identity (see Khan and Ecklund 2013). The most prevalent stereotype “is the radical Muslim insurgent, bent on waging jihad, or holy war, against the West…[usually representing] violence as an inseparable part of being Muslim, as well as religion as justification for violent actions” (Media Smarts, n.d.). Other stereotypes center on Muslim women, portraying them as passively helpless or strong feminists because of faith. Crime dramas such as CSI: Miami[1], Criminal Minds[2], and NCIS[3] almost always represent Muslim men as prone to misogynistic violence and Muslim women as victims of male domestic violence in the few instances of their depiction. 

Ethnomusicological interest in exploring these complexities of Muslim musical and religious identity offers an important strategy for challenging one-dimensional and harmful representations of Muslims in the media. One particularly important point of intervention is the Sama’ polemic, which examines the permissibility of music in Islam and reveals invaluable insights into the complexities of Muslim life. These discussions surrounding music and Islam, which date to the origins of the faith in the seventh century, but have continued alongside globalization, Westernization, and postmodern life for Muslims across the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, defy inaccurate depictions of Muslims (Hirschkind 2006, 1–2; Marcus 2007, 89–90; Nelson 2001, 33–4; Gribetz 1991). Neither the Qur’an (the holy book of Islam) nor the hadith (sayings and actions of prophet Muhammad), as two of many sources of cultural authority and autonomy for Muslims in a globalizing world (Nelson 2001, 33–4), definitively explains the permissibility of music in Islam. This places the onus on the individual Muslim to negotiate their relationship to music with the practice of their faith, reminding us of the complexities of postmodern subjectivity, where music “is part and parcel of the cultural constitution of subjectivity…how individuals are involved in constituting themselves as social agents” (DeNora 2000, 47).

I asked several practicing Muslims originally from outside the United States—but who currently live in the U.S.—about their relationship with faith and the role of music in their lives. For this article, I draw predominantly on two interviews. Fatima Suleiman, an eighteen-year-old Black Muslim woman from Mauritania, and Sarafina Khouri, a twenty-year-old Sudanese Muslim woman from Sudan, provided thoughtful insight into their experiences with music and faith in their original cultural contexts and in their lives in the United States as students.[4] Muslims living in Western countries that are predominantly Christian and/or secular often struggle with the placement of their faith over other facets of living in the postmodern world, and those Muslims who do center Islam in their lives must often find ways to navigate living in non-Muslim societies. Khabeer’s call resonated with my own ethnographic research on music and its role in the lives and identity of young Muslims in the United States. This ethnographic research challenges stereotypical depictions of Muslim life by reflecting on Muslim negotiations of faith with their music consumption in postmodernity. 

Muslims living in Western countries that are predominantly Christian and/or secular often struggle with the placement of their faith over other facets of living in the postmodern world, and those Muslims who do center Islam in their lives must often find ways to navigate living in non-Muslim societies.

While I used several indicators to identify and analyze the instances where my Muslim interlocutors negotiated the role of music “in self-monitoring and self-regulation” (DeNora 2000, 52) of their subjectivity, the negotiation of faith for music was the focus of the study. This indicator was utilized to explicitly identify what my respondents had said to justify music use as Muslims who practice Islam. Further complicating the negotiations of my Muslim respondents were thematic areas defined by Tia DeNora in Music in Everyday Life (2010) for utilizing music: memory, spiritual matters, mood changes, mood enhancement, and activities, each with varying levels of overlapping significance to any given person. Aesthetic reflexivity, where respondents reflect on their use of music as “[self]-aestheticization […], a strategy for preserving identity and social boundaries under anonymous and often crowded conditions of existence” (DeNora 2000, 47) also complicated their negotiations. 

There are several ways that my respondents justify their listening to and use of music. Some challenge the explicit wording of the Qur’an and hadith, some claim ignorance of any restrictions on music in Islam, while others invoke the lack of enforcement by authority figures on music in Islam, or appeal to the existence of religious music among Muslim communities. Each of these methods of individual negotiation challenges the validity of musical restriction in the faith. Examples of this are found in my conversation with Fatima, who justifies music by challenging the explicit wording of the Quran and hadith and appealing to the existence of religious music in Islam (Suleiman 2017). Another interviewee, Sarafina, justifies music by insisting that her authority figures did not enforce restrictions on music (Khouri 2017). 

Some challenge the explicit wording of the Qur’an and hadith, some claim ignorance of any restrictions on music in Islam, while others invoke the lack of enforcement by authority figures on music in Islam, or appeal to the existence of religious music among Muslim communities. Each of these methods of individual negotiation challenges the validity of musical restriction in the faith.

Regarding the permissibility of popular music, Fatima responded that “there are no [music genres] brought up in the Qur’an or the hadith but […] the scholars; they say if the songs have anything to do with romantic or sexual relationships, or if it has curse words then it’s automatically forbidden…but then it’s like why does it come out all of a sudden so I don’t really follow that part because it’s like not actually in the book” (Suleiman 2017). Fatima negotiates faith by directly challenging its validity in outlawing music, particularly because of issues with some Muslim scholars’ interpretations. As the basis of her reasoning is that there are no explicit passages in the Qur’an or hadith for outlawing music and that all Muslims refer to these texts, she defers to the texts in deciding what music to listen to. Fatima prioritizes her own textual understanding of Islam over the interpretation of Muslim scholars in deciding whether music is permissible or not because although they practice the same faith, they live in different eras, localities, and have different concerns. 

Fatima also justified her use of music by appealing to the existence of religious music in Islam. She argues, “we listen more to our religious music, nasheeds.[5] It’s not like regular music; it talks about God and everything. How Christians have gospel music, Muslims have nasheeds” (Suleiman 2017).  Fatima focuses less on the possible restrictions of Islam on music, and more on certain music that glorifies Allah and serves as good moral instruction, which she feels religiously justifies music for Muslims. 

Sarafina justified her music use by insisting that Muslim authority figures do not enforce bans on music. When I asked her about the permissibility of music in her home, she stated, “my parents were never like ‘don’t listen to music’…I’ve never been told ‘don’t listen to music’ or ‘you can’t do that’; you know what I mean? It was never told or taught to me that because of Islam that I could only listen to certain songs” (Khouri 2017). Sarafina negotiates faith not by being ignorant of any restrictions or discussions about permissibility of music, but by placing the burden of teaching and enforcing these restrictions on authority figures who did not teach her. In this sense, Sarafina is positioning responsibility with her authority figures when confronted with discussions of permissibility of music and Islam, deferring to the popular acceptance of music as justification for personal use. 

These instances of negotiation from Fatima and Sarafina are few of many where my Muslim respondents consistently make complex decisions regarding their faith and their music consumption. Their reflections support Khabeer’s argument about the complexity of Black Muslim life, and also demonstrate an active resistance to the more singularizing and harmful narratives that we see in many mainstream depictions of Muslims in the media. Their negotiations of faith and listening to music depend on a balance of deferral to external forces and individual agency in the postmodern West. This might lead us to new ways of thinking about the subjectivity of Muslims, as both constituted by Islamic upbringing and consistently reconstituted through new experiences and criticism of the media in the postmodern West. 

Their negotiations of faith and listening to music depend on a balance of deferral to external forces and individual agency in the postmodern West.

This “give and take” of subjectivity from both the Muslim community and Western society was most apparent in interviews with my Muslim respondents, especially when they spoke about their faith compared to their uses of music and other beliefs. As Khabeer and others have called for research that challenges stereotypes of Muslims, ethnomusicologists should continue to explore discussions of listening and music in Islamic societies, and particularly among Muslim communities in Western societies. Obscure understandings of Muslim subjectivity in the West are not helped by the fact that less than 2 percent of speaking roles in 200 popular films featured Muslims, or that when Muslims are portrayed in the West, it is through damaging stereotypes. Everyday Muslim musical decisions exemplify the complexity of Muslim subjectivity and postmodern life, defying the stereotypes that still define limited Muslim depictions in Western film and media today. 

References

Al Jazeera English. 2021. What Will It Take to Boost Muslim Representation in Film? | The Stream. June 24, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcosq2dmJI0&list=PL753C25BA340C0D9E&index=25&t=309s.

DeNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gribetz, Arthur. 1991. “The Samā’ Controversy: Sufi vs. Legalist.” Studia Islamica 74: 43–62.

Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Khan, Mussarat, and Kathryn Ecklund. 2013. “Attitudes Toward Muslim Americans Post-9/11.” Journal of Muslim Mental Health 7 (1).

Khouri, Sarafina  (pseudonym). 2017. Interview with the author, June 29, 2017.

Marcus, Scott. 2007. Music in Egypt: Includes CD. Music in Egypt. Oxford University Press.

Media Smarts. n.d. “Media Portrayals of Religion: Islam.” https://mediasmarts.ca/diversity-media/religion/media-portrayals-religion-islam.

Nelson, Kristina. 2001. The Art of Reciting the Qur’an. Vol. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Suleiman, Fatima (pseudonym). 2017. Interview with the author, June 27, 2017.