‘Sonic Jihad’: Black popular music and the renegotiation of Muslim identities in Post 9/11

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ABSTRACT On 11 September, 2001 the American Twin Towers and the Pentagon became targets of what the American President George W. Bush described as an act of terrorism on the American people. The so-called ‘War on Terror’ that ensued established a new world order in which America reserved the right to militarily intervene in any country in pursuit of the so-called terrorists. The Taliban of Afghanistan fell. Saddam of Iraq was hanged. Muslims all over the world became enemies and/or were perceived as potential enemies of the American State. The American official media created and continued to reproduce the images of Arabs and their Muslim religious identities as objects of attack and derision. However, in America black Muslim popular singers have generated a counter-culture, seeking to provide ‘alternative viewpoints’ on Muslim identities. This paper analyses the lyrics of Paris, one of the most popular American black Muslim music icon. Paris's musical compilation ‘Sonic Jihad’ has been received as an act of defying White America's blanket attack on Islam and Muslim identities under the guise of fighting the ‘war on terror.’ The paper argues that through popular music, black Muslims offer a critique of American policies that victimise the world in general and the Arabs in particular. The paper applies Antonio Gramsci's concept of the subaltern agency to the analysis of popular music. The aim is to explore how musical lyrics construct what is popular in popular cultural identities and suggest that the subaltern exists in the liminal space characterised by resistance, but also incorporation to the dominant cultural systems. Paris’ music must be viewed as a cultural instance in which popular music is used to produce contestatory knowledge that maps out new horizons for cultural production and learning from the perspective of Black Muslim.