'The Taqwacores' on Q TV

The legendary Clash singer and guitarist Joe Strummer famously said, "the future is unwritten". Well, I'd love to hear what Strummer would have to say about Michael Muhammad Knight -- the author of "The Taqwacores", a book that, in many ways, wrote the future of the North American Muslim punk music scene. Knight's book takes us into a vibrant house of aspiring punk musicians living in Buffalo, New York. Like most young punks, the characters in this book live for sex, drugs and rock n' roll. But in this house they also pray to Mecca (denoted by a hole smashed in a wall). The characters in "The Taqwacores" all negotiate their identities - religious, political, cultural and sexual - through the rebellion of punk....from mohawked Sufis to burqa-wearing riot girls and Indonesian skater boys. The book began as a photocopied, spiral-bound zine that Knight distributed out of the trunk of his car in mosque parking lots. In 2005, it was picked up and published by Alternative Tentacles, Jello Biafra's record label, and it's now being re-released in soft-cover by Soft Skull Press. Knight has since written a few books on American Muslim culture but "The Taqwacores" seems to have had the most affect on contemporary culture. He's been hailed by critics as a Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac or J.D. Salinger for post-9-11 American muslim youth...many of whom were inspired to create bands of their own like "The Komanis" or Vancouver's all-girl punk outfit, "Secret Trial Five". The book has also inspired two films coming out this year -- a dramatic feature film - and a documentary by Montreal-based filmmaker, Omar Majeed. The two sat down in Studio Q to talk about the subject.

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