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Shotguns
and Munaqababes along the Arabian Sea |
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The
following is an excerpt from chapter six of Mark Levine's book, Heavy
Metal Islam: Rock Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam,
which has just come out. Mark Levine had come to Pakistan last year
and gone all over our country |
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Driving
into Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), there is a sign
on the road that welcomes you to "the land of hospitality."
This is not what I expected to find on my way to Peshawar, gateway
to the region of the country controlled by the Taliban and al-Qa'eda,
where Osama bin Laden is said to be hiding.
In the United States, and even in Pakistan, the NWFP is known almost
exclusively as a haven for terrorists, ultra-traditionalists, and
drug and arms smugglers. No doubt it has many of those, but it also
has the ancient valley of Swat, known as the "Switzerland of
Pakistan" (at least until the Taliban overran it in the fall
of 2007) because of its famous ski resorts. The region is also home
to some of the largest and most beautiful Buddhist statues in the
world. And until Saudi-style extremism invaded the region - courtesy
of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, which during the Afghan
war turned the NWFP into the staging area for mujahidin activities
in neighboring Afghanistan - the region was popular with adventurous
Americans. |
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When
you arrive in Peshawar, road signs point to the "Imaginarium
Institute for American Studies." Yet the U.S. Consulate's American
Club changed its name for security reasons. The gates leading into
the tribal areas warn, no foreigners allowed, yet Peshawar is awash
in foreign money and people, its "smugglers' bazaar" awash
equally in weapons, drugs, pornography, and cheap Chinese electronics.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, USAID, European NGOs, the Taliban
- all have staked a claim to a city that has been at the crossroads
of empire since Alexander the Great crossed the nearby Khyber Pass.
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So
has Sajid & Zeeshan, Pakistan's best rock duo, whose improbably
beautiful album One Light Year at Snail Speed, filled with songs
driven by acoustic guitars and keyboards, was recorded almost entirely
in the home studio of the band's keyboard player, Zeeshan Parwez,
using old synthesizers and guitars bought for a song at the smugglers'
bazaar. The duo's music, which features lush vocals that flow over
techno and house beats, acoustic guitars, and vintage synth sounds,
symbolizes the contradictions of living on the frontier of Pakistani
society and identity.
The day I arrived,
an article about the band appeared on the front page (of the entertainment
section) of one of the country's English-language newspapers: "Peshawar
is not a place known for being very music-savvy, and the idea of
a band coming from there was surprising for many music enthusiasts."
In fact, as the duo explained to me, Peshawarians are called "walnuts"
by other Pakistanis because they are supposedly "hardheaded
or stupid. When we tour in other Pakistani cities, people actually
ask us if we live in mud huts."
Such ignorance stems from the fact that so few Pakistanis from outside
the region go to Peshawar these days, since the city and the surrounding
tribal areas have become identified with the Taliban and reckless
violence. Yet the rock scene there is almost two decades old. Sajid
Ghafoor, the duo's singer and guitarist, was one of its founders,
and from the start has been determined to show Pakistanis that Peshawar
has a vibrant, creative cultural scene at the forefront of Pakistani
society.
Neither Sajid nor Zeeshan would leave Peshawar, which they regard
as a refuge from the crass materialism and lack of social solidarity
that pervade the country. As Sajid explained, "Peshawar might
be light-years behind other cities, yet we don't deviate from our
traditions and culture. People still look out for each other. Even
if we party, we respect tradition." "One record shop here
got the best music before shops in the big cities. And the coolest
was metal. We grew up on metal. Megadeth, Metallica, Rush, Rage
Against the Machine, and of course Floyd and Zeppelin; the sound
just related to our feelings of aggression living in a dictatorship,
and helped us get out the anger in a healthy way."
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"There
used to be so much culture here, especially music," Zeeshan lamented.
"Junoon [the pioneers of Pakistani rock, dubbed by the global
media the "U2 of Asia"] used to play here. We could play
for crowds of thousands. But once Musharraf handed over control of
the NWFP to the religious parties, that all changed." Zeeshan
explained this as we headed toward the tribal areas surrounding Peshawar,
which are normally a no-go for Westerners and most Pakistanis as well.
Sajid and Zeeshan also know that this tradition is under threat, and
they are despondent about the growing extremism of Pakistani Islam
and its intersection with government corruption--a combination that
led the duo to record its first Pashto-language song, 'Lambay', soon
after my visit, for which we collaborated on a heavy-metal version
of the song for the compilation album Flowers in the Desert, being
released by EMI later this summer.
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Echoing the description by many of my Lebanese friends about their
country's increasing religious-secular divide, Sajid said, "When
I was in school I had religious friends. We respected them and they
respected us. My brother is one of the most famous guitarists and
producers in Pakistan, but prays five times a day. What you have to
understand is that the Islamists who are against music are against
it not because a fatwa has told them it's wrong, but because music
opens minds and allows people to express themselves. They use Islam
to stop others for political or economic reasons. But that's not Islam."
Junaid Jamshed, the founder of Vital Signs, is perhaps the biggest-selling
artist in Pakistani history. But these days it's not music that keeps
his spirits high. Instead, it's his faith. If Junoon was the Led Zeppelin
of Pakistan, Junaid's good looks, charismatic personality, and powerful
voice made Vital Signs the country's Beatles. But beneath the fabulous
life of a mega celebrity, something wasn't right. As he recounts it,
"It was ten years ago, around 1997, and I was at the peak of
my career, almost an icon in my country. I had everything at my feet,
but I was unhappy and discontented.
"Then I met an old school friend, Jhani, who had returned to
his faith. He was a very successful businessman, yet he led a peaceful
and uncomplicated life, with time for friends, family, and charity.
Jhani never spoke to me about Islam or any ideology; he didn't preach.
But as I spent time with him I began to think that maybe this way
of life could give me spiritual material for my albums -- new directions
-- as far as music was concerned. Then I realized the music I had
been doing up till then was often without substance. Everyone was
doing it...
"So I started sitting with him and going to the mosque. You know,
all the things about gun-running and terrorism, that the West and
even many in Pakistan relate to mosques and Islam, they had nothing
to do with what I was seeing... [Instead,] for the first time I began
to respect Hindus, Christians, Jews, and other religions because I
realized that everyone is created by the Almighty. Everyone deserves
respect because we're all part of a global family."
Junaid's turn toward religion came with a heavy price, however: He
came to believe that music was haram, or forbidden in Islam. This
view, expressed by many very religious Muslims, is in fact hotly debated;
the reality is that most musicians I know in the Muslim world consider
themselves religiously valid Muslims and don't share Jamshed's view.
He disagrees: "You can debate it, but that's the way it is. And
even with the music, all those great bands, the Doors, the Beatles,
and the rest, all wanted to be against the establishment. But they
didn't have anywhere to take people once they led them away -- there
was never really an 'other side' to break into, rather than just out
of."
At the same time, however, Junaid's spiritual awakening hasn't led
him to turn away from or criticize his old friends in the rock and
pop world. "Look, if I just tell society, 'Don't do this!' they
will be flabbergasted. 'What the hell is this guy talking about?'
'Who is he, a musician, to tell me music is haram?' etcetera. You
must give them a better alternative. If I don't have a better alternative,
I shouldn't tell them to stop or leave something."
Junaid has managed to cross the religious-secular divide while keeping
his respect for the world he left behind. But the dialogue he advocates
is increasingly difficult to have in Pakistan, just as it is in Lebanon
and most of the other countries of the MENA. Pakistanis from the country's
artistic, religious, and journalistic elites have all complained to
me that the lack of communication, and the loss of young people to
extremism that it encourages--extreme consumerism as much as extreme
religion--"is killing the country." ...
At heart, according to one senior government-appointed religious figure
whom I know, the problem is that Pakistan is divided by vested interests
that are beyond the reach of any conceivable medicine to heal, no
matter how much sugar is added.
At best, if enough money is thrown into the medicine chest, one could
hope to produce a strange simulacrum of Islamic and Western society,
such as have evolved in Dubai or Doha, where huge amounts of wealth
and an invisible foreign underclass allow a few lucky Arabs to live
the "liberal" Muslim dream next door to their expatriate
Texan and British neighbors. Indeed, if you walk through the airports
in Lahore and Karachi, you'll find advertisements for Emaar Pakistan's
latest luxury development, Crescent Bay, along Pakistan's Arabian
Sea coast. It's a lovely-looking development, with happy looking families
living in homes that could easily be in Dubai, or Minnesota for that
matter.
But only a few Pakistanis will be lucky enough to live there or even
work there as the guards, cooks, gardeners, and drivers that make
the lives of Pakistan's elite livable. Leaving the airport, I walked
past four munaqqababes - wealthy young women in full niqab (a black
frock covering the whole body, with gloves and veils covering the
entire face save their eyes), which hide their chic western designer
clothing and 80 gigabyte iPods--with tags still on their veils from
when they went through security. As I passed them something an up-and-coming
singer from Lahore, Ali Roooh, said to me as we drove through one
of his city's poor and overcrowded markets rang inside my head: "Mark,
Pakistan is doomed unless we can return to our traditions of taking
care of each other." With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,
the continual fighting in the Northwest Frontier Province, and the
growing power of Taliban-inspired forces, Ali's fears seemed sadly
prescient. |
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