Effed up in the parking lot

Quote from: Moetown on August 20, 2009, 09:09:31 PM

I haven't heard it, but it sounds like it'd be kinda cool.

Um... familiar?

Quote from: Just Some Girl on April 18, 2009, 10:35:24 AM

Quote from: The Joke Murderer on April 18, 2009, 10:31:34 AM

Quote from: Just Some Girl on April 18, 2009, 09:41:46 AM

Quote from: The Joke Murderer on April 18, 2009, 09:16:22 AM

Quote from: Just Some Girl on April 17, 2009, 10:39:50 PM

I've read a ton(ne) lately...mostly for life avoidance reasons (!!) and roomie commandeering the tee vee...

Lessee, finished this one in the hospital (had started a few days prior) during the four-hour wait for my surgery last week. Utterly fascinating, a super-quick read (and this one's far more film-able) and I love love love that the writer is unapologetic and/or doesn't over-explain the Muslim phrases/prayers/rituals just launches into the book as if they're common knowledge (and a couple chapters in, it does feel like it is).

Product Description
A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi’a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists. Their living room hosts parties and prayers, with a hole smashed in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. Their life together mixes sex, dope, and religion in roughly equal amounts, expressed in devotion to an Islamo-punk subculture, “taqwacore,” named for taqwa, an Arabic term for consciousness of the divine.

Originally self-published on photocopiers and spiralbound by hand, The Taqwacores has now come to be read as a manifesto for Muslim punk rockers and a “Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims.”

About the Author
Michael Muhammed Knight converted to Islam at sixteen after reading Malcolm X's biography, and spent two months at Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan. He later left orthodox Islam. His writing regularly appears in progressive Islamic venues. He lives in Western New York State.

It's better to have progressive muslims than to have fundamentalists, but personally, I'd rather not have any muslims at all. No matter how many mohawks you wear and how much you punkify the damn thing, Islam is a full fledged middle eastern monotheistic religion, with all the crap that goes with it. And burqas aren't cool, and never will be.

Wow. Just... wow.

Well, I never said I agree with Islam (or any religion for that matter). But I do like the imagination of this writer (and implausibility of the punk/Muslim/Buffalo scenario, which is an aspect of fiction, remember); his fierceness; the grit; the narrator's sense of "belonging" (and his constant questioning, especially about Islam -- what really constitutes a Muslim?), etc. It's a coming-of-age novel, in many ways, only one set in a world I don't know (except for the punk part), so it was fascinating to me. So you can slam the religion all you want, but that doesn't make this any less of an interesting read.

Also, it reminded me of the punk houses in my past (lived in a 10-person, vegan, punk/communal-type household when I moved to Ottawa, and visited/partied in countless way more hardcore punk houses in university and beyond) and so I guess there's a sense of nostalgia there. Not that I'd go back to that kind of life in a gazillion years, but still... partly shaped who I am now, so...

Whatever I am now. Oh yeah, the (JS)Girl who goes: "So fuck you, Dan."

(keed)

Hey Karen, don't take it personally. I'm not criticising you. Ok, I'm going to explain myself again: first of all, it is obvious that the author has an ideological slant. He is trying to make islam "cool". I don't think it is a good idea to ignore the ideological context in which art is made. I mean, there's quite a lot of propaganda that is beautiful to look at (I'm thinking, for instance, of Russian Constructivism), but it would be naive to just consider the aesthetics without considering the message, or the context.

Secondly: there's the whole suspension of disbelief factor to consider. Personally, I would have trouble to take that book seriously... Unless it was satire or something. Burqa wearing riot grrrls?! Come on!

At the time I said it was filmable...and there is indeed a movie in the works. I guess my producer friend no longer needs to read it in consideration of looking into the option. Shoulda known.