Arab Media & Society

Spring, 2006. A quick glance at the top 40 most requested songs on the Web site for the popular Arabic music video channel Melody Hits TV reveals the latest and greatest from stars such as Lebanon’s Nancy Ajram—infamous for her sexually suggestive videos—as well as others like America’s rapper Eminem and Egypt’s crooner Tamer Hosny. Next to each song’s title and number is also displayed a picture of the artist. At number 32, next to her hit Megamix, is a picture of Britney Spears staring at the viewer with the fingers of her right hand resting suggestively on her bottom lip. At number 35, popular rapper 50 Cent is shown in front of an expensive sports car wearing a fur coat, diamond-studded chain and black bandana. Wedged between the two at number 34 is the British Muslim singing phenomenon Sami Yusuf with his latest hit Hasbi Rabbi.(1)

Well-dressed, sporting a fashionably cut, close-cropped beard and preferring tailored black suits to traditional dress, he is famous for his glitzy religious CDs and music videos. Born in 1980 to Azerbaijani parents, Sami Yusuf grew up in London and first studied music under his father, a composer. From a young age he learned to play various instruments and at the age of 18 was granted a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.(2) In 2003, Yusuf released his first album entitled Al Mu’allim (The Teacher). Along with the Al Mu’allim also came the release of the first “Islamic music video” for the album’s title track by the same name. Both the video and the album were immensely popular throughout the Muslim world, where even in conservative Saudi Arabia album sales topped 100,000 copies.(3)

Yusuf’s message is one of tolerance and integration. In Yusuf’s music, talk of infidels and jihad are replaced with appeals to God’s love and the beauty of religion. “Islam teaches us to be balanced, to be in the middle,” Yusuf says, adding that “Islam is not a religion of extremism, and my message is balance.”(4) Yusuf believes that the majority of Muslims hold Islam to be a religion of peace and tolerance(5) and so Muslim youth, especially in the West, should be proud of their religion. “My message (to the youth) is … to be proud of your religion, be proud of who you are whether you’re from Pakistan or from Saudi Arabia or from Algeria or from Morocco or anywhere in the Muslim world … just be proud of who you are.”(6)

Looking at his photo on the Melody Entertainment Web page, those unacquainted with Yusuf’s work would probably be hard-pressed to tell the difference between him and other contemporary music stars in the Middle East and Europe. Dressed in a stylish collared shirt with slicked-back hair and close-cropped stubble, Yusuf does not appear much different from other popular singers such as Egypt’s Amr Diab or French-Algerian Cheb Khaled. This outward similarity has often led to Yusuf being confused with other “non-Islamic” popular music stars, as recently happened on a trip to Egypt. “I am not a pop singer,” said Yusuf in an interview with Turkey’s Zaman newspaper. “I reminded people of this many times in Egypt. You know that some youngsters requested my phone number there. You know such things always happen. I told them that I am not a pop singer and don’t want to be a pop singer.”(7) Despite the cool, pop star-like image, however, Yusuf remains—at least in his own eyes—a religious singer, and it is primarily in this capacity that he has been able to achieve such popularity.(8)

As a Muslim singer with a specifically religious message, Sami Yusuf must, like all social actors and entertainers for whom religion is a primary identity, be able to legitimate his own interpretation of “what Islam is.” He frequently condemns religious radicals, saying in one interview: “Although they are not as widespread among normal Muslims, the extremists have a very loud voice in spreading their narrow-mindedness and ignorance, bringing confusion to the minds of many Muslims.”(9) But like the messages of those radicals he deplores, Yusuf’s message must be perceived as authentically Islamic in order to be accepted. In short, Yusuf’s legitimacy as a preferred religious artist for young Muslims is not just tied to his ability to deliver his songs through an entertaining medium (although this no doubt plays a part), but also is based on the content of his message. For unlike most other video artists whose sole aim is simply fame or money, Sami Yusuf’s self-identified aim has always been to “do something for Islam”(10) and to create, in TBS contributor Patricia Kubala’s words, “Al Fann Al Hadif (art with a purpose).”(11)

Islamic Authenticity, Popular Culture, and the West: A Theoretical Context

In his book Islam: The View from the Edge, historian Richad Bulliet argues, “The impetus for change in Islam has more often come from the bottom than from the top, from the edge than from the center.”(12) Lacking a centralized religious hierarchy, Bulliet contends that the evolution of Islam often has taken place on the geographical and ideological margins of the Muslim Ummah when new communities of believers seek ways of melding their newfound religion with the native culture and environment.

In a modern era that is characterized by transnational flows of people, ideas and information, the new edge of Islam lies less in the historical Dar al-Islam, and more in the West. Now home to large communities of Muslim immigrants, their progeny, as well as an increasing population of native converts, the Islamic West is becoming an increasingly important location of religious re-interpretation as Muslim diasporas and new converts seek to reconcile Islam with Western culture and the contemporary Western lifestyle.

Much of the new thinking about Islam in the West is not taking place as much within the traditional realms of religious authority, however, but within popular culture. Faced with the realities of secular society and aided by the development of new media such as the Internet, the battle over “who speaks for Islam” in the West (and more and more in the East, for that matter) increasingly is being played out in the modern public sphere and outside the traditional realms of Islamic authority.

Concurrent with this expansion of Islam and Muslim religious interpretation into the realms of popular culture is an escalation of concerns over religious authenticity. With new interpretations of Islam proliferating throughout the realms of Western popular culture accompanied by the rise of a “new breed of religious leader, often only half educated in conventional Islamic teachings, but determined to interpret the faith in ways that make sense to people with modern educations,”(13) debates abound over “what Islam is, as well as “what Islam is not.”

This growing debate over Islamic authenticity as manifested through the medium of popular culture, moreover, should be of keen interest to scholars of the Middle East and Islam. Mass media in particular, as a vehicle of expression for popular culture, is of great significance “in the contemporary process of constructing the boundaries of social identity.”(14) When we examine the role played by tele-Islamists, Muslim TV talk show hosts, and religious pop singers like Sami Yusuf in the contested locus where the struggle to define Islamic authenticity is taking place, popular culture and its expression though mass media can tell us a great deal about the evolution of Islam in the modern age.

An Awakening: Finding a 'Way of Life' in the Modern World

For Yusuf, the desire to act out for his faith came, as it most likely has for other young “born-again” believers and converts,(15) with an “awakening” at an early age. “Sometimes people’s faith seems to fade away,” he says, “but then they go through an awakening. They find that their faith is back in line, stronger than before. And this is what gives them the desire to do something. This is what happened to me,”(16) For Yusuf, this awakening occurred during his teenage years, and was a result of finding the hidayet, or true path, to God. “I am the kind of person who always researches, thinks and tries to learn the truth. This awakening occurred as a result of many things. Elhamduillah, the turning point came when I was about 16 or 17 and I really wanted to do something for Islam.”(17)

In re-discovering the “true path to God,” Yusuf is not alone. Recent research indicates a rise in the number of young Muslims who are eschewing traditional interpretations of religion and choosing for themselves as individuals what being Muslim means.(18) The contemporary search for Muslim religious meaning in the West, however, is occurring in a social environment where the collective memory—the means by which traditional religion is sustained over time—has by and large now ceased to exist.(19) In the traditionally defined Christian West, where dramatic social changes associated with the historical process of secularization having been occurring for some time now, we have already seen the religious “quest for certainty” manifested through the fragmentation of traditional religions, the subsequent spread of religious pluralism as a response to secularization, and the rise of alternative religious expression such as the New Age Movement, itself a response to the decline of traditional religion.(20)

The general spiritual confusion that characterizes post-modern, Western society is also further exacerbated by new means of communication and social organization which “means that everyday life is being shaped, for a growing number of people, as much by events taking place in distant places as by those in the local community. Hence people become exposed to a variety of sources and types of information that they realize are important but cannot always grasp and control.”(21) For religiously minded young people growing up in the secularized West, religion can act as a form of guidance that allows one to navigate the confusing post-modern social environment. For young Muslims, Islam is especially appealing for its perceived ability to offer a “complete way of life” in which modernity is conveniently filtered through the regulations and spiritual guidelines encompassed by the Qur’an, Shari’a, Hadith, Sunna of the Prophet, and various other sources of religious authority. This is seen in Jacobson’s 1998 study of young British Muslims, whose responses indicate that Islam is able to inform all decisions related to navigating daily life. One young man says, for example, “I’d say religion plays the greatest part in my life. I certainly wouldn’t do anything at all that would conflict with what my religion says … It’s a way of life (italics mine) for me. I eat, breathe and everything the way the religion tells me.”(22) Another respondent echoes similar sentiments about Islam’s all-encompassing power saying, “It’s not religion, is it—it’s a way of life (italics mine). It’s interweaved with what you do every day. Like you can’t define it in its own existence—that’s how it is for us. Like if you eat pork, that’s not religious; if you don’t ear pork, that’s religious.”(23) And still a third informant adds, “It’s not religious—it’s a way of life (italics mine)—the way you should be. Do certain things. Religion’s not just praying and wearing a certain dress – it’s the way you act, the way you act towards people. It’s just – being human, basically.”(24)

The belief that Islam is a “way of life,” as it is understood by Sami Yusuf and other young Muslims, necessitates the creation an alternative social sphere in which vulgar products and aspects of modernity are re-constituted and re-shaped into acceptable Islamized forms. Thus we see Sami Yusuf making claims, for example, about creating music and music videos in accordance with the Shari’a, or Islamic Holy Law. “I do think it (music) can be used as a means for integration (in Europe), but it must be done according to the Shari’ah,” Yusuf has said. “For example, there should not be any indecent or immoral connotations, basic things that go against our fundamental understanding of Islam.”(25) For Yusuf, accordance with the Shari’a does not imply, however, that Islam is incompatible with modernity because Yusuf also believes that Islam and modernity are not only reconcilable, but complimentary. “The youths are very open-minded now. They are mostly proud of their religion. Although there are some elements of modernity they like, they have realized that staying aloof from religion and shying away from religion is wrong. Religion goes hand in hand with modernity.”(26)

Islamizing Modernity

Before proceding, a note should be made about the concept of modernity itself. As Giddens and many others have noted, modernity is neither uniform nor clearly defined. Modernity is in fact an ambiguous project, and varies greatly depending on time and place. Similarly, the same degree of ambiguity surrounds the concept of secularism. Talal Asad points out, for example, that one’s definition of what defines secular space often depends on the type of religious symbols involved. Referring to France, he notes, “What is it that makes the wearing of the veil a violation of secular rules of politics and not the yarmulke? My point is not that there is unfair discrimination here, but that even in a secular society there are differences in the way secular people evaluate the political significance of "religious symbols" in public space.”(27) Thus, we must keep in mind that secularism, along with modernity, are hardly uniform concepts. As we will see below, even in the strain of Islamism that some may describe as “liberal,” definitions of modernity and secularism can and do vary greatly.