After some wonderful recent posts, most notably Lizzy Ratner’s ruminations on Zionism inspired by her trip to Poland, I’m almost embarrassed to raise this topic. But maybe a pop culture item is perfect for August.
To the point: I’m interested in a song released in May and the reaction to it. The song is "Allah, Allah, Allah," the final track on the album It’s all crazy! It’s all false! It’s just a dream! It’s Alright by the Philadelphia-based band mewithoutYou. I’m not familiar with this band; I just heard the song on a college radio station and thought it was fantastic. But I was curious about the use of "Allah” – it’s just not something you usually hear on a college radio station playlist. After some Internet searches I’ve learned that two of the band members, brothers Aaron and Michael Weiss, have a Jewish, Christian, Sufi background [Jewish father] and infuse their music with religious overtones. Their family was acquainted with the Sri Lankan Sufi teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who lived and taught for many years in Philadelphia. It’s the work of Muhaiyaddeen that serves as the inspiration of much of the new album.
Now my main interest in the song is that it just sounds good. You can listen to it here (use the player located in the upper right of the page). And though I’m not religious I embrace the song’s theme that there is a divinity in all things. But I’ve also been interested to see the conversation on blogs, youtube clips, and other places regarding the band’s use of the term "Allah." As these threads demonstrate, several listeners are initially uncomfortable with the use of the Arabic word for God, though they tend to get over it in the course of the comments.
The context is that those of us in the U.S. live in a culture so hostile to Muslims and Islamic culture that bigoted anti-Muslim agitprop such as the documentary Obsession not only gets taken at face value by major news networks but actually wins awards. Obsession is a film so cartoonishly facile, by the way, that I tell people that you can take the film, substitute "the Arachnids" for the Muslims, and end up with the newsreel clips from Starship Troopers, an underrated satire of fascism. So it’s in this context that I applaud mewithoutYou’s new album and the healthy conversation it sparks. It sounds really good, too.
