Robin Wright of the US Institute of Peace has a new book on the role of culture in both reflecting and inspiring this year’s uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. Rock the Casbah, released earlier this month by Simon & Schuster, “chronicles the new order being shaped by youth inspired revolts toppling leaders, clerics repudiating al Qaeda, playwrights and poets crafting messages of a counter-jihad, comedians ridiculing militancy, hip-hop rapping against guns and bombs, and women mobilizing for their own rights .”
Here is what the Los Angeles Times says about the book:
Young Muslims — more than half of the Islamic world is under 30 — are at the forefront of this change, not just on the barricades in Egypt and Tunisia but on the concert stage in Marrakesh and on television in Saudi Arabia. Part 2 of the book, “A Different Tune,” goes far beyond the usual platitudes about Facebook and YouTube (though it happens to be true that they empowered the Arab Spring revolts) to explore Islamic rap, “pink hejab” {the Islamic head scarf} feminism, “satellite sheikhs” who preach a more tolerant form of Islam, and Muslim poets, playwrights comic-book artists and stand-up comics who challenge stereotypes and restrictive theology while affirming their faith. Wright’s in-depth knowledge of those societies’ cultures and histories informs every page of “Rock the Casbah.” Even the first section, which chronicles the overthrow of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers, as well as the sustained though ultimately fruitless protests against Iran’s rigged 2009 election, furthers our comprehension of those well-known events by expanding to cover developments less familiar to Western readers. She cites a 2007 letter to Osama bin Laden from Saudi Sheikh Salman al Oudah as evidence that even conservative Wahhabist clerics such as Sheikh Salman have come to see Al Qaeda’s murderous tactics as crimes that disgrace Islam. She chronicles homegrown revolts against Al Qaeda (in Iraq’s Anwar province in 2006-07) and the Taliban (in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in 2009) to back up her contention that support for extremism had plummeted among Muslims even before there was a political alternative other than U.S.-supported autocracies. “People are angry at America,” comments Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but “radicalism doesn’t have a policy for education or health or the economy. Nobody wants another Taliban state.”
To get a flavor of the rage and pointed political message of some of the music, check out El General’s rap on Ben Ali’s Tunisia- with English subtitles:
One of the artists Wright profiles is Morocco’s Soultana. Here is a video for Sawt Nssa (Voice of Women):
The title “Rock the Casbah” might seem to be drawing on the wrong cultural references for the subject of this book, feeling both out of time and place. But it somehow fits. Recorded in 1982 by the British punk band the Clash, the basic message of the song is that of an authoritarian regime seeking to use religion, oil and military force to keep its citizens from tuning into a new – and presumably revolutionary – sound. Even the fighter pilots sent out to enforce the ban can’t resist the music and the freedom it brings:
The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the Casbah way
As soon as the
shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit
radio blare
As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet
pilots wailed
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
It turns out that the guys in the Clash were more prescient than most political analysts about what was coming in the Middle East, well ahead of their time. After all, they already had a sense of music’s revolutionary potential.
