Karim Ben Khelifa for TIME france Médine, son of Algerians, raps against the rise of radicalism

Muslim Rappers     Welcome to the Hip-Hop Ummah
	How young rappers are using their music to popularize a more moderate brand of Islam
	By CARLA POWER | London

Posted Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005; 10.53BST
When the Muslim hip-hop group Blakstone drive their van out onto London's streets to sell their album, it gets noticed. The black Mercedes is embossed with Islamic calligraphy and an image of a boy hurling a stone at a tank. Crowds gather, some to listen, others to talk, often about drugs and crime in their own communities, about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about Islam. "A lot of young guys, they'll look at us and say, 'You're Muslim?'" says Blakstone founder Sam Ashley Welbeck. "'You don't seem boring.'"

They're not. Sampling soundbites from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, name-checking Koranic terms, the trio's music is a potent mix of politics and piety. "King Fahd … what is it exactly that you do?/ Custodian of the misery that you put us through/ Meanwhile we dying whilst you live off oil we accrue," Blakstone raps in Traitors, a sharp jab at Muslim leaders. The group is just one voice in the Islamic hip-hop scene springing up from London to Beirut, rappers speaking out on the big issues shaking up the Muslim world.

Hip-hop, like global jihad, is a youth movement that draws on anger, testosterone and cultural rootlessness. In Senegal, rappers celebrate their favorite mystical sheiks. Palestinian rappers craft rhymes about Hamas and the Israeli occupation. In the past decade, hip-hop has channeled the frustrations and ambitions of Muslim youth to such an extent that H. Samy Alim, a California-based linguist specializing in hip-hop, writes of "the transglobal hip-hop ummah," referring to the worldwide community of Muslim believers. Like the religion itself, though, Islamic hip-hop embraces a wide range of views, from quietism to calls for armed jihad. British rappers Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew tell Muslims to throw infidel leaders like Bush and Blair "in the fire." French rapper Médine may have titled his first CD September 11 and his second Jihad, but he is passionate in his denunciations of extremists who "have made Islam a sick religion."

Eager to reach Muslim youth before zealots do, reform-minded Islamic leaders and Western policymakers have begun to think about hip-hop as a useful tool in the battle against extremist Islam."When you talk about engaging with young people, there's no better forum than loud music," says Fuad Nahdi, publisher of Q-News, a British Muslim magazine. "Hip-hop can harness the rage of young Muslims, and turn it into song." Britain's Mecca2Medina began rapping at the suggestion of a sheik at their mosque. "Suicide bombing is not the answer!" they chanted to a Muslim crowd at a concert staged after the July 7 London bombings. As part of its efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world, the U.S. State Department last summer funded a project promoting young rappers in Morocco. There is talk of expanding it to other Muslim countries.

Many Islamic groups like Blakstone make music that "is about the underdog," says Welbeck. Yet for the 32-year-old rapper, a former Xerox systems analyst who founded Blakstone two years ago, the music also "provides a middle way" between tradition and street culture; "It shows you can be Muslim, but you don't have to be one of those guys just scuttling from your home to the mosque." Hip-hop, the traditional music of the margins, just might help move young Muslims into the European mainstream.

With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris

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