If I Can't Dance to It, It's Not My Jihad

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When pop stars record a song for a cause, it's usually to raise money for victims of famine or disaster. But when the biggest names in Pakistani music got together recently, the cause was a little closer to home: denouncing violence committed in the name of Islam. "Yeh Hum Naheen (This is Not Us)" is an impassioned reminder that the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists. The five and a half minute song gives "voice to the speechless," says U.K.-based media consultant Waseem Mahmood, who bankrolled the project. "The response is amazing. It's coming from both Muslims and goras [foreigners]."

Mahmood became inspired to do something after his two teenage sons were bullied at school. Many Muslims in the West claim to have faced discrimination and prejudice, particularly since the 9/11 attacks, at the hands of non-Muslims who associate them with terrorism. The website for Mahmood's project explains that the philosophy behind the song "is to build on the essence of Islam as a faith that promotes tolerance, peace and harmony removing prejudices within the community and amongst non-muslims around the world."

"My children did it," he says. "They were upset with the way Muslims are portrayed."

The sing-along ballad in Urdu was recorded in Karachi over a few months in late 2006 and early 2007, and features such Pakistani heavyweights as Ali Zafar, who sold more than 5 million copies of his 2003 debut album; the genre-mixing Haroon; heartthrob singer-turned-actor Ali Haider; and gorgeous pop diva Hadiqa Kiani. The lyrics are a straightforward plea for tolerance: "This story that is being spread in our names is a lie/These stamps of death on our forehead are the signs of others/The name by which you know us, we are not that/The eyes with which you look at us, we are not that/This is not us, this is not us."

The song was released in Pakistan earlier this year. Despite distribution problems (logistical rather than political), it proved popular. "It was an instant hit when launched," says Tauqir Shaukat, 24, who works at a Karachi FM radio station. But it really took off this week when it debuted in Britain, striking a chord with the massive South-Asian community there. The song has been downloaded off the Internet more than 65,000 times so far, a huge number for a Pakistani pop song, and its producers have been flooded with feedback from people around the globe — almost all of it positive. South Asians in the West “relate more to this song than [do] those in Pakistan," says Salman Khan, the project's Pakistan coordinator. "The people outside Pakistan feel [discrimination] more." No word yet from Osama bin Laden or any of his followers on the song and its sentiment. Fundamentalists, after all, believe music is haram — forbidden.