'We Don’t Want to Convert You'

The hacks have come calling for Fun-Da-Mental since Sept. 11, asking for the opinions of what London's Evening Standard dubs a "radical Muslim rap band."

Fun-Da-Mental vocalist Dave Watts laughs when he hears the label and asks, "Is it ignorance or is it laziness?" For one, they think of themselves more as a collective than a band — membership fluctuates constantly, and as founder Aki Nawaz says, "bands are boring."

Their background is in rap, but their latest album, There Shall Be Love, is softer and largely instrumental, melding the sounds of the tabla and dhol drums with flutes and violins. And of the group's seven current members, three — Watts, bassist Lloyd Sparkes and drummer Yash Puri — aren't even Muslim. All that aside, it's okay with them if you want to say they're a radical Muslim rap band.

Islam is, and always has been, important to Nawaz. Since he's Fun-Da-Mental's chief "conceptualist," it has also been central to the group. But it's not so much the religion itself as the experience of being a Muslim in a non-Muslim society that has been key. Nawaz has created within Fun-Da-Mental what he has not found outside: a multicultural society with shared values, welcoming Muslims and non-Muslims alike. A hatred of inequality, rather than a common faith, is what brings the seven together politically and drives them forward musically.

"We ain't pushing no Islamic ideology. We don't want to convert you infidels," Nawaz says. "Our message is more, ‘Man, lose your ignorance.'"

On the global level, Fun-Da-Mental rails against a world system in which the U.S. is "imperial" and Tony Blair is a "puppet." Its members criticize leaders of developing countries who allow "economic imperialism and terrorism," subjugating their countries by becoming dependent on Western aid. Another concern is Islamophobia and the accompanying "demonization of Islam" — as Nawaz says, "Muslims are made scapegoats."

The group also worries about the impact of these things on the younger generation, who are probably feeling the same alienation that Fun-Da-Mental's members, as Asians and blacks, felt growing up. Nawaz, 40, has two young children and remembers how he "never was made to feel English" as a Pakistani immigrant growing up in Bradford, England. The group has this message for a Muslim teenager — or any youth questioning his own identity, because alienation isn't unique to European Muslims: "I know how he feels," Nawaz says. "He's involved in a society united in ignorance. He can't change things overnight. But we want to give him the confidence to confront it."

Had Nawaz stayed in Pakistan, he would not have used music as his medium. "It's loved as entertaiment, but musicians are generally not respected there," he says. "The culture here accepts subversion and dissent in music as a selling point."

The latest chapter on Fun-Da-Mental philosophy is on There Shall Be Love, which was finished before Sept. 11 and released shortly afterward. "There ... will always be those people who have no interest in bringing people together," Nawaz writes in the liner notes.

"These are the people we fear and must struggle against." Is this a radical Muslim message? Or just a simple, fundamental truth?