“A modern day hippie in search of love”

Page 27
Q-News, Issue 361
March 2005

The rock star and the mullah has had a remarkably long shelf life, but as Abdul-Rehman Malik argues, it ignores the complexity of Pakistani society in favour of simplistic polemics.

Although released in 2003, The Rock Star and the Mullah, starring guitarist Salman Ahmad of Pakistan’s premier rock band Junoon, has had a remarkable shelf life. After being shown on BBC’s Storyville and Public Television in the United States, the film produced by London-based October Films should have quietly passed into the realm of late-night reruns and the occasional repertoire cinema resurrection. Instead The Rock Star and the Mullah is still making its rounds on television networks (most recently in Australia) and at special screenings and film festivals the world over. In India’s cinema capital Mumbai, crowds have lined up to see Pakistan’s answer to U2’s Bono square off with his country’s politically powerful religious elite. Timeout Mumbai declared that the film simply “rocks.”

Dashing, deeply spiritual and musically innovative, Salman Ahmad is the ideal poster boy for ‘liberal Islam’. The premise of the film is compelling: Pakistan’s leading rock star takes to the streets of mullah-ruled Peshawar - capital of the North West Frontier Province where a coalition of religious parties holds sway and where many believe Osama Bin Laden is still hiding - to go face to face with clerics who say that music is forbidden in Islam. Since they came to power, Peshawar’s once thriving folk music industry has all but vanished, with popular artists now either unemployed or working from neighbouring Punjab. Shops selling cassette tapes and CDs have been cleared of their stock. Radio stations no longer play pop music.

Like a modern-day hippie in search of love, beauty and a break, guitar on his back, Ahmad visits a madrasah where he challenges a group of students to explain why they believe music to be haram. He tells them he was born with a God-given talent to play the guitar. They stare at him blankly. He sings a verse from the Quran while strumming away. They shift uncomfortably. Even if they are offended, they are exceedingly polite. After all, he’s one of Pakistan’s leading cultural exports. In fact, even after one of the older students condemns him, others run up as he exits to ask for his autograph - he’s there for a good half hour.

It’s hard not to sympathise will Ahmad. He appears so eager and sincere. He obviously doesn’t know much about the theological arguments about the place of music in Islam, but if he can’t get a straight answer, then it’s not his fault, right?

Well, maybe not. Ahmad has a habit of simplifying things. The powerful pull of traditional Islam through the vibrant Sufi tradition is an important feature of South Asia’s religious culture. Ahmad is right to celebrate this tradition. It is also deeply musical, so it’s unusual that he spends so little time exploring qawwali, ghazal or naat. It’s not a question of whether music is permissible or not, but what kind of music. I would venture that there are many purists who visit the shrines of the saints and enjoy the ecstatic songs of qawwali, but would find Junoon’s music at best trivial and at worst, unacceptable. To call this trend “modern”, as Ahmad does, is simply misrepresenting the reality of Sufi Islam, which he claims to adhere to.

Ahmad would have done more for his cause had he decided to tackle the textual debates about music. It would have given him credibility as opposed to relying on his “progressive” rock star image to carry his argument, a sometimes flimsy line of reasoning.

In some ways, hearing Ahmad preach about his right to play the guitar and sing rock music makes him sound remarkably like a mullah - full of certainty, zealously partisan and passionate.

There is something self-righteous and missionary in his approach to the subject. It is riddled with contradictions. On one hand he is fed up with the mullahs who were democratically elected to office in a particularly conservative (even by Pakistani standards) area of the country, and on the other hand his unabashed support for President Parvez Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup and has no plans of vacating his position.

Ahmad’s conversation with Maulana Bijli - Mullah Electricity (so named for his fiery sermons that carry across Peshawar on powerful loudspeakers) - is most instructive. Bijli condemns Muslim societies who accept music saying, “They are all sons of pigs. The whole world is America’s stooge.” He advises to “keep women at home, cut off the hands of thieves and stone adulterers to death.” But then, he tenderly asks Ahmad to leave music behind and spend more time with him. He then breaks into song, a rather beautiful naat, sung in a rather fine voice. In one of the most authentic moments in the film, Ahmad is dumbfounded. We are entertained.

The rise of literalist radicalism in Pakistan is deeply concerning and Ahmad is brave to face it head on. At the heart of it Ahmad is a musician and conveys a powerful belief in reconciliation and freedom. His formative years in the US and his global reach place him in the unique position of troubadour-activist. His cross-cultural work with United Nations and attempts to spur cultural exchange and dialogue with India ought to be celebrated. His leanings to traditional Islam as expressed in Sufism come through powerfully in his music, which is undoubtedly cutting edge and undeniably popular. Junoon’s unique music is a product of Pakistan’s rich cultural milieu. It is as much part of Pakistan as is Maulana Bijli.

The Rock Star and the Mullah begins with images of children reciting the Quran, heads dipping forward and reeling back as they seek to commit the verses to memory, cut with scenes of Ahmad ecstatically playing his audiences into frenzy. The outdoor auditorium where he plays has men and women, but they sit in separate sections. Young women in hijab shriek alongside their friends whose long tressed hair falls over their fashionable kurtas. This is the complicated, modern reality of Pakistan - caught between geopolitical pressure and the struggle to define its identity in a globalised world, it is not east to understand.

In this journey, it is unfortunate that Ahmad and his directors chose not to dwell on this complexity. They chose the path of least resistance, which results in a hollow, yet at times entertaining, film.