Article Previews Doc Fest: Taqwacore November 6, 2009

Following a group of self-proclaimed Islamist Punks on a journey across America and Pakistan, Taqwaore poses questions about Islam, the American melting pot, and personal religious identity. The feature length documentary takes viewers into the personal lives of Michael Muhammad Knight and his fellow Taqwacore devotees.

The story starts with Michael, who in 2004 published the book “The Taqwacores”. The underground novel described a fictional Islamic punk movement in upstate New York. As the documentary later explains, Knight wrote the book in order to cope with the religion he had converted to at the tender age of 15. To his surprise, however, this apparently cathartic literary exercise had great online success, ultimately causing young Muslims across North America to start a scene resembling what the book had described. The documentary is a compelling look at the American and Canadian punk kids who struggle to find and walk a line between their traditional culture and the western culture within which they live in.

“Taqwacore” might seem rambling: filmed over three years and without the director putting himself in a prominent narrative role. But far from being a preachy mission documentary, which it might so easily have been, the kids in the film are anything but pedantic or proselytising. Instead, to their credit, they come across as people genuinely striving to find a means of self-expression in, dare I say it, a post 9/11 world, where the difficulties of being a Muslim American can all too easily be assumed. This immediately endears us to the majority of the band members on the Taqwacore tour. Their music, lyrics and passion constantly on show through heartfelt performances of songs with lyrics ranging from the tearfully questioning, “Why do you hate hate hate me”, to the playfully provocative, “Muhammad was a punk rocker, you know tore shit up! Muhammad was a punk rocker. He had a Rancid Sticker on his pick-up truck!”

Director: Omar Majeed

Country: Canada

Premiere:

Dates: 05 November, 14:55 Showroom 3, 06 November, 19:05 SIF Studio

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