The Taqwacores by Michael Knight Page B

Arabia,” said Ayyub.
    “Fuck off,” said Fasiq.
    Umar’s door was open but I knocked anyway. Sitting on the floor, he looked up from his book and greeted me sunna-style.
    “Wa-alaikum as-salaam,” I replied. The room felt anarchomonastic. Shelves lined with books, walls adorned with Islamic calligraphy plaques and fliers for straightedge shows and two three-foot by five-foot flags hanging on separate walls. One was green with a white circle containing red crescent and lazy squiggles of Allah’s Name in some generic holy phrase. It represented the Islamic Conference, an intergovernmental organization counting fifty-six nations in its membership. The second flag looked like our own Stars and Stripes after being sucked through a black hole: the starry blue field now a solid orange, the stripes green and white, and in the upper right-hand corner a big star and crescent, white on green. “Which is that?” I asked, pointing to it.
    “Kashmir and Jammu,” Umar replied. “Just got it mail order.”
    “Cool.”
    “Islam enjoins solidarity with our oppressed and persecuted brothers. But I’m not a nationalist; that’s why I got that one up—” He gestured to the Islamic Conference flag. “We’re one community, brother; that’s the umma, the only legitimate political entity on this earth.”

    “Mash’Allah,” I said, just to aid the flow of conversation.
    “Islam is actually against nationalism of all kids—not only political nationalism but cultural nationalism too. There are many people who say, ‘we have to adapt Islam to American culture’ or ‘we have to adapt Islam to such-and-such’ or whatever. But brother, we do not want ’American Muslims’ here and then Arab Muslims’ over there, you know? That’s division. Islam is universal. It transcends all our petty race-and-nation questions.”
    “True.”
    “It’s not even a religion, brother. Religion is games and superstition. Islam is a PERFECT SYSTEM OF LIFE.”
    “Right.”
    “Everything has a purpose and meaning.”
    “Totally.”
    “Did you know that salat is even medically beneficial to us?”
    “No,” I replied with tone of semi-enthusiasm.
    “Brother, if you study traditional yoga—not this watered-down Bally’s aerobics yoga, but the real-deal stuff in India—you can see the different movements and positions in Muslim prayer. If you breathe a certain way in each position, four-rakat prayer utilizes every muscle in your body.”
    “Wow,” I said.
    “Allah is the Planner,” said Umar. “He planned it all out for us.”
     
     
    In the early evening I found Jehangir still out in front of the house. He had taken the boom box out of his car and popped in a Billy Bragg CD, skipping it ahead to “California Stars” and lying stomach-up on the sidewalk with his hands cradling the back of his skull. I stood out there holding the screen door open loving the
way the world felt at that time of day at that time of year, not too cold or hot or bright or dark, with a little breeze sometimes but not too much, everything perfect in every way. And there was my hero on the ground. The song met its end and then began again. He must have had it on repeat.
    “You ever hear of a band called Burning Books for Cat Stevens?” he asked.
    “No,” I replied.
    “They’re out West,” said Jehangir, eyes up to the sky.
    “Are they any good?”
    “They’ll be huge in six months. All over MTV, just you wait and see.”
    “Really?” I asked, sitting at the edge of the porch.
    “No, not really.”
    “Oh. Haha.”
    “They are a pretty good band, though. I might have one of their records upstairs, but I need to buy a new needle for my player.”
    “I still don’t get the whole vinyl thing,” I said. “It makes no sense.”
    “Technology versus Ideology,” Jehangir replied. “It’s a punk thing.”
    “Is punk an ideology?” I asked.
    “Who knows anymore. Maybe it’s just wearing a wallet-chain.”
    “To some people, I