It has often been argued that rock music has religious origins, or at least at the beginning was strongly conditioned by the religious atmosphere of Christianity in the United States. Now we are seeing more stories about rock being taken up into ways of life beyond the Christian. Of particular interest is the emerging conversation about rock and Islam. Here at R&T, I have tried to register that conversation several times (such as here, here, here, and here).

Now comes an interesting profile by journalist Corey Kilgannon, in the New York Times, of the Pakistani singer and guitarist Salman Ahmad. Ahmad teaches music at Queens College and is in Junoon, a popular band in South Asia. Kilgannon reports the importance of mediating and “colliding” Muslim and South Asian musics with Western rock. Insofar as Western rock still bears traces of its Christian past, this “colliding” necessarily becomes an interreligious moment, however explicit. (Ahmad apparently has just written a book titled Rock and Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution, which we will have to review at Rock and Theology.)

Salman Ahmad has been a strong activist for nonviolence and against HIV/AIDS, providing an important witness to the kind of life that can be had in the rockish incubation of religious pluralism and courage for life.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

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