The most important battle in the world right now may not
be between radical Islam and the West but between Islam and
itself. The fourteen-hundred-year-old religion has hit a
crossroads. Moderates and extremists are vying for influence and
power in this ancient tradition, and perhaps nowhere is that
struggle more evident than in Pakistan. As one of the largest
Muslim countries, with a population of 150 million, Pakistan is
a test case for a religion that is being pulled apart by the
twin tensions of modernity and fundamentalism. In the midst of
this maelstrom, fate, with a little help from the BBC, has
placed an unlikely champion of a more moderate version of Islam
at the center of the debate. His name is Salman Ahmad, and he is
the guitarist in the band Junoon. A South Asian trio with
members from Pakistan, India, and the United States, Junoon has
become a worldwide sensation over the last decade and is now a
household name for millions of Pakistanis and Indians. And
Ahmad, who has teamed up with award-winning producer Ruhi Hamid
to make documentaries exploring Islam, may be the best-known
face in what the New York Times has called “the
U2 of Asia.”
“Who are the Mullahs who say that [music is
forbidden]?” demands Ahmad, sitting calm and relaxed in a
circle of students at a Pakistani madrassa, or religious school.
What unfolds next in the BBC documentary The Rock Star and
the Mullahs is a rare glimpse into a world few Westerners
have ever seen. Ahmad asks the students of this fundamentalist
Islamic school to tell him why they believe that music is
haram, or forbidden, in the teachings of Islam. As he
presses them and they respond, the young Muslim students are
torn between their fascination with this cultural icon, who
represents rock and roll and twenty-first-century values, and
their adherence to a form of increasingly extremist Islam taught
by their local mullahs. Eventually, Ahmad reaches for his
guitar, and as the students sit around him, their expressions a
mixture of shock and intrigue, he defies the ban on music and
sings—a verse from the Qur'an. The teacher of this small
group studies his famous visitor. “You can decide whether
you want to go to heaven or hell,” he finally declares.
It is encounters such as these that are
turning Ahmad, who is a practicing Muslim in the Sufi tradition,
into much more than a celebrated musician. With his rock-star
looks, down-to-earth approachability, and disarming charisma, he
has a unique ability to speak to extremists and directly
challenge their views even while respecting the essence of their
faith. The result makes for an unusual window into the real
human struggles that are shaping contemporary Islam. And it also
makes for great television, as producer Hamid was thrilled to
discover.
Originally trained as a doctor, Ahmad finished medical
school in
Pakistan in the early 1990s but decided to test the
waters of the musician's life for a year before starting a
medical practice. Against all conventional wisdom, he stayed in
Pakistan, a country where a local rock-and-roll band was simply
an oxymoron.
“Up until the eighties, all the pop culture we had in
Pakistan was Indian Bollywood music or Western music,” he
explains. “I was thinking, 'There's such a huge history of
music on the subcontinent, why don't we have our own?' I had a
spiritual connection with music, and I wanted to express it. So
I decided that I would try it for one year.” Ten years
later, Junoon has made history with its homegrown blend of rock
and roll and spirituality. Indeed, a healthy dose of Islam is
often mixed into the lyrics. And Ahmad doesn't hesitate to give
his own views on where his religion should be headed in the
twenty-first century. “If you look at Islamic history, the
Prophet Muhammad lived a really tolerant life,” he
explained at a screening of the documentary last winter.
“He married a woman who was fifteen years older and a
divorcée. He imbibed information from Christianity, from
Judaism. He was a very open man.”
Such is the message that this pied piper of Asia is
spreading to youth through his words and music. If the success
of the band is any indication, the message is having an effect.
And his sphere of influence is beginning to expand beyond
Pakistan. Indeed, just as certain forms of religious extremism
spread across the Near East, becoming a pan-Islamic phenomenon,
so, too, is the moderating influence of Junoon and Ahmad in
ascendance, touching Muslim youth from Lucknow to Lahore to
London. Ahmad and Hamid have recently completed a second
documentary entitled It's My Country Too, a
cross-country exploration of how America is changing Islam and
how Islam is changing America. How much impact can Junoon and
its idealistic guitarist have? It's easy to underestimate the
powerful combination of spirituality, music, pop culture, and a
message that resonates with youthful dreams of a brighter, freer
future. And in a time when somewhere in the mountains of North
Pakistan a local folk hero named Osama bin Laden is hard at work
selling young people a violent version of reactionary Islam, it
is heartening to know that another kind of hero is eliciting a
different kind of passion in that same generation. They are the
ones who will ultimately shape Pakistan's future, and perhaps
the rest of the world's as well.