Rapping for the Holy War?

Islamists in the United Kingdom are using rap music videos as a call to arms to recruit young people for the holy war. Are young people being radicalised as a result or simply adopting Islam as a posture? Matthias Becker investigates

Are ghetto culture and Islamism in Britain being fused? Ever since July 2005, the social climate has been tense

​​ A twenty-four-year-old Lebanese man is currently being charged with planning explosions on trains in Germany. In the UK two men, twenty-eight and twenty-nine, stood in court in October – also facing charges of planning attacks. One month earlier three Londoners, two of them twenty-seven, the other twenty-eight, were convicted of a terrorist plot to set off bombs. In all three cases the attackers were acting on Islamist convictions and were comparatively young.

Religious fanaticism as a youth trend? Not completely off the mark: some martyrdom videos are accompanied by a soundtrack of ragga music and religious extremists now present themselves in classic gangster-rap poses. The video "Dirty Kuffar" (non-believer), for instance, conjures up a curious image: a man dances and sings to a ragga beat, masked with a keffiyeh, the Arab headscarf, and points a pistol at the viewer.

Hip hop jihad

Destroyed subway train in London after the suicide attacks (photo: dpa)
The 7 July 2005 London bombings claimed 56 lives. They were the second-deadliest terrorist attack in the UK, after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland

​​ The rap is a call to arms in the holy war. The track is accompanied by war footage from the Middle East and images of the collapse of the World Trade Centre, falling with the mocking smile from the singer. After the video appeared on a radical preacher's internet site four years ago a wave of similar Islamist rap songs followed in its wake.

Islam expert Jochen Müller is researching Muslim youth culture. These videos are particularly aimed at young people with a strong sense of injustice, he says: "These young people constitute a protest movement. After a long development process they are ready and prepared to take action against the supposed enemy, including militant action."

Police and government are concerned

Müller is familiar with the propaganda, now also appearing in the form of pop music, but emphasizes that when, for instance, a rapper compares himself to Osama Bin Laden, this is not always about fundamentalist convictions but mostly about provocation and shock effects, he says. Sometimes, however, there is more to it than this.

In the UK, where "Dirty Kuffar" was recorded, Islamists have had a big influence on the youth. Both government and police are concerned about this development. They believe that this means the risk of terrorist attacks is now greater. In September three young Londoners were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in a plot involving explosives attacks. They had recorded so-called "martyrdom videos", films in which terrorists admit to carrying out their attacks.

One of these "martyrdom videos" promises: "There will be a wave of martyrdom operations. Your countries will be bombarded. You will experience daily suffering in this world and ever worse in the afterlife! My one wish is that I could come back to life and do the same thing again. And again, and again, till people finally come to their senses and realise that it is better not to pick a fight with the Muslims."

"Muslim Boys" and hip hop poses

Osama bin Laden in combat gear on the screen of a Macintosh computer (photo: AP/DW)
"Look what Osama's doing on me Mac!" Radical Islamists in Britain are using the internet as a means of recruiting prospective jihadists

​​ The manner in which these young men pose for the camera has little to do with Islamic custom, more to do with rap posturing and inner-city lifestyles, and in London there are strange overlaps to be seen. An infamous South London street gang is known as the "Muslim Boys" and social workers report that young men who till recently had dealt drugs and led a "gangster" lifestyle have suddenly left for Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban.

Neil Gerrard is the MP for the London district of Walthamstow where the three come from. He explains some of the measures being taken there: "A Muslim organisation here is attempting to counter the radicalisation of young people. It particularly addresses those who have got into trouble with the police, over drug dealing for instance."

It is exactly these young people the extremists are trying to attract. There have already been serious problems in prisons, Gerrard says, where people locked up for wholly un-political offences come into contact with extremists.

Disenfranchised youths

There are several reasons why Islamism might beckon to youths who feel disenfranchised: it rejects western society radically and militantly, offers a clear orientation and promises a sense of community. Are ghetto culture and Islamism being fused?

The Islam expert Jochen Müller warns against over-exaggerating the danger: "I would prefer to say that aspects of street culture, including that of the much-studied 'ghettos', are borrowing an attitude from Islam. Only a few develop from this to become militant. Fundamental, however, is that Islamism in all its various branches is a protest movement."

Matthias Becker

© Deutsche Welle / Qantara.de 2008

Translated from the German by Steph Morris

Qantara.de

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