I just went to a garage in Birmingham and stepped into the office where there were about 5 or 6 youth of both Pakistani and Bengali backgrounds. They were sitting down having finished listening to some rapper.
On the screen it had a this picture of the rapper called Frenzo Harami (translation from Urdu is Frenzo the B*rd).
Having asked what is this guy about? One of the boys explained to me uncle this guy pushes himself to be a total harami, and he told me he glamorises grooming of girls, brothels pimping etc. And pushes his own image to be an out and out harami,
It is an interesting tactic to grab an audience I thought , where the heartlessness and cold individualism of traditional hip hop and rap artists from the US and parts of London , builds the same attitude in many inner city youth. Being ( on the face of it from a Pakistani background) he seems to be building an audience amongst both young Pakistani’s and Bengali’s. And subsequently building individualism and ruthlessness of the capitalist ideology in their impressionable minds
The question I asked to myself when I left , what are the youth missing here? It seems to me that they are missing an aspiration to do some thing greater in life to escape from the grotty realities of inner-city life.
It seems clear to me that we as Muslims here have not carried to them correctly the aspiration to change the World to an Islamic way of life.
Thus Islam doesn’t appeal to them. Most groups and organisations, believing in simply preserving the scraps that they have from Islam and that is sufficient , nay a great achievement.
Mosques for example are seen as great achievements and it is worth compromising Islam to protect them by inviting candidates from non Islamic parties to address the Muslims at Jummah. Or restricting to dua for the Muslims of Burma, China , India and Syria with out taking any political action for the Muslim world to unite itself. In such circumstances youth look elsewhere for their aspirations.
If they haven’t done well in education (and we are bringing up many educated fools that have no understanding of anything apart from their degree) – the capitalist culture glorified in rap
and such types of music is their escape route.
The aspiration of dominance over the other, money and women and greatness that this type of music pushes forms how they start looking out towards the world They look to the gangsta culture , petty crime , drugging, spliffing and getting highs, disrespecting women , parents as a way to gain self esteem and aspire to greatness.
It is about time that we as part of the Ummah in Britian take up the goal of working to re-establish Islam. Once we are fixed on that goal only then will the youth have an aspiration to become carriers of the deen.
Until then many Muslim families will come victims to a ruthless hip-hop, rap or grime culture that they can not challenge as they simply will not see the difference between Islamic ideas and western ideas.
If your aim is to pray 5 times and go to work then why on earth would you need to see the difference between western ideology and Islam. Islam to your mind is complete. Then the complaints about misbehaviour of the youth that can not be addressed and all the misery that entails.
If on the other hand your aim was to restore Islam that was brought by Muhammad (saw) you would surely need to understand the difference between what Islam says are the principles of life and what capitalism says. Only then would be possible to address the ideological principles that underpin the ideas presented by Frenzo Harami that are so attractive to many a Muslim youth.
It was stated profoundly by Umar bin Al Khattab (ra), “We were the most humiliated people on earth and Allah gave us honour through Islam. If we ever seek honour through anything else, Allah will humiliate us again.”
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