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Is Extremist Hip Hop Helping ISIS?

Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.” That is the caption posted by Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 24, better known in west London DJ circles as L Jinny or Lyricist Jinn. It was accompanied by a picture he tweeted of himself in Syria holding a severed head. Bary is now reportedly under investigation for being the voice of the hooded figure who beheaded American journalist James Foley last week.

This is not the first time European hip-hop has come under scrutiny for spreading jihadist ideas, as I document in my new book,  Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture. In 2012, Germany officials tried to indict former rapper Deso Dogg another convert to Islam for his lyrics which allegedly inspired a 21-year old Kosovar to fire at a busload of American servicemen in Frankfurt. Rumor has it he was reportedly killed in April of this year in eastern Syria by a suicide bomb.

Two things are evident about European hip hop today: First, as in America, some of its biggest stars are Muslim, the children of immigrants and/or converts. Second, a number of these artists are (or have been) embroiled in controversies about freedom of expression, national identity, and extremism. European government officials are increasingly worried about the influence that Muslim rap artists wield over youth, and are scrutinizing hip hop practices in poorer immigrant neighborhoods, trying to decide which Muslim hip hop artists to promote and which to push aside.

In a perverse way, hip hop is as much a symptom of the larger problem of cultural alienation as it is a solution.

Britain was the first country to deal with what state officials now call Muslim hate rap.” In 2004, the song Dirty Kuffar was released online by rap group Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew. The video, splicing together images from Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya, praises Osama bin Laden and denounces George Bush, Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon, Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabias King Abdallah as dirty infidels. The track drew the attention of the Home Office and Labour MPs, who saw the lyrics and imagery as advocating violence. In 2006, Aki Nawaz of the popular hip-hop-techno group Fun-Da-Mental released an album All Is War, with a cover depicting the Statue of Liberty hooded and wired like an Abu Ghraib prisoner, and a song (Che Bin Pt 2) comparing bin Laden to Che Guevara. Two MPs called for his arrest. In 2011, the BBC had Radio 1 Xtra tune out the words Free Palestine in a track by the rapper Mic Righteous, so as to ensure that impartiality was maintained.

 

Europe’s Rap Wars

The debate over hip hop, Europes dominant youth culture, stands in for a much larger debate about race, immigration and national identity. With many of the biggest stars being Muslim, the disputes over which Muslim hip hop artists are moderate or radical are also disagreements over what kind of Islam to allow into the public space. As European state officials decide what hip hop policy to adopt, American embassies on the continent have slowly inserted themselves into this delicate dance between European governments and their hip-hop counter-publics.

Hip hop is at the heart of US embassies outreach to Muslim communities. The State Department has argued that hip hop can convey a different narrative to counter the foreign violent ideology that youth are exposed to. American rap artists are invited to perform at embassies in Europe. Local artists are invited to the embassy. The US ambassador to France has sponsored hip-hop conferences, inviting French rappers to his residence, including the controversial K.ommando Toxik (who, at the US embassy, performed a tribute to two boys who were killed by the French police in November 2007, an incident that triggered a wave of riots).

This debate over hip hop is playing out most poignantly in France, the country with the largest Muslim community in Europe, the second largest hip hop market in the world and a place whose traditions of laïcité (secularism) aggressively restrict expressions of religion in the public sphere. After the French riots of 2005, French MPs called on the government to prosecute seven rap groups whose lyrics had allegedly incited youth to violence. The artists were acquitted, but the French government began investing more heavily in hip hop at the local and national level, sponsoring concerts and funding local institutions in troubled neighborhoods in an effort to recognize margina