Punk Rock Islam

The Koran, punk rock and lots of questions.
By Erika Hayasaki
November 19, 2008, LA Times

This much Hiba Siddiqui knows: She is a Muslim teenager living in America. But what does that mean for her?
Cool feature in the LA times about modern Muslim American teens and the Muslim punk subculture. Mentions of Muslim punk rock and Michael Muhammad Knight's novel The Taqwacores about a group of punk Muslim friends.

Spiritually Significant Movies

Looking for more spiritually significant movies?
Check out the Top 100 Spiritually Significant Movies.

In the Not-So-Distant Future

1. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

This dystopian tale set in Los Angeles in 2025 centers around Lauren Olamina, a young black woman who flees her community to seek a better life. Lauren suffers from hyperempathy (she feels the pain of others as if it were her own), but dreams of a better world through her religion, Earthseed.





2. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

Told in a futuristic slang similar to Russian, this is the dystopian tale of Alex, a juvenile delinquent who thrives on Beethoven and violence. When Alex undergoes psychological rehabilitation for his behavior, the reader is forced to consider the nature of free will.








3. The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary Pearson

When Jenna Fox wakes up from a coma, she has zero memory of the past seventeen years of her life. As she slowly unravels the mystery of her identity, Jenna must come to terms with what it means to be human in an age where science rules.







4. The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier


A deadly virus has killed everyone on Earth, except for Laura Byrd, a wildlife specialist who has been isolated on an expedition to the South Pole. Meanwhile, the newly dead populate “the City”, an earthlike afterworld, where their existence depends on the memories of the living—in other words, on Laura.

New Takes on the Old Book

Looking for movies that deal with Christianity in new or surprising ways?
Here's a list:

1. Dogma
Two fallen angels find a loophole in the church dogma that may allow them back into heaven. Irreverant and sometimes disgusting, always funny. Alanis Morrisette plays God and Chris Rock is the 13th Apostle!

2. The Last Temptation of Christ
A new take on the man who represents the struggle between the spirit and the flesh. Stars Willem Dafoe (Jesus), Barbara Hershey (Mary Magdalene), Harvey Keitel (Judas) and David Bowie (Pontius Pilate)

3. The Decalogue
Originally made for Polish TV, each episode revolves around one of the Ten Commandments and the lives of people in a Warsaw apartment complex.

4. The Life of Brian
The Monty Python movie that is often considered blasphemous and sacrilegious, this is the tale of Brian, a nobody in Jerusalem who seems a lot like Jesus.

5. Saved!
Mary is a good girl at a Christian school. When her boyfriend tells her he thinks he's gay, she decides to save him by having sex with him. You can't get pregnant your first time, right? What follows is a funny, punchy, smart story of Mary and the misfits that surround her.

Donnie Darko must be going insane. Why else would he be friends with Frank, a giant, sinister Bunny who says the world will end in 28 days?
Enter the strange, dark world of a teenager who nearly escapes death when a plan crashes into his home, who is interested in time travel, and discover the gateways between past and present, between life and death.

Like the paranoia and end-of-the-world feeling of Donnie Darko?
Try reading Don DeLillo's White Noise.

Defending Your Life

A lighter look at the afterlife.
Defending Your Life is the tale of a man who dies in a car accident and finds himself in Judgement City, the purgatory where the fate of souls are determined.
When Daniel falls in love with a perfect woman sure to get to heaven, he is more determined than ever to get to heaven too.
Watch a clip!

Books About Death and Afterlife

1. Blind Faith, by Ellen Wittlinger



After Liz’s grandmother dies, her mother becomes deeply depressed and finds solace only at her spiritualist church, whose members claim to communicate with the dead.
Liz’s atheist father disapproves, and Liz is caught in the middle. When Liz meets Nathan, she begins to deal with her complicated feelings about loss, love and faith.


2. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin


Liz is only fifteen when she gets hit and killed by a car. She ends up in Elsewhere, a land where the deceased age backwards until they are born. Initially furious, Liz soon begins to accept her afterlife and even finds joy.




3. Restless, Richard Wallace


Seventeen-year-old Herbie is a great athlete and is getting geared-up to do both football and cross-country in the fall. But while out running one night, Herbie begins to sense that he is not alone. Eventually, Herbie meets and communicates with spirits who are between worlds and who are searching for answers about life, death, and how to move on.


4. Bone Dance, by Martha Brooks

When Alexandra inherits land from the father she has never met, she is surprised and even resentful. When she goes to Medicine Bluff, she meets Lonny,
the stepson of the man who sold the land to her father. Lonny wants to hate Alexandran, the “city girl”, but finds himself drawn to her in this story of love, loss, redemption, and deep spiritual connections with the Earth.

Books About Grappling with Faith

1. Blankets, by Craig Thompson













Craig is a pious teen who is an outcast, even at religious camp. Rather than trash-talk, Craig actually reads the Bible and also draws. When he meets beautiful Raina, he must reconcile is feelings about love, spirituality, God and the church. (graphic novel)




2. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley



Famous civil rights leader tells his story of transformation from
a street-savvy criminal to a follower of the Nation of Islam,
and to his ultimate spiritual awakening as a Muslim that peaks
with the hajj journey from Mecca to Medina.





3. Dare Truth or Promise, by Paula Boock



Willa and Louie are two girls who are falling in love in this
story set in New Zealand. Louie struggles not only with
her sexual identity, but how she can reconcile it with her faith,
and ultimately finds hope through a discussion with a young priest.


4. Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature, by Robin Brande



Mena’s life couldn’t get much worse: by her first day of
high school, she has been kicked out of church, bullied
by former friends, and hated by her parents, all because
she took a stand to do the right thing. Her freshman year
improves when she is paired with Casey in biology, and
her brilliant science teacher helps Mena explore how belief
in science isn’t necessarily opposed to a belief in God.


5. The Ransom of Mercy Carter, by Caroline B. Cooney


Based on true events, this is the tale of Mercy Carter, an
11-year-old girl who is taken prisoner by the Mohawk Indians
after a raid her village of Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704.
After trekking to a traditional Indian village in Canada, Mercy
struggles to reconcile her attraction to the Kahnawake Mohawk
way of life (including the newly Catholic tribe’s rituals) with her
Puritanical upbringing.

Mystical Poets

"Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude..."
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself


Looking for mystical poetry? Want to go into the great metaphysical beyond?
Think about these old favorites:





-Emily Dickinson
Behind Me -- dips Eternity --
Before Me -- Immortality --
Myself -- the Term between --
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin --
(keep reading)


-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
(keep reading)

-Rumi
Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
(keep reading)

And a new favorite:

-Rita Dove
I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

As the walls clear themselves of everything
but transparency, the scent of carnations
leaves with them. I am out in the open

and above the windows have hinged into butterflies,
sunlight glinting where they've intersected.
They are going to some point true and unproven.

hear Rita read the poem at Pablo Neruda's grave.