ALEXANDRIA: The audience, mostly young Muslim women in veils, clapped, swayed and sang along as Sami Yusuf belted out a love song.
The object of his adoration? Mohammed the prophet of Islam.
With a British accent, Islamic lyrics and trendy video clips, 25-year-old Yusuf has become a music idol to a young generation of Muslims eager to reconcile their religious impulses with the appeal of modernity and pop and to proudly display an Islamic identity many feel is under attack. He rejects the clash of civilizations theories fueled by the current angry exchanges over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. He seeks to dispel stereotypes and to show that the Western and Muslim cultures he straddles can coexist.
I don t call it a clash of civilizations. I call it a clash of the uncivilized, Yusuf said of the cartoon controversy. On one hand, you find these extremist people who are anti-religion. They re really creating Islamophobia …. On the other hand you find these other extremists who are burning flags.
Islam and the West have much to offer each other, he said in an interview at the British Embassy in Cairo, wearing a beige suit, trendy striped scarf and trim beard. I am an example of that. I am a British Muslim. I am a proud Brit who is also proud of his religion.
Yusuf was born to Azerbaijani parents and raised in London where he has non-Muslim friends, including Christians and atheists.
The diversity that exists in the United Kingdom is close to the Islamic understanding of tolerance, he said.
The British government, contending with the extremism that spawned the bombings of a London bus and subway trains in July, appears happy to help spread the message; its embassy is listed on Yusuf s Web site as a supporter of his Egypt tour.
Yusuf learned music from his father, himself a musician, composer and poet, and studied with composers from the Royal Academy of Music. His lyrics and music are mostly in English, with some verses in Arabic, Turkish and Hindi.
Yusuf said he didn t have the mainstream West in mind when he worked on his first album. I wanted to do something for the minority Muslims living in the West, especially in the UK, to bring up their morale a bit. They need to be proud of their religion, he said.
But the Arab world has been listening too, especially to Mualim, or Teacher – his song about the Prophet Muhammad: We once had a Teacher, The Teacher of teachers, He changed the world for the better. And made us better creatures.
His appeal was evident at a recent concert in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
I just feel psychologically calm when I listen to his music and when I praise God and the prophet with him, said Fairouz Yaseen, 34.
He shows that Islam is not about (Osama) bin Laden or terrorism.
To some, Yusuf makes it not just right, but even cool to be an observant Muslim.
Elham Ismail, 20, said he s the kind of guy she would marry. He is trying to show that we can be religious youths who uphold their values and can still look good and be chic, she said.
Such role models are exactly what Muslims need, Yusuf believes.
The only famous people we know of are Osama bin Laden and his crew, and this is very dangerous because unfortunately some youth are . Frustrated and are attracted to extremism, he said.
Yusuf doesn t think his music can change Muslim extremists.
I don t think they ll even listen to me, he said. They will always be there … I don t consider them Islamic any more than I consider the actions of Hitler Christian.
He thinks Western foreign policies are partly to blame for the extremism. What I want to do is really share with them our culture, our identity, what Muslims are about, what Islam talks about – educate them about Islam and that it is not synonymous with terrorism.
To that end, one of his songs commemorates the 186 children killed in the Russian school seized by Chechen Muslims in 2004: Every day I see the same headlines / Crimes committed in the name of the divine / People committing atrocities in his name / They murder and kidnap with no shame / But did he teach hatred, violence, or bloodshed? No … Oh No.
Another song challenges the notion that the veil oppresses women: So don t you see / That I m truly free? / This piece of scarf on me, I wear so proudly / To preserve my dignity.
He wants to reach the pop mainstream by collaborating with Western artists to bridge existing gaps – a difficult task, many believe, in the fractious atmosphere of Mohammed cartoons deemed insulting to Islam.
We need peace. There is a lot of anger out there, he says. We need to defuse them and bring reason and logic. AP
