The influence of Hip Hop culture on middle eastern youth - Essay Example

The consequent influence of hip hop culture on Middle East youth seeps into religion and society through the music. The hip hop culture offers a harmonious contradiction of values for Middle East youth through dress code, music, image, hip hop artistes, militarism and sexuality.         From the debut of hip hop in the 1960's through the Civil Rights Movement, proponents of Afro-centric culture were either sworn Muslims or had Muslim sympathies. Malcolm X aka el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, Amiri Baraka, Muhammad Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Talib Kweli, Oshea Jackson aka Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg Brad Terrence Jordan aka Scarface, Mos Def, Q-Tip aka Fareed Kamal, Akhenaton, Busta Rhymes, Nas ne Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones and Queen Latifah are a few widely known names.

"The best place for a young Black male or female is in the Nation of Islam. (As) soon as we as a people use our knowledge of self to our advantage, we will then be able to be called Blacks" (Decker 53). Here, popular rapper, hip hop representative and professed Muslim, Ice Cube observes the link between cultural identity through Black Nationalism and hip hop. Hip hop is well-known for its violent tendencies and some sects of Islam are notorious for their militancy. The predisposition toward violence and holy war or jihad conveniently fits hip hip within the framework of Islam.

Although, hip hop does not belong solely to Blacks, the majority of hip hoppers are of African American origin. “Hip hop and rap cannot be viewed simply as an expression of African American culture; it has become a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local identities all over the world" (Mitchell 1). The all-encompassing effect of globalization can be felt in all countries, absorbing all cultures. The phenomenon of the entry of hip hop into Middle East mainstream music is as a result of Black Muslims who proudly celebrated their identities and waged their wars of words both on the stage and the world stage.

One of the pioneers of Black Muslim hip hop is the group, Soldiers of Allah, lyrical jihadis who declare, 'The mic is our weapon, our words are our ammunition, and the stage is our battle field.' This is the objective of Muslim hip-hop group, M-Team, which is short for Mujahideen Team (Miah 26). Again the Muslim word warriors highlight the themes of violence, jihadism and holy warfare. The Muslim holy warfare agrees with the hip hop gangster culture which applauds shootings, turf conflicts, and gang wars in urban neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, globalization has brought in its trail mostly American hip hop culture; therefore the hip hop dress, the hip hop slang, drug dependency, partying, liberal sex culture, and some the hip hop doctrines become endorsed by the world of listeners. At the same time, hip hop has been frequently used as an open arena to voice social subjects such as racial identity, racial discrimination, politics, history and religion. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Yemen are all Middle East countries which shelters an underground hip hop culture.

Censorships muffle hip hoppers and rappers to a certain extent; however, the technological breakthrough of the internet broke down and continues to erode walls which block the internet audience from hearing Muslim hip hop lyrics. Owing to the heterogeneous mixture of both the religious and the secular in Muslim hip hop, a new genre of music emerged.    "Youths use hip hop as a cultural repertoire from