Heavy Metal Islam (8 page)

This debate over who is the only group working to democratize Morocco can seem parochial to an outsider, or even egotistical—each side wanting to define itself as the main hope for achieving justice and democracy in its country—particularly when such alliances are already being forged through the country’s young NGO culture. The inability of two movements of highly intelligent and politically committed people to find common ground speaks volumes about how hard it will be for democratic forces in Morocco, and across the MENA, to pry open corrupt and authoritarian systems that have spent decades perfecting the arts of repression, manipulation, and co-optation—the most important skill set possessed by the region’s leaders.

In
The Satanic Angels,
Boulane has one of the main characters explain that “when music is banned, then the real satanism will begin.” This is surely true, but the problem with the movie version of the satanic-metal affair is that the metalheads are no less cartoonish than the Islamists. If Nadia Yassine saw it, she’d recognize the metalheads portrayed in it as her own worst nightmare: little more than spaced-out stoners lost in the “spiritual vacuum” of contemporary Moroccan society. Their function, as one of the wealthy, French-speaking “establishment types” who comes to their defense explains, is little more than that of canaries in the political coal mine, serving as “a wake-up call for all those living in the euphoria of the Internet…Thanks to these young people, we have learned that no one is really safe.”

The fourteen metalheads of the satanic-metal affair were certainly not angels, satanic or otherwise. At least back in 2003, there’s no doubt that many of them liked to drink beer, get stoned, and generally slack about as much as their teenage or twentysomething counterparts in the United States or Europe. But many of them were—and today are even more so—incredibly talented, intelligent, well educated, and politically active citizens at the forefront of their country’s struggles for social change. As much as their peers in the JSA, or the older generation of journalists and activists who have patronized them, they were, and are, agents of their own destiny—and of Morocco’s as well.

EGYPT

Bloggers, Brothers, and the General’s Son

“
L
isten, I don’t wanna worry, but I’m really afraid that some of the stuff that I—we—have told you could get us into a lot of trouble. Do you think that you could use different names when you mention us in your book?”

Marz (not his real name) made this admission to me at around two in the morning as our tour bus sped along the mist-covered road connecting Alexandria to Cairo. Tall, with narrow features, a short ponytail, and the stubble of a beard, he normally speaks with an arresting voice that alternates between plaintive whispers and barked orders.

Marz is the lead guitarist of Hate Suffocation, for my money the best death-metal band in Egypt, if not the Middle East and North Africa, and he had a lot to lose if my account of the burgeoning Egyptian metal scene brought Hate Suffocation unwanted—as well as much-wanted—publicity. A well-known California-based metal producer was considering producing the band’s new demo, and with each gig its fan base was noticeably increasing. And gigging, Marz explained, is crucial for Egyptian bands since hardly any of them have record deals. Their popularity rests on their live performances and the buzz created from songs downloaded from their MySpace sites. What would happen if he couldn’t gig, or if the government blocked his website?

Taking a drag on his cigarette, Marz peered nervously out the window; to ease the tension, I mentioned his far blunter warning then posted on the “about me” section of his MySpace page—“Know This! Fuck you, you don’t need to know anything about me! So fuck you!” He grinned while our fellow passengers discussed the differences between the Cairo and Alexandria metal scenes, which had come together that evening for an impromptu “metal summit” in my honor.

In Egypt today, Marz’s obnoxious attitude is not only understandable but reasonable (in fact, he’s quite sweet). Living on the political and cultural margins of Egyptian society, refusing to conform to its norms, metalheads—or “metaliens,” as they often refer to themselves—have long been the object of ridicule and attacks in newspapers, on television, in live comedy, and in conservative religious discourse. This situation is aggravated by the policies of a regime that is expert at tolerating and even encouraging a manageable level of dissent by those who don’t question its legitimacy, while regularly deploying pinpoint violence to slap down anyone, including the metal community, who directly defies or challenges its authority. (According to Human Rights Watch, this policy has resulted in between 6,000 and 10,000 political prisoners in detention at any given time, “pervasive” police torture, including rape, and the routine beating of and sexual assault on peaceful protesters.)

Metaliens naturally worry about once again becoming easy targets for attack from the government or conservative forces, as they were in 1997, when more than a hundred metal musicians and fans were arrested in the Arab world’s first satanic-metal scare. As they move through the hardscrabble streets of Cairo and other major cities with their strange, menacing T-shirts, long hair, and guitars slung over their shoulders, they present a direct and public challenge to the regime and the values it pretends to uphold. But they are not the only group to do so. Egypt’s burgeoning blogger scene, one of the most prolific in the Muslim world, is the newest group attempting to create an independent social and political space, albeit largely on virtual terrain. This hasn’t stopped the government from jailing prominent young bloggers even as it boasts of sponsoring a high-speed Internet infrastructure for the country’s growing middle class.

The biggest threat, however, remains the Muslim Brotherhood. Until recently, the government could count on playing these two poles of Egyptian society, secular and seemingly westernized versus religious and traditionally conservative, against each other in order to deflect any challenges to its power. Today, however, a new generation of Brotherhood members—the peers, and occasionally family members of the metalheads (and in some cases it turns out, former metalheads themselves)—have become far more interested in pushing the boundaries of political expression for their members than in limiting the expression of metalheads or other non-mainstream groups within Egyptian society. Yet, as in Morocco, the opposite sides of youth culture have yet to consider working together toward the goal of greater freedom and democracy. Part of the reason is the wide cultural gap between them, and the mistrust of religious forces by musicians who have suffered through “satanic metal” affairs. But Egypt’s metalheads are also far less sanguine about the possibility of political change than are their counterparts in Morocco. Less willing than Brotherhood members to risk their freedom to push for greater democracy (which, despite accusation by the government, today’s Brotherhood is clearly doing), they would rather hold on to the slowly increasing freedom they have to play their music.

I had arrived in Egypt at the time of Hate Suffocation’s biggest gig yet, at the fourth installment of what has become known as the “Metal Accord.” The space was the legendary Villa Hassan Fahmy, known as “the Mecca of Egyptian metalheads” because of the many great concerts that have been held there. New venues have opened up in central Cairo, such as the Sawi Culture Wheel, celebrated for its professional sound system (still a rarity in most smaller music halls in Cairo) and for sponsoring metal nights even though the owner is devoutly religious. But it is at the neglected old villas of the country’s elite, lying upward of an hour outside Cairo’s urban core, where Egyptian metalheads feel most free to be themselves.

Located not far from the pyramids, off one of the ring roads that surrounds Cairo, Villa Hassan Fahmy was packed with upward of 1,000 fans for the Metal Accord. Shouts of “Metal till we die!” and “That’s so fuckin’ brutal!” were punctuated by enthusiastic fist-pumping and metal horns. The bands plowed through sets of originals mixed with classic metal hits as the black-T-shirt-clad fans headbanged and slam-danced their way into metal Firdaws, or Heaven.

From the stage, Marz screamed into the microphone, “Welcome to the new era of death metal in Egypt.” The crowd went crazy. While the majority were young men—as is the case at metal shows the world over—a far larger share of the crowd was female than would be the case at a typical Moroccan metal concert. Some of the girls headbanging and screaming were wearing headscarves. The energy, never mind the air, was hot and sticky; the fans lapped up the fleeting moments of freedom. The concert, like the other mini-festivals organized by the metal community, was naturally a place for the best-known artists to meet, party, and strategize. Members of almost a dozen bands came to check out the show and show their support, and for several hours the Villa Hassan Fahmy rocked.

But even a decade after the 1997 crackdown, the Mukhabarat still routinely comes to metal shows to spy on the scene. Who exactly was that taking pictures of the bands and audience? Would plainclothes security people suddenly pounce on a fan perceived to be sporting an inverted cross or pentagram on his neck or T-shirt? Some younger fans, with no memory of the crackdown, joked about how cool it would be if they were arrested. My friend Slacker, official archivist of the metal scene, shook his head in disbelief. “Man,” he said to them, “you’re such poseurs. Do you have any idea what it means to be arrested by the Egyptian police?”

Egypt has long been home to one of the most vibrant centers of cultural production—in film, music, and television—in the Arab world. In fact, one of the first international conferences of musicians and composers, the Oriental Music Conference, took place in Egypt in 1932. Because of this, it’s not hard to imagine there being space for metalheads to play and listen to their music without interference from the government or self-appointed gatekeepers of public morality. But as in other Arab countries today, the music scene in Egypt is dominated by “porno devil” divas singing the kind of cheesy and sex-saturated pop music produced by Arab entertainment conglomerates such as the Rotana. As one Egyptian observer of the scene described it to me, “If we judge by numbers, then Arabic pop music sells the most, dudes with cars and sound systems mainly listen to rap (gangster wannabes), and people who are on drugs mainly listen to electronic music—trance/house/techno and rave.”