Heavy Metal Islam

This is not the Middle East that you know. Not the images we see on the national news and cable shows. Picture an eighteen-year-old Moroccan who loves Black Sabbath and Cannibal Corpse. A twenty-two-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip. A young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." In Heavy Metal Islam, Mark LeVine explores the incredibly vibrant alternative music scenes sweeping the region and bringing with it a new movement of peace and change in countries as diverse as Morocco, Iraq and Pakistan. Through interviews with musicians and fans, LeVine reveals young Muslims struggling to reconcile their religion with a passion for music and a desire for change. These are the risk-takers and revolutionaries, as much on the front lines of the culture war as the suicide bombers and Al-Qaeda martyrs. Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest, and in many cases considered immoral in the Muslim world. This music may also turn out to be the soundtrack of a revolution unfolding across that world.

A college professor and musician (who brought together latin rock sensation Ozomatli with Moroccan world music star Hassan Hakmoun on the Grammy winning 2005 Street Signs), Mark LeVine has direct access to the major players in the Islamic rock world, and to the region's most important religious and political activists, and is able to reveal the change that's taking place through the young people and the music community. Cutting through the governmental censors and religious restrictions, LeVine reveals a youth culture hungry for change and willing to risk freedom and even life for it.