Muslim Women Rappers: Changing the World One Beat at a Time

 Rap music has always been one of the most influential forms of music, especially in the West. Black performers and musicians used hip-hop and rap as a tool to engage with their younger audience in talking about the issues that prevailed, related to racism and sexism in America and the society at large. Muslim women, similarly, have started using rap music as a vehicle to get their points across. A woman from Afghanistan – which is one of the most conservative, oppressive, and suffocating countries in the world (especially for women) – replaced her hijab with a hoodie and blazed the path she walked on with her fiery rap and assertive music. Paradise Sorouri is the first Afghan rap musician who is on top of being a singer, is a woman who does not cover her head. She aroused the ‘ghairat’ of the majority of Muslim men in Afghanistan which led to her being physically attacked by at least ten men on the street.
Another similar example comes from Saudi Arabia where women are confined (or rather bricked) inside their homes under the veil of safety and guardianship. A group of women released a rap song that condemned the whole façade of guardianship which prevented women from liberty and agency altogether. This also invited criticism from men all over because it revealed the fragility of their egos. On the surface, it seems almost insignificant, music and lyrics might not bring about revolutions, but they stir the values of a conservative society and they show an alternate picture of liberty to their citizens. Sorouri was such a threat to the Afghan mainstream society that she received death threats and rape threats and even had to leave the country twice. That does not happen out of the blue, that influence is not meager or insignificant – this is the kind of resistance that snowballs into revolutions! The Saudi women would have faced the same backlash, had their faces been visible, probably even worse since the guardianship-inducing society of Saudi Arabia cares more about the ghairat of men than anything else.
 Here, one needs to acknowledge the resistance music of Pakistan as well and the most recent example is Meesha Shafi’s Na Tutteya for Coke Studio. Shafi’s brilliant rapping in this song is provocative and mind-blowing hitting all the right notes. It is even more banging because the courts and justice system of Pakistan refused to listen to her, so she created her own space to say what she wanted with force and assertion, and a lot of swag! Rap has given Muslim women a beautiful medium to channel their anger, fury and their opinions about themselves in a productive, provocative and poignant manner, reaching millions around the world.