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Back in 1992, a relatively obscure film from Britain called \u201cWild West<\/a>,\u201d starring the now well-known actor Naveen Andrews, revolved around young British-Pakistani Muslims who loved country music and tried to hit it big<\/a> in Nashville. The comedic value of the film was galvanised by the unlikelihood of such an unusual cross-cultural leap. But for Oklahoma native Kareem Salama<\/a>, a budding country singer who explicitly draws from Islamic themes, life isn\u2019t the clash of cultures you may think it is. Salama, whose parents immigrated to America from Egypt, is a product of the Midwestern environment he grew up in, fused with his Muslim upbringing. Kareem released his self-marketed debut album, \u201cGenerous Peace<\/a>\u201d last year and toured sporadically around the US (performing for a crowd at the annual ISNA conference) and the UK (sponsored by the Home Office-supported Radical Middle Way<\/a> project) to curious, and ultimately appreciative, audiences. He released a special single, \u201cPrayers at Night<\/a>\u201d to focus attention on last summer\u2019s war in Lebanon. Outside of Muslim circles, Kareem is finding notoriety<\/a> for the living dichotomy he is, in an American musical landscape where the closest Islam has meshed has been through rap and hip-hop from African-American Muslims. Although Salama is now being treated as a curiosity, he displays a unique sensitivity when questioned about his background \u2013 keenly aware of the prejudices people might have of Islam, Midwestern American culture, and (naturally) country music. It\u2019s easy to think that as a young boy, he drifted towards country music as a way to fit in with his non-Muslim friends. But Salama is no novelty. Drawing inspiration from ancient Islamic and English poetry and peppering his deep Southern drawl with Qur\u2019anic references in Arabic, he is keen to explore the parallel and universal themes that stretch beyond religion, time, and art. altmuslim\u2019s Shahed Amanullah recently spoke to Kareem about his music, and he tells us more about John Donne, \u201cHee Haw\u201d, Imam Shafi\u2019ee, and why he\u2019s \u201cnot big on the whole bashing G.W. thing.\u201d<\/p>\n I was writing songs when I was young, but I wasn\u2019t a serious songwriter. When I was in high school, I took up some poetry and I kind of fell in love with one of John Donne\u2019s poems, \u201cA Valediction Forbidding Mourning,\u201d and I wanted to memorize it. If you\u2019re familiar with classical Arabic or classical Islamic poetry, you have these melodies that coincide with this particular form of poetry. So, I essentially did the same thing, I used to sing the Arabic poetry to one of my sheikhs and I wrote my own melodies for John Donne\u2019s [poem] and I later did \u201cDover Beach\u201d by Matthew Arnold, \u201cBelieve Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms\u201d and a few by Robert Frost. That\u2019s what prompted me to start writing my own songs, writing my own lyrics again.<\/p>\n I sang once at ISNA and a lot of people liked what I sang. So, I guess with some encouragement from my parents \u2013 a lot from my dad \u2013 I found a guy here in Iowa City, a producer [songwriting partner\/guitarist Aristotle Mihalopoulos], and we became really good friends and we worked really well together. He\u2019s highly skilled [and] my musical ability is pretty limited. I mess around on the guitar and can play some chords and work out my progressions, but I go to him with a song in my head and some ideas for the chorus and how the melody would go and we work together to build it up. The great thing is that he\u2019s able to feel my vision and exactly what it is that I want and what direction I want to take it. That was, alhamdulillah, a blessing and a big part of why the music comes out as well as people seem to think it comes out. We\u2019re almost finished with the second album which is, in my estimation \u2013 alhamdulillah \u2013 is quite a bit better than the first.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve tried to talk to people about this, people that knew me when I was young, and figure out where it came from. One, just being around country music all the time. People from Texas, Oklahoma, and the South in general don\u2019t have the natural aversion that other people might have to country music. For some reason, my parents, even though they\u2019re not really into music, they took us to a lot of county fairs. And because we lived in Oklahoma at that time, the county fairs had a lot of country music singers instead of somewhere like Philadelphia where the Yankees live. We\u2019d go to Arkansas, Branson [Missouri] \u2013 my parents even took us to the Grand Ole Opry [in Nashville]. I also remember that my parents used to watch Hee Haw every week!<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to pinpoint a particular moment when I felt, \u201cOh, God, I love country music!\u201d although I do remember when I ws about 12 hearing a girl sing Tricia Yearwood\u2019s \u201cShe\u2019s In Love With a Boy\u201d and I remember I was really fond of that song. It was a very natural thing, it was part of the environment that I was in. And I like other kinds of music \u2013 it isn\u2019t like I\u2019m a one trick pony. Even when I was younger, when I used to sing, there was only one other Muslim family in my town \u2013 and believe me, they\u2019re more redneck than I am! One of the girls in the family would say, \u201cYou twang too much when you sing!\u201d My brother\u2019s a very religious young man, mashallah<\/i>. But people for some reason thought he wasn\u2019t religious because of the way he talked.<\/p>\n There\u2019s some kind of a soul in country music \u2013 I don\u2019t want to compare it to the Qur\u2019an at all \u2013 but the melody\u2026 I sang a song a capella<\/i> to somebody and then I recited the Qur\u2019an to a non-Muslim and they said there\u2019s something similar there. They\u2019re different in that the Qur\u2019an is not sung, but there\u2019s something that comes from deeper down, from the diaphragm or something.<\/p>\n The other thing is, obviously, the lyrical content. People say, \u201cOh, country music is all about someone singing about his dead dog.\u201d I say, \u201cSo what?\u201d If you\u2019ve ever been hunting \u2013 and I used to go hunting \u2013 you have a dog. The dog rustles up the quail or something like that. If you were living in the 1800\u2019s and you had this dog, that\u2019s how you got your family\u2019s food every day. The dog was there with you all the time, helping you to get your sustenance. If it died, you\u2019d probably be sad too! At night, when you\u2019re around a fire, you\u2019d be thinking about it and you\u2019d sing about the dog. It\u2019s an old art too. You can still hear something very old and very traditional. You can feel that fire cracklin\u2019 and the people sitting around a fire singing about something that at least means something to them. Being rooted in something old still makes me feel more comfortable.<\/p>\n Yeah, I think you\u2019re very right. There\u2019s some traditional bluegrass or country [music] that are hymns. There\u2019s one in particular that I listen to called \u201cAm I Born to Die?\u201d I have a shortened version of it so that it [says], \u201cAm I born to die to lay this body down.\u201d And it says, \u201cWhen I pass, it\u2019ll be a choice between Heaven and Hell.\u201d They draw on that a lot. Sometimes there is some sectarian elements that come in, but I write similar things from an Islamic ethos or perspective or aqeedah<\/i>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been to a rap concert, but when you rap \u2013 not that I have anything against rap \u2013 there\u2019s something in that that\u2019s not as reverent. Even the crowd \u2013 the objective is to get that crowd rollin\u2019. But if you ever see the Dixie Chicks, the crowd screams for them but there\u2019s still something reverent about the music. There\u2019s something reverent about the lyrics of country music and there\u2019s something reverent about the style \u2013 unless you\u2019re talking about the Toby Keith, honky-tonk stuff. It makes it a lot easier for me to insert these moral, ethical messages that I wanna send in something that\u2019s already a platform for that kind of thing.<\/p>\n I know the only reason [the media] contacts me is because [I\u2019m] a Muslim country music singer. That\u2019s the interest, but the question is whether or not I can sustain that interest. That\u2019s the great thing. I get e-mails from people \u2013 Muslim and non-Muslim \u2013 where it\u2019s obvious they [read about me] out of pure curiosity and then they were just blown away. This guy from South Carolina who works for a church there, he e-mailed his daughter who e-mailed me and he said something really sweet \u2013 he said \u201cThis man is a walking, talking, singing hope for the world. I am inspired.\u201d And he\u2019s making a video of one of my songs!<\/p>\n I\u2019m not trying to put out art and say, \u201cI\u2019m Muslim. Come support me.\u201d No. I want it to be legitimately as good or better than anything else you hear. Hopefully that\u2019ll be the trigger that catches people\u2019s interest. But in all fairness, I\u2019m also limited because I don\u2019t go to bars and sing, whereas other people have that opportunity. There\u2019s a lot of things that I do that limits myself and so the fact that I\u2019m receiving an advantage in this respect in that I\u2019m a Muslim and a country singer \u2013 I\u2019ll take it, it\u2019s fine!<\/p>\n I really don\u2019t stop and think about who the target market is. People think, \u201cWell he writes in a very universal way and so it must be that he\u2019s targeting non-Muslims.\u201d It\u2019s just not true. I just naturally write like that. And the reason I naturally write like that is because a lot of music is poetry and overt expressions are always not poetic. A good poet doesn\u2019t just tell his wife he loves her. He finds some interesting way to tell her that he loves her. I studied a lot of Imam Shafi\u2019ee\u2019s poetry. And one of the new songs I did on this new album is called \u201cGenerous Peace\u201d \u2013 which ironically should have been on the first album! The beginning of it is based on a poem he wrote and says [recites the verses in Arabic], \u201cThis fool in front of me speaks his vile words to me. And I hate to respond to him. He increases in his foolishness, in his assault on me. And I increase in my tolerance of him. For I am like incense. The more you burn me, the more fragrant I become.\u201d If you translate a lot of Imam Shafi\u2019ee\u2019s poetry or even Sayyidina Ali\u2019s poetry, you wouldn\u2019t be able to tell what religion these men were.<\/p>\n In fact, when Imam Shafi\u2019ee talks about the Prophet (SAW), he says [recites the verses in Arabic] \u201cA lion dies in the jungle of starvation while a dog eats the best meat. People of no worth sleep on beds of silk, but people of great lineage make the earth their beds.\u201d He\u2019s obviously talking about the Prophet (SAW), but he doesn\u2019t say his name. The way I write is just naturally universal and many people can take from it.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll preface it by saying I didn\u2019t actually mean for it to be just about the Iraqi war, it was meant to be about war in general.<\/p>\n No, you\u2019re right. But the thing that bothers me in this war in particular, unlike World War II, is that none of us are suffering. In other words, you have the Iraqi civilians and people generally who suffer tremendously. You have the soldiers who are sent by our commander to fight, and they suffer. And their families suffer. But none of us are suffering, none of us feel it. In World War II, everyone felt it. And I think the problem is if you don\u2019t have an altruistic or moral reason to scrutinize your government \u2013 and that\u2019s what a democracy is, we are a check on the government \u2013 if we don\u2019t scrutinize our government to follow our civic duty or for some moral altruistic reason, then at least the circumstances can force you to do so. The problem is the circumstances are not forcing us to do so.<\/p>\n I was telling Aristotle when we were going to the mall, \u201cLook at us. We\u2019re going to the mall. Our soldiers are over there dying. Our Iraqi brothers and sisters are dying. It\u2019s just a mess.\u201d And then you\u2019ve got all these sterile words like \u201ccivilians\u201d or the \u201cfamilies of the soldiers.\u201d No. It\u2019s Jessica. It\u2019s Tricia. It\u2019s Donna. It\u2019s even Mustafa<\/a>, one of the kids that moved to my town \u2013 a Muslim \u2013 when I was growing up. He actually did a tour of Iraq for a year and a half, he graduated from West Point. And then on the other side, you\u2019ve got Fatimas, you\u2019ve got people with stories that are actually dying. And I\u2019m not even trying to take a position. I\u2019m just saying make sure you understand what we\u2019re doing, to make sure war is worth fighting for. You only know something is worth doing if you recognize the price that comes with it.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.altmuslim.com\/images\/altmuslim_icon.gif\"){kind=icon}
Tell us how you started with your musical career.<\/b><\/p>\nWhat influenced you to begin writing and performing?<\/b><\/p>\nWhat directed you towards country music as an outlet for your musical expression?<\/b><\/p>\nIt seems that there\u2019s a theme of Christian spiritualism in country music, things like divine justice, redemption, and submission. And it seems that, of all the musical genres out there, that Islamic themes could most easily be inserted into country music. Is this a fair assessment?<\/b><\/p>\nDo you worry that your background might be seen as a curiosity or are you perhaps comfortable with the notoriety if it gives people a chance to listen to your music?<\/b><\/p>\nI take it then that you\u2019re not targeting niche Muslim audiences but you\u2019re really targeting the mainstream country music market.<\/b><\/p>\nI know myself and a few other people that I\u2019ve spoken to were particularly touched by your song \u201cBaby, I\u2019m a Soldier\u201d and what I think is the daring juxtaposition of an American and an Iraqi within the song. Tell me a little bit more about that song and what prompted you to write it the way you did.<\/b><\/p>\nBut that\u2019s the way people are taking it.<\/b><\/p>\n