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ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul Rehman-Malik. On this podcast from the Aga Khan Museum, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

I felt something magical here. I felt something important. I felt like a deeper connection to my religion and the religious and the larger social values that I think come from my religious identity.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Today, a conversation with a Muslim hipster.

 

These days, Muslim culture is having a bit of a moment. There are incredible shows on Netflix like Mo and Man Like Mobeen. Last summer, Disney put a teenage Muslim girl on screen, as the star of the superhero show, Ms. Marvel. Muslim comedian Kumail Nanjiani recently starred in  the acclaimed docu drama, Welcome to Chippendales. And that’s only to name a select few.

But a decade ago, when Abbas Rattani and his friends would get together to talk about what it meant to be young and Muslim in America, they had to look a bit harder to find themselves represented in pop culture.

 

So they started sharing their own ideas, creating their own videos and art. Before long, they had their first viral moment, sparking heated debates about representation. They’ve remained a vital part of the conversation ever since. And the informal group became a potent collective called MIPSTERZ – a jokey blend of Muslim and hipster.

 

That’s where my conversation with Abbas Rattani got started.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

It’s been a wild ride for you and for the MIPSTERZ collective. But let’s get down to brass tacks. Do you still see yourself as a Muslim hipster and what does that mean even? What does that — what is a Muslim hipster?

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

That’s a great question. I do. And that’s because I’m not truly a hipster. I think if you ask a true hipster, they would be very upset because no self-respecting hipster identifies as a hipster. You know, I’m a nerd, I’m definitely a Muslim nerd. And you know, and I’m also a comedian, so I’m happily calling myself a hipster. And all the true hipsters around me get a little upset. I remember I had the fortune of having dinner with Riz Ahmed, and I said, “You know, you’re a hipster, you’re a Muslim hipster, you’re a Mipster.” And he was upset. He was like, “I’m not a Mipster, definitely not a Mipster.” And I was like, a true Mipster would totally react that way. You know?

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

The idea for MIPSTERZ came in 2012 during the holy month of Ramadan.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

I moved back to New York City and I had run into some friends that I had known from university, and I said, “Hey, what are you guys doing for Iftar?” And they’re like, “Oh, we’re going to, you know, this Muslim engineer’s meet up or we’re going to this Muslim doctor’s meet up, or we’re going to this Muslim, you know, corporate Muslim’s meet up.” And I thought, you know, I don’t really fit in with any of these groups and the types of topics and things that I’m concerned about aren’t really discussed in these environments. And at that time, there wasn’t this like group of Muslims that were interested in deconstructing texts and, you know, critical theory and, you know, approaching topics of social justice and critical racial justice topics.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

And so Abbas and some friends decided to start a space to talk about their interests through the lens of their Muslimness. MIPSTERZ was born.

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

And I think that’s ended up being almost a comedic, like a tongue-in-cheek response to like the corporate Muslims or the young urban Muslim professionals or whatever, you know, these little pockets of the Muslim financiers group.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

At first, MIPSTERZ wasn’t necessarily about making art. They created an email listserv where they could share ideas. And it was a space to explore their urban, American Muslim identity. The term Mipsterz wasn’t meant to be permanent.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

People didn’t really care about the term. It was very much a placeholder term. It was something that we were just going to have in place during Ramadan of 2012. And it was just a way of us to kind of remember, oh, this is a separate group and we’re going to all kind of hang out in this space. And then when Ramadan ended, we were like, all right, that’s it. You know, we’re done here. And other Muslims were like, no, no, no, no. Like, I felt something magical here. I felt something important. I felt like a deeper connection to my religion and the religious and the larger social values that I think come from my religious identity. We have to continue this. Right? And then a lot of artists in this space also started coming out and was like, I can create, I can be seen in these spaces. You know, there’s something beautiful here for me. This part is a little bit sad but there were a lot of Muslims who felt previously not welcomed in Muslim spaces and they were coming out. And they for the first time felt seen.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Abbas’s own relationship with Muslimness and Muslim culture is a complicated one.

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

You know, my parents were in a little bit of a pickle and necessarily couldn’t give me the life that they really wanted for me. And so I ended up being raised by a different set of parents. They were my aunt and uncle who were Sikh. So I actually grew up in a Sikh home, and they very much wanted to preserve the fact that I was Muslim, but they didn’t necessarily have the ways and means to kind of teach me Islam or introduce me to certain characters that they thought were very important. And so my exposure to Islam actually didn’t happen in a more robust way until I went to university.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

He was searching for something – a way to connect with his Muslimness and understand it in the context of urban America.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

There weren’t really any, like, you know, millennial or Gen X or like boomer Muslims in the creative space that I was like, this is the guy, you know, like this is the person, you know.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

The only person he encountered who was thinking about these kinds of things was Omid Safi, at the time a professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, now at Duke University. Omid’s work often explores the messy intersections of modernity, spirituality and faith. He helped guide Abbas.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

And I think when MIPSTERZ was popping off, I would hit him up and be like, what are you like — how do I even navigate this space? I’m in this space accidentally. Like, this is not what I thought, you know, my life would take me in this direction.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Abbas was also looking to figures from history.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

And then, you know, not to sound cliché, but I think Malcolm X, you know, when I read his autobiography, I resonated so heavily with this notion of like, why do we have to rely on white infrastructure and white people to exist fully as human beings? You know, we don’t need that. Like, we are wholly human. And if anything, they’ve been restricting our sense of flourishing. And so that came out of a lot of Malcolm X’s writing that really resonated with me. And then a very big, you know, Imam Ali household. You know, even though my parents couldn’t, you know, raise me in the traditional sense, I was definitely way in touch with my parents all the time. I mean, it was my aunt and uncle who was raising me at the end of the day. But Imam Ali was just like the beacon of how we need to move in society. And I think that was somebody I kept going back to.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Abbas, you convene this space, this fateful Ramadan. You call it MIPSTERZ. You’re doing your meetup.coms. You start running a listserv. How do you move from that online and convening space to actually making culture?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

MIPSTERZ allowed me to be around Muslim folks that were just phenomenal like creators and thinkers and just imagineers, you know, if you will. And I being just excited by that energy and by their passion, I would be the first to say, “Let’s create something. Let’s make something. Let’s like start convening a process by which the art is rendered.” And I would say, I don’t know if any art will come out at the end of this, but let’s just be in conversation together and in collaboration together. And inshallah, something gets made. But if it doesn’t, this is the art right here. This is, this process right here is a beautiful thing.

 

I remember I met somebody who was playing the santur, which is like this very traditional Persian instrument. And they were like a santur rock star. I mean, this person had trained as a santurist for many years and played and loved playing it. Some artists are a little bit stiff when they’re like, “Hey, can you play for me?” They’re like, “Absolutely not. You know, I only play in certain situations and environments.” But this person was not like a true hipster. This person was like, I’m going to play all the time, every time. And at the same event, I met a person who was passionate about particle physics. Okay? They were just so into particle physics and they’re like, “This is my jam. I love studying it. I’m going to pursue a Ph.D. in particle physics.” And as this person was talking, there was a cadence to his voice. There was a beat to his voice. And the santurist – I turn to the santurist, I’m like, “Play to this.” You know, I look at him, I’m like, “Play to this.” And you just hear this santur melody as he’s breaking down particle physics in the background. And I’m like, “This right here is so beautiful.” You know?

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

That’s amazing.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

And everyone just started gathering around and listening to this guy talk passionately about particle physics and was in this moment. And I think that’s like… I just kept leaning into those kinds of things.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You very quickly had this kind of major viral moment in 2013, right? With a video that depicted young, cool looking Muslims just being, walking and skateboarding around. You know, cool urban America set to the Jay-Z track, SomewhereInAmerica. I have to say, Abbas, I remember watching that the first time, the first time I watched it, I remember just being struck by there was something really kind of fresh and dynamic and different about it. And the thing that I think struck me was it didn’t feel like people in the video were performing their Muslimness. They were just being who they were. And it was Muslimness baked into their bodies, into their actions, into what they were doing in the world. What was going through your head and the head of your incredible collaborators as you were bringing this together?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

I have to give credit to my muse, which is Layla and her sister, Zayneb Shaikley. Both of these sisters, I think after I met them, I was like, I want all of Islam to just like be taught in the world by them.

 

You know, as someone who didn’t grow up around Muslims, right? And then going to UNC and really the only Muslim that I resonated with or connected with was Omid Safi. Despite being around other Muslims, I just, like, still didn’t connect, you know? And then I meet these two sisters who grew up in a predominantly Muslim community, had Islam infused all around them, and yet they were the coolest people in the room. Okay? Like Layla just casually is like, “Yeah, I grew up skateboarding and going to skate parks, you know? And that was like my vibe. And I listen to punk rock.” And I’m just like, “Who are you?” Like, I didn’t know such a person existed. And she was just like, “Oh, this is all of us like in L.A. This is like all of my friends. This is my friends in Boston, too. And this is my friends in so and so.” And I was like, “I don’t– who– uh uh can you introduce – like, I want to meet these people.” You know? They very quickly became my, like, you know, self-appointed, self-designated older sisters. And I just loved being around them and learning a lot of Islam and Islamic identity around them. What I started noticing was that they were very bold. They were never shy in who they were. They were defiant. And I was like, “I need to film this.” And she was like, “Oh, then I got to introduce you to so and so and you got to meet so and so.” And I was like, “All right, I’m going to film them.” And they’re just like, “Yeah, who cares? Like, film us in our element.” And if you look at the film, it really — it’s essentially a montage. You know, it’s like a bunch of scraps of shots kind of pieced together to the beat. And I think one of the things when we put these scraps together, we really wanted to do this as a music video for Yuna.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Right. Yuna is this Malaysian songstress, singer-songwriter… Like kind of like this incredible musical talent, right?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

Who’s boldly Muslim.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Yeah. And sort of she was just kind of coming into the, kind of the North American scene at that point, wasn’t she?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

Yes, she was. And she was boldly Muslim and didn’t let the record industry kind of govern how she looked in that space. And we reached out to her people and everybody. And we spent a year just like trying to get, you know, a green light on that. And they were just like, “No, no, no, we’re not interested. We don’t want to affiliate with this” or whatever. And I don’t know who was talking. I think it maybe was her like management team. And then we were just like, okay, well, we have all this great footage and everyone’s asking like, “When is this coming out? When is this coming out?” And one of the decisions we made was to do it to the Jay-Z song Somewhereinamerica. Because I remember when that song came out, I was like in chills when I heard it. Because in the song, Jay-Z is like, no matter how much culture we create for you, no matter how much our prominence rises in society, we will still be looked at in this negative, vilified, you know, less-than-human kind of way. And then at the end of the song, he like tauntingly is like, “Yo, just go ahead and express our culture the way you want. You know, keep appropriating our culture. We will not lose to this and we will keep creating in spite of this.” You know? And when I heard that, I was like, that’s what I feel like it is we are doing. I think this is very much like… when you meet Layla, she’s so larger than life. She now is like an entrepreneur, co-founder of this, like, you know, multimillion dollar startup company, you know, has a podcast as well. And, you know, you just follow her on Instagram and you’re just like, oh, wow. Like, how do you have time to do all the stuff that you do?”

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Yeah it’s amazing.

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

And, you know, that energy I felt like is like Layla will still create despite all of the Islamophobia, despite all of the haters, despite any negativity, she’s still her bold self. And I was like, this is some, this is some Imam Ali energy over here. And you know, this song matches so well.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

And so you bring this together, you put it out into the world, folks like me and, you know, millions of others all over the world are watching this. And then like something happens. There is this very at times visceral response from folks. There’s a questioning of the choice of the song. Others are saying it’s too flashy, doesn’t have substance. Some people bring in kind of a racial critique into it. Some people are talking about the objectification of women. You caused a kind of a firestorm in the Muslim conversation. I want to know if you Abbas were surprised by those responses and how did you process them?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

I was surprised, but at the same time, I wasn’t surprised. I remember from my UNC days, there is a certain group of Muslims who, you know, take in the world or perceive the world through a particular lens, in their lens. And I think those are the kinds of Muslims that popped out and viewed this film in that way.

 

So on one hand, you know, the critique of like “this is consumerist” because there’s like subsequent shots of like these Michael Kors watches, for example. And it’s like, yeah, but everyone around me, they just happen to wear that, like I don’t know, I’m documenting as it’s being seen. And also there is a pride by which like that level of status or achievement is reached by these refugee or, you know, immigrant, asylum seeker type folks, right? They came to this country with nothing and now they’re something and they’re proud. And oftentimes, you know, exterior examples of that, you know, like a watch or fashion or whatever, is like a status symbol in some ways. And then the interesting thing about like the racial critique, I remember some of the Muslims in the video came to me and they were like, “It’s so sad that even though I’m Black and I’m Muslim, I’m not being seen in this film, even though, we’re in this film as often as like the non– like as the light skinned Muslims.” And I’ve watched this film back again, and I was like, yeah, I mean, I don’t understand this racial critique. And it made me think about, like, are people seeing what they want to see in this film? Do they want to take away what it is they want to take away? And the third critique was about, you know, gender identity in the public space. You know? Everybody in this film, you know, was– we went about it in the right way because I also collaborated with a friend of mine, Habib, and we were like, got consents and everything. And we asked people and we talked to people. We were like, “Hey, this is what we’re thinking about, the film” like, etc., etc… And everyone’s like, “Yeah, I would love to be in this. I want to be in this. This is who I am.” And then for people to say, you know, Muslim women can’t represent themselves like this or shouldn’t represent themselves like this, I think is a larger conversation and something that a good friend of mine, Zahra Ayubi, who’s a professor at Dartmouth, has like helped me walk through, you know, and think about because I didn’t realize the level of just like gender discrimination that’s baked into some of these comments,

 

And a friend of mine, I think, summarized it well. He was like, “Listen, you created a piece of art. And when art enters the public space, it’s subject to public critique. It doesn’t matter what the artist’s intention was.” Because for the people who wanted to see themselves in Layla, they saw themselves and they resonated with it. And the people who wanted to see this vibrant, literally vibrant, you know, beautiful Islam in public display in the US, they saw that. And people who wanted to see, you know, women violating Islamic norms, you know, then they saw that and they got upset about that. If they wanted to see a specific, you know, racial group dominate, they saw that. But, you know, I will say the one group that I feel like we didn’t have good representation on, going back, are like a lot of Latinx Muslims and Latina Muslims that I didn’t even know, in my full ignorance existed, until after the film. And we heard from like Bolivian Muslims and Peruvian Muslims just being like, “Oh my God, I want to be a part of this!” And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is my own ignorance here. Like, I didn’t even know, you know, other than… we did have a sister who was Cuban. But outside of that, I didn’t know there were like, like Southern American, you know?

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Last summer, MIPSTERZ staged an art exhibition at Duke University around the theme of Muslim Futurism. It’s a multidisciplinary project which imagines a future where religious discrimination doesn’t exist. Central to the project is a video, ALHAMDU, showing a multicultural group, dressed in a stunning fashion – think New York urban wear mixed with Arab, African and South Asian stylings. The settings move from the inner city to desert landscapes. You can feel the birth of a new civilization in those images.

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

Initially, it started off as an experiment. We were at Zoo Labs, which is a music residency in Oakland, and we invited a bunch of Muslims and Muslim-adjacent people, people who resonated with Islam. They basically were like, for example, somebody’s Hindu by religious tradition but loves qawwali music, which is like a very classic, quintessential Islamic Sufi genre of music. And we would invite everybody and I said, “Let’s create a new genre of music.” Like, is this even possible? You know, and that’s when we started using the term Muslim Futurism or Muslim futures before anybody else was using it. And in 2019, we said, you know, let’s take this notion of thriving. Let’s rent out a house in Joshua Tree in California, and just be. And let’s wear things that we think we would be wearing on this other planet. And Joshua Tree has this like Tatooine vibe, and Tatooine is Tunisia, you know, if you remember from Star Wars.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

That’s right.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

It’s like other people have been ripping and exploiting our like lands and our stories and our cultural ideas. Why don’t we create this world that’s similar to Tatooine? And we filmed it again. We put it out into the world. It was 20 seconds and we said, “Does anybody want to see any more of this?” And that’s when we got our first funding through crowdfunding. Over like 850 people were like, “We want to see this.” And it was crazy. We had folks as famous as Kesha Ali to like non-Muslims, just like funding this film and being like, “Yeah, put this out there, put the whole vision out there.” And it was so wild when one of the VP’s at Tribeca just straight up called and was like, “I can tell that so much went into the making of this that you guys don’t let on from the production. And I want to know all of it.” I am like back to being speechless.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Futurism always contains the sense of optimism and progress. And the planet is literally falling apart and we are engaged, you know, and confronting systems which marginalize and continue to oppress. And there is real danger out there, real violence. And yet the notion of futures and futurism often carries with it hope. Are you actually hopeful?

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

Ask me this question later, you know, when my child is born. But right now, not so much. I’m a little bit on the side of just critique. You know, I started off, as a comedian, as a satirist, critiquing, you know, Muslim groups around me and seeing like, what could we be doing better? And similarly, now I’m also engaged in a critique and almost in a satirical critique of like, how bad can we get as a society? Like, where are we failing as Muslims? But really, the goal there is to kind of create a level of enthusiasm or motivation a little like, you know, you kind of prick somebody to wake them up a little bit like a… I don’t want to call myself a gadfly, but maybe it is a little bit of a gadfly kind of approach here. So that, that is where I stand right now. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to end on a note that I don’t think sincerely reflects my current state of mind.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Abbas Rattani, tell me about a joy or a meanness that has come to you as an unexpected visitor recently.

 

ABBAS RATTANI:  

I would have to say the announcement that I’m going to be a dad. I think that was a joy, but also invokes a lot of, you know, fear because I want to make sure that I do it right and help my wife out and do this co-parenting thing together and really provide a life full of joy, but also a life that has a sense of awareness and critique of the ills in the world. And, you know, the world is kind of crazy right now and I don’t know what it would look like when, you know, they are my age, you know, 30 something years from now.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Abbas Rattani, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on This Being Human.

 

ABBAS RATTANI: 

Thank you for having me. I’m very honoured. Thank you, guys.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Thank you for listening to This Being Human. We will provide links to some of MIPSTERZ work in the show notes.

 

This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. Our executive producer is Lisa Gabriele. Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound.

 

Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

 

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. For more information about the museum go to www.agakhanmuseum.org

 

The Museum wishes to thank The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation for their generous support of This Being Human.