The Muslims: Fuck These Fucking Fascists | Epitaph Records; September 24
“Disclaimer, we’re a little ridiculous,” says QADR, “Let us know if you want us to, like, answer the question seriously…” Before I can respond, Ba7ba7 jumps in: “But don’t let us know that.”
It’s a sticky, hot summer afternoon and I’m sitting with punk band The Muslims having a cool-down beer, totally unsure of what I’m getting into.
Musically, the Durham-based band (identified here by their artist names) specializes in incendiary, laser-focused punk music that rages against all forms of oppression. In person, the bandmates specialize in shenanigans, and an earnest answer often devolves into a joke.
Within the first 10 minutes of the interview, Ba7ba7 pivots from recounting the racist backlash the band regularly receives online to asking me if I’ve ever heard of cancel culture. Without missing a beat, QADR and Abu Shea help fill in a mock narrative that involves a sponsorship from the Ben Shapiro show, a career-defining performance at the RNC, and this kicker:
Ba7ba7: “We were three white guys from Seattle.”
QADR: “Then we became marginalized.”
Abu Shea: “Then we became melanated.”
By this point, The Muslims can barely contain their laughter.
In all seriousness, or whatever is left of it, their humor is less curveball than icebreaker. The three band members are genuinely warm, attentive, and kind, and their ability to laugh in the face of injustice, while still ripping it to shreds, is refreshing.
Fuck These Fucking Fascists, The Muslims’ latest album (and their first under illustrious indie label Epitaph Records), comes out digitally September 24th. It packs the same political punch as the band’s previous releases, with added attention to melody and repetition, and a goal to have everyone, adults and children alike, both consumed and tormented by how catchy it is to curse reactionaries.
“I want to have earworm songs where a five-year-old kid is singing, ‘Fuck these fucking fascists’ and then their parents hate-email us like ‘My kid just called their teacher a fascist,’” says QADR, the band’s lyricist. “I want it to be a problem.”
Lead single “Fuck These Fucking Fascists” is an F-bomb laden storm of pop-punk mastery, with racing guitars and drums that reveal the band’s more obvious influences, like Blink-182 and Green Day. QADR’s occasional sweet vocal turns also signal the soulful influences of her youth, like Lauryn Hill, and K-Ci & JoJo. This balance provides a loose frame for the rest of the album—12 songs, all under three minutes—as the group rails against racism, homophobia, religiously-sanctioned patriarchy, and COVID-19.
It’s not all righteous rage: “Froot Of The Loom” is a rousing pride anthem for baby gays, and my personal favorite “John McCain’s Ghost Sneaks Into The White House And Tea Bags The President,” is a hilarious fever dream that you’ll undoubtedly find yourself humming.
Political statements in music often risk getting lost in the noise—in cliches and boring production, or in the incongruous behaviors that frequently trip musicians up—but on their latest album, The Muslims have provided a way forward, reminding listeners that good music can be fun, radical, hard, and hysterical, all at once.
Lead singer and guitarist QADR, drummer Ba7ba7, and bassist Abu Shea first came together as The Muslims in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump. The bandmates have roots in New York, Charlotte, and Raleigh, respectively, and have made Durham their home the past few years.
QADR and Ba7ba7 first played together in the early 2010s in the Greensboro-based protest band Cakalak Thunder, which Ba7ba7 co-led. On QADR’s urging they decided to give it a go as a punk band and put out a call for a bassist, eventually bringing Abu Shea into the fold.
For The Muslims, identity is central—any press mention of them won’t fail to include the fact that they are brown and Black, queer and muslim—and they love punk music too much to see it tainted by bigotry.
“Being in the punk scene, I’ve noticed racist, problematic ass white dudes in public spaces that are not being fucking checked,” QADR says. “For them, punk spaces have been a safe haven of exercising white male rage and that’s not what the fuck punk is. This is a space of outrage, of speaking out against establishment and oppression in the system.”
“It’s really great to make those white folks feel like we’re invading their space, because Black punk has always existed,” says Abu Shea, who also grew up going to punk shows, “Raleigh has a really, really deep historic punk scene that has always been dominated by white dudes. Being in the Triangle and being a POC, Muslim, queer, punk band, it’s the antithesis of the Triangle’s history. That’s one of the biggest things that I miss about playing shows right now actually. There’s always somebody who feels affronted.”
The group’s identity-driven approach is also a way to reclaim their faith, and confront the dissonance between the lives they live now and the constraints they encountered growing up in more rigid Muslim communities.
“As an organizer, my belief in justice and cosmic accountability is shaped by Islam,” says Ba7ba7, who is of Palestinian orgin. “But there’s hella shit I don’t like culturally and politically about the ways that people practice their faith or leverage their faith that I was super repelled by. The great thing about being in the Muslims is that it’s a space to practice something that I used to have a harder time with a decade ago, but now I’m getting better at embodying the way that I am a Muslim.”
QADR, who was born into a Black Muslim community adds, “For me, religion wasn’t a liberatory practice or liberatory space. For a very long time, I was very adamant about not claiming Islam. The reclamation of my identity is similar to the reason I decided to firmly come out, knowing what the consequences would be for me interpersonally and in my family because it was about agency. I deserve to be as free as I need to be.”
Detractors in the band’s YouTube comments are quick to try and find contradictions in the band’s identities, while failing to recognize that their impulse to police Muslims from the outside is itself rooted in Islamophobia, not to mention the blatant double standard applied against Christianity.
“When I was driving through Virginia, this country song came on,” QADR says, “And the chorus is ‘sitting here, drinking beer, singing God, amen.’ And the verses are like, ‘Never been to church. But like, you know what, yeah, I’m thanking God for where I’m at.’ No other religious group could do that. No one could ever be like, ‘Sitting here, drinking beer saying, Alhamduliah’ Like what the fuck? Hopefully we’ll do that, but that’s just absolute hypocrisy.”
It’s no small thing, then, that The Muslisms, despite the heaviness they balance on a regular basis, can braid silliness with the seriousness of their mission.
In practice sessions, QADR leads on lyrics and music and will bounce the drafts off of Abu Shea and Ba7ba7 until a song comes out of it.
“We provide a musical plate for QADR to hash out the emotions she’s working through,” Abu Shea says.
“Sometimes we’ll end an actual song that we have, and then one of us will just like keep fucking around and keep playing and we’ll all add stuff then I’ll just start yelling stuff over it and then through the process of yelling, I realize, ‘Okay, this is actually could be thing, let’s record this,’” says QADR. Despite a seemingly ad-hoc approach, in just four years the band has managed to produce three cohesive albums and an excellent EP of winding, exploratory jams. Most recently, in early July, they also achieved the major milestone of signing to Epitaph Records. While they appreciate the significance, they also hold it loosely.
“A lot of bands are grinding and a lot of bands have been out here kicking ass [and] doing amazing things,” QADR says. “What we’ve got, I want it for everybody.”
As the pandemic drags on, the band has collectively found solace in gardening, video games, family, and trolling their fans. In the past, their releases have come out on April 1st, so a late fall release is disorienting to their dedicated fanbase. And when I ask them if the record will actually come out on time, they refuse to confirm or deny.
“We’re going back to the early Netflix days where basically what’s going to happen is you preorder and you get mailed a piece of candy,” Abu Shea deadpans, “Put it in your DVD player and see what happens.”
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