Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight

The Taqwacores is a novel about a strange community, to put it mildly. To even try and come up with a single word or a sentence that could capture even the gist of the crew of Muslim punk artists is mindwrecking.

The title, "Taqwacores", combines taqwa, the Arabic word for "piety," with "hardcore," used to describe many genres of angry Western music (and also adult movies). So the protagonist Yusuf Ali experiences "taqwacores" as deep Muslim piety mixed with angry hardcore music (played in...